Death Quotes

I cannot live, if I am already dead.

~ Donna Russo Morin

Man is more noble dead than alive, because in returning to the earth he becomes earth, and nothing is nobler than the earth that entombs us, closes our eyes, and blossoms in a beautiful eterneity.

~ Tahar Ben Jelloun

Which is the most successful country on Earth? In whichever country dying is the most difficult thing, that country is the most successful one! And which is the most stupid country on earth? In whichever country dying is the easiest thing, that country is the most stupid one!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The earth was a grave: our life was lent to it by its elements and had to be returned: a time came when the simple elements seemed to long for release from the complicated forms of life, when every element of every cell said, Enough! The planet was our mother and our burial ground. No wonder the human spirit wished to leave. Leave this prolific belly. Leave also this great tomb. Passion for the infinite caused by the terror, by timor mortis, needed material appeasement.

~ Saul Bellow

Man needs only a small patch of earth for his pleasures, and a smaller one still to rest beneath.

~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We keep sending colonies up into space,” Akilah says, “and we don’t even know what’s at the bottom of the sea.”“Yeah, we do,” I counter. “Fish and stuff.”Akilah laughs. “We’ve barely explored the sea. There are places where the water is so deep that it has never seen light.” She sighs. “I would like to go to those places. I would like to sink down and down and down and see what’s hidden at the bottom.”The sea is a dangerous place because it makes you believe in forever. I stare back at the shoreline, where heavy boulders clutter the shore, a remembrance of the attacks during the Secessionary War. For all the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the war, more are dead and gone beneath the waves of the sea. I tread water, turning slowly, so the island’s behind me and all I can see is the blue-green waters. The sea goes on forever and ever. We are tiny, almost invisible specks. It could swallow us up. We are less than the bright stars of the night sky, compared to the vastness of the sea.And it is this place, as one tiny, barely visible speck bobbing in the water, where Akilah feels safe.Maybe being alone in the sea, with its unexplored depths, its clawing-finger waves, really is safer compared to the land, where there are people and malice and death.

~ Beth Revis

Life is plenty pointless. We're all put here on this earth, such a minuscule thing, really. This tiny Earth, in the midst of an ever-larger universe. We were put here for reasons unbeknownst to us, reasons that may not even exist. And, above all that, we try so hard. People work to discover things, to try to create the greatest new thing, to learn everything, to find answers. But those answers are pointless. Because one day, this world will end. And whatever mark you may have thought you left will vanish, like it was never even there. And that, my friends, is the meaning of life.

~ Payton Webb

Death, the beginning of eternal things, is only the end of earthly cares. -Priest

~ Jules Verne

The scene is most beautiful without people in it. People just screw things up. Forget the whole thing, the world, all the living people, I tell myself, and it has a ring of truth to it. The dead are better, aren't they? The dead don't betray or harm. They've already done all they can do. I can't figure out what people mean or who they are or whether they can be trusted, so, forget them. Don't even try anymore. For now at least, forget the living.

~ Jael Mchenry

I don’t know when my time on earth will be up; but I DO know that today, I am one day closer. You can bet I’m going to make this day count! Will you?

~ Steve Maraboli

It's the solitude that slays you. Maybe because you'd expected ruin to arrive in a grander and more romantic form.

~ Michael Cunningham

Death and birth are solitary experiences. We are born alone and we die alone. When we are expelled from the maternal womb, we begin the painful struggle that finally ends in death.

~ Octavio Paz

You can't miss me, because I was never there.

~ Ili Ann

I'll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I'll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.

~ Everett Ruess

How would you know if you were the last man on Earth? He said.I don't guess you would know it. You'd just be it.

~ Cormac Mccarthy

We were too greedy, grasping for immortality too soon. Perhaps if we had only been patient, content to wait, we would all have forever in the end.

~ Jessica Khoury

It is said that the dead are infinitely patient, although it is usually said by the living, and how would they know?

~ Lee Battersby

To inspire is to give life. To expire is to give death.

~ J.r. Rim

Gosh, it's easy!' he marveled, open-mouthed. 'I never knew before how easy it is to kill anyone! Twenty years to grow 'em, and all it takes is one little push!'He was suddenly drunk with some new kind of power, undiscovered until this minute. The power of life and death over his fellowmen! Everyone had it, everyone strong enough to raise a violent arm, but they were afraid to use it. Well, he wasn't! And here he'd been going around for weeks living from hand to mouth, without any money, without enough food, when everything he wanted lay within his reach all the while! He had been green all right, and no mistake about it!Death had become familiar. At seven it had been the most mysterious thing in the world to him, by midnight it was already an old story. (Dusk To Dawn)

~ Cornell Woolrich

The Farmer’s Almanac promised a cold winter. The coldest in decades. Andrew grinned, unaware of how hideously ugly it made him. Let the winter be record breaking. The year would be marked in infamy and not for the weather alone. He could imagine the headlines, mentioning it as the winter of death, as his spree was just beginning. It would put the town on the map.

~ Jaime Allison Parker

There was something unbearable about the damp, dark earth closing over a coffin and the still, empty flesh that was inside. She had attended a hundred funerals, but when you really loved someone there was something too final about a burial. Something brutal.

~ Sara Sheridan

A chap’s impending death has a way of focusing the mind.


~ Sara Sheridan

But death has taken root inside you and you know it will grow, like a cancer with a voice, from now until the day it consumes you whole.

~ Sharon Bolton

It is one thing to look at a mistreated boat and another to look at a tomb. The silence of the bay seemed more intense. And I could see the glint of the carrion flies.

~ John D. Macdonald

We thought we were invincible and Dominic proved us all wrong,” - Jesse Carlisle

~ Nina D'angelo

The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death, the modern man's worst fear is just death

~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.

~ Malcom X

No one understands me but I am cool with that. I was different from others. I knew this from when I was young. Things that turned people off normally about violence and death did the exact opposite with me. For when I was a small boy, death always intrigued me. I loved watching things die. Watching life leave someone's eyes was an adrenaline rush.

~ Jewel_Louise

At that moment Sonny noticed that the other car had not kept going but had parked a few feet ahead, still blocking his way. At that same moment his lateral vision caught sight of another man in the darkened tollbooth to his right. But he did not have time to think about that because two men came out of the car parked in front and walked toward him. The toll collector still had not appeared. And then in the fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone he knew he was a dead man. And in that moment his mind was lucid, drained of all violence, as if the hidden fear finally real and present had purified him.

~ Mario Puzo

At that moment Sonny noticed that the other car had not kept going but had parked a few feet ahead, still blocking his way. At that same moment his lateral vision caught sight of another man in the darkened tollbooth to his right. But he did not have time to think about that because two men came out of the car parked in front and walked toward him. The toll collector still had not appeared. And then in the fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man. And in that moment his mind was lucid, drained of all violence, as if the hidden fear finally real and present had purified him.

~ Mario Puzo

Go ahead, kill me! But live with this: All those people die!For the rest of your life, somewhere behind the feeds, that human part of you hiding down deep will always wonder how much pain you could have prevented if you hadn't been so weak!

~ Rick Remender

Of course a carp is just a carp, waiting to become either your pet, or a gefilte fish. But am I wrong to also see this body lying in a pool of blood, being fibbed about in plain sight, as a metaphor for all the corpses and blood never discussed?

~ Leela Corman

The truth is, it is the younger inexperience gangsters who often cut down the older original gangsters. The best way for this young thug to prove himself to others, is to simply cut down an established gangster. Thus, this cruel cycle of senseless violence repeats itself, with the younger being more vicious and rootless than his predecessor. It’s the dog, who kills the lion, and once he has killed the lion, he’s no longer a dog; he’s now a lion himself.

~ Drexel Deal

All Sam Peckinpah ever did in his movies was show that getting hit on the chin doesn't sound like [makes a small popping noise]. When one grown man hits another grown man in the face, it splatters like an overripe tomato. And it's not fun getting killed. It's bloody and gory and altogether unpleasant. That's all Sam Peckinpah ever did.

~ Harry Crews

Mellas continued to look at the wallet, saying nothing. Hawke, who had been watching Mellas through the steam that rose from his pear-can coffee mug, handed Mellas the cup. Mellas gave a brief smile and took a drink. His hand was shaking. Hawke said in a calm voice, 'Something happened. You want to talk about it?'Mellas didn't answer right away. Then he said, 'I think I know where the gooks are.' He pulled out his map and pointed to the spot, his hand still trembling.'How do you know that, Mel?' Hawke asked.'From the direction he crawled after he was shot.' Mellas tossed the wallet down at Fitch. Then he dug into his pocket and pulled out the soldier's unit and rank patches. he looked at them, then at Fitch and Hawke, who were no longer eating. 'I let him crawl toward home with his guts hanging out.' He started sobbing. 'I just left him there.' Snot was streaming from his nose. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry.' His hands were now shaking with his body as he clenched the two pieces of cloth to his eyes.

~ Karl Marlantes

In other words, they appeal to the state for protection, but the state is precisely that from which they require protection. To be protected from violence by the nation-state is to be exposed to the violence wielded by the nation-state, so to rely on the nation-state for protection from violence is precisely to exchange one potential violence for another. There may, indeed, be few other choices.

~ Judith Butler

Precarity designates that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death.

~ Judith Butler

TV is a pornographic cacophony of violence, death obsession, screams, gunfire and drama. You think it's fine because you are damaged.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Nausea and panic rose in my throat. I had killed a man.

~ A.b. Shepherd

The poker fell from my trembling hands as my entire body shook with reaction. I fell to my knees, pressed my hands to my face and began to sob. What had I done?

~ A.b. Shepherd