Death Quotes

If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end.

~ A.c. Grayling

I am your little ram,burying his muzzle in thick grass of your pasture,folded by you at night, herded by day,a dedicated dog nipping at my hocks.The day will come for you to drawthe bright sickle of the moonacross my wooly throat.Do it with love, without regret.

~ Mark Wunderlich

How quickly he fell, how soon it was over.

~ Donna Tartt

She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena's love of music, Pran's asthma, Maan's generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small unrung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar's great-grandchildren. Indeed, for all the Minsisster of Revenue's impatience with her, she was his regret.And it was right that she should continue to be so, for he should have treated her better while she lived, the poor, ignorant, grieving fool.

~ Vikram Seth

Every damn fool thing you do in this life you pay for.

~ Édith Piaf

Liz wrenched her hand from his grasp, and this time, she stepped boldly forward. “I will stay and Michael can go.”  Her voice did not waiver as she pronounced her own death sentence. No matter what happened to her, she knew she couldn’t let him die.

~ Willow Cross

Death and madness are his only mistresses.

~ Kristen Painter

When all the birds drowned in the sliver bayWhen the smoke signal went into outer spaceNobody would rememberThe day the world went awayWhen the blood dripped off the rusted blade When the Bible was torn off another pageNobody would realizeThe day the world went away

~ 喬靖夫

Fear and hopelessness washed over her. She was looking her own mortality in the face, and it was a horrifying thing to do.

~ Rose Wynters

Jaden felt their boredom, their tired eternity. Beyond that, she felt their dying essence. They were immortal—all-powerful beings—and yet they were powerless against the onslaught of ever-changing time. They were lost in a modern world, one they didn’t have the energy to understand. And, in being lost, they were immobilized against it. Not even their judgments could assuage their exhausted wisdom of forever.

~ Michelle M. Pillow

Ah, this delicious night air,' she said, luxuriously sniffing in the coolness. 'Night air and gardening are the great tonics. There is nothing so stimulating as bare contact with rich mother earth. You are never so fresh as when you have been grubbing in the soil - black hands, black nails, and boots covered with mud.' She gave her great jovial laugh.'I'm a glutton for air and earth,' she said. 'Positively I look forward to death, for then I shall be buried and have the kind earth all round me. No leaden caskets for me - I have given explicit directions. But what shall I do about air? Well, I suppose one can't have everything.'(Mrs. Amworth)

~ E.f. Benson

This is not a white and black business we are in. There are messy shades of crimson haunting us in everything we do.

~ Michelle M. Pillow

He had seen so much of life, but even more of death. He had seen countless eras come and go and still he braved forward, forever alone. And here she was ready to give up after a few lousy years. She was a coward.

~ Michelle M. Pillow

It takes a few days for the transformation to be complete, depending on how much venom is in the bloodstream, how close the venom is to the heart. As long as the heart keeps beating, poison spreads, healing, changing the body as it moves through it. Eventually the heart stops, and the conversion is finished. But all the time, every minute of it, a victim would be wishing for death

~ Stephenie Meyer

But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.

~ Thomas Browne

~Posters with torn edges hanging from rotten walls~ The doctor told me something onceshe saidSTOP DRINKINGI slapped her across the face with thisNOI walked right out of that officewent right down to the holeI told the bartenderWHISKEY, MOTHERFUCKERhe poured and he pouredand I slapped my money down on that barthe man I had been driving around withhe just sort of sat there next to this hookershe probably had something rottenway down there between her legsher eyes told of no soulI emptied the bottle down my throatand ordered some chipsthe bartender told meTHEY'RE STALEand I give him a I DON'T FUCKIN' CARE,GIVE ME SOMETHIN'He slid me a ham sandwich dripping with cheap low-fat mayo and saidENJOYI went back to my roomand talked all nightso much conversationit turned the toilet bowl pale

~ Dave Matthes

Sometimes it isn't fighting that's brave, it's facing the death you know is coming.

~ Veronica Roth

A coward,' he declared with dignity, when he'd stopped coughing and had got his breath back, 'dies a hundred times. A brave man dies but once. But Dame Fortune favours the brave and holds the coward in contempt.'— Dandelion

~ Andrzej Sapkowski

I thought of Bobby, of the last look he had given me, and at that moment I understood one of the differences between man and cat: man knows he's going to die, so he can get ready and be willing, even eager, to go. A cat knows the end is near, but that's all. He can't accept death: he can't trust in it; cats are perhaps too metaphysical an entity to need to believe in the idea of a beyond; a cat is his own god and man his creation.

~ Jaime Manrique

Pulling through is what people do around here. There is a kind of bravery in their lives that isn’t bravery at all. It is automatic, unflinching, a mix of man and machine, consuming and unquestionable obligation meeting illness move for move in a giant even-steven game of chess – an unending round of something that looks like shadowboxing, though between love and death, which is the shadow? “Everyone admires us for our courage,” says one man. “They have no idea what they’re talking about.”“Courage requires options,” the man adds.“There are options,” says a woman with a thick suede headband. “You could give up. You could fall apart.”“No you can’t. Nobody does. I’ve never seen it,” says the man. “Well, not really fall apart.

~ Lorrie Moore

In such a beast as this... (he means the army)...it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it was finished as a battle.

~ Paul Hoffman

I had long believed adversity was the greatest teacher, but I learnt that nothing teaches you more about life than death.

~ Alex Staniforth

The only people I am aware of who don’t have troubles are gathered in peaceful, little neighborhoods. There is never a care, never a moment of stress and never an obstacle to ruin a day. All is calm. All is serene. Most towns have at least one such worry-free zone. We call them cemeteries.

~ Steve Goodier

There's such an intimate kind of beauty in the act of listening to music being created right in front of your eyes, watching the notes fly off the performers' fingertips, the night enveloping you like a blanket. 

~ M.c. Frank

But you are not your bank account, or your ambition. You're not the cold clay lump you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are Spirit, you are love, and even though it is hard to believe sometimes, you are free. You're here to love, and be loved, freely. If you find out next week that you are terminally ill - and we're all terminally ill on this bus - what will matter are memories of beauty, that people loved you, and that you loved them.

~ Anne Lamott

Sufism, in one definition, is human life.

~ Idries Shah

As life runs on, the road grows strange With faces new, and near the end The milestones into headstones change, ’Neath every one a friend.

~ James Russell Lowell

You learn, finally, that you'll die, and so you try to hang on to your own life, that gentle, naive kid you used to be, but then after a while the sentiment takes over, and the sadness, because you know for a fact that you can't ever bring any of it back again. You just can't.

~ Tim O'brien

My parents say you’re no good, Elijah.” I exhaled and killed the cigarette in the grass.Laughing, Eli’s eyes went to my lips and his hands touched my bare midriff. “Really? And what do you say?”He had brought his lips so close to mine that it became hard to think about my next words when all I wanted to do was crush my mouth to his. I wanted him to completely consume me. “I think you’re broken,” I finally got out, and Eli arched a brow. “But I think I’m broken too. I just don’t know it yet.

~ Nadège Richards

I'm not sure I'll ever know the meaning of life or what comes for us after death, but I know it's more than the hysteria people make it out to be. It's about freeing your soul when no one else can; turning thirty and still feeling like you're seventeen. It's about taking chances on a whim, embracing the rain during the storm, and smiling so damn much that you start to cry. It's never regretting, never forgetting, and always being.It's kissing underwater and touching in the dark. Loving even when you think it's emotionally impossible and surviving someway and somehow. It's about living life with a full heart and an overflowing glass.I live life on the edge. I dream, I care, and I belong.I know there's a here and now.I know that I want it.

~ Nadège Richards

Visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said Life goes on. What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.

~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon.She did not hear him, but stood over his bed and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow.Hold my hand, he said, and then: why are your putting the sheet over my face?

~ Dylan Thomas

His face was so ravaged, it was like looking at death itself. Except for the smooth, silvered part of it. By creeping degrees, his human hand lifted. He turned it over, showing a bloody palm. His cracked lips moved. Beloved.He could not say the word, but I knew it. So did his Fool.

~ Robin Hobb

His face was so ravaged, it was like looking at death itself. Except for the smooth, silvered part of it. By creeping degrees, his human hand lifted. He turned it over, showing a bloody palm. His cracked lips moved. 'Beloved.'He could not say the word, but I knew it. So did his Fool.

~ Robin Hobb

During Xtha-cka Zhi-ga The-the, the Killer of Flowers Moon. I will wade across the river of the blackfish, the otter, the beaver. I will climb the bank where the willow never dies.

~ David Grann

Yet Theo had become engrossed in his own tale, transporting himself back to the night of which he spoke. In the distance, he could again see the faces he had encountered on that fateful night, the twisted bodies and pained expressions of the men who no longer walked the realms of men, but those of the underworld gods.

~ A.h. Septimius

We weep as we witness the dead of a loved one.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

He knew, but it was not enough. The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin. When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.

~ Madeline Miller

Yet this thou art alive, but if ye soar,My poor frail heart will have beat out its cryAnd sadly miss thy sweet form all the moreWhile helplessly I stand and watch you die.

~ Timothy Salter

There was something shameful about surviving sorrow. You were corrupted. She was corrupted. She was no good anymore. She was inauthentic, apocryphal. She wanted to be a seeker and to travel further and further. But after sorrow, such traveling is not a climbing but a sinking to a depth leached of light at which you are unfit to endure. And yet you endure there.

~ Joy Williams