Death Quotes

Without guidance and support for patients and families approaching death, there may be unnecessary conflict, confusion, and trauma that linger long after the passing of a loved one.

~ Lisa J. Shultz

It behooves me to remember as I advance in age that death is an inevitable part of the life cycle rather than a medical failure.

~ Lisa J. Shultz

Part of us did die. Literally - that tissue on your face, the part they removed. It died. And you can't recover from any kind of death without mourning it.

~ Alyssa B. Sheinmel

Death is the only certainty in life. The moment we are born, our journey towards our final destination begins. It’s the beauty or the ugliness of that journey that defines our life; the distances covered varying in each case. Every flower that has bloomed in the free breeze of spring has to wither in the cruel icy autumn draught.

~ Anurag Shourie

There are no more surprises and shocks in life, so that I watch the flame without agitation. For me the greatest reality is this and nothing else... Nothing else will worry or interest me in life hereafter.

~ R.k. Narayan

When people pass on we must choose how to remember them. While our loved ones sleep for eternity we must carry on with our daily toil. We can elect to harbor adoration and love in our precious memories or cling to animosity and detestation. We can kindly remember our ancestors or continue to feel embedded enmity towards people who no longer walk this earth. Regardless the human frailties of the recently departed, it seems that we should aspire to clutch the best part of our ancestors being fast to our hearts. A book encapsulating a departed person’s life has many pages; we must choose which chapters to treasure and what chapters to disregard or downplay.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

In the lassitude after love Odysseus asks Circe, What is the way to the land of the dead?Circe answers, You are muffled in folds of heavy fabric. You close your eyes against the rough cloth and though you struggle to free yourself you can barely move. With much thrashing and writhing, you manage to throw off another layer, but find that not only is there another one beyond it, but that the weight bearing you down has scarcely decreased. With dauntless spirit you continue to struggle. By infinitesimal degrees, the load becomes lighter and your confinement less. At last, you push away a piece of coarse, heavy cloth and, relieved, feel that it was the last one. As it falls away, you realize you have been fighting through years. You open your eyes.

~ Zachary Mason

Every living thing dies, Art. That’s why we cherish it while we have it. That’s why we respect the decisions our loved ones make for themselves. That’s why we love, and why we care, and why we hurt. Because everything dies.

~ Reilyn J. Hardy

Time is quixotic because it can torment us. When we have insufficient stimulus to fill our lives, we resent the relentless quality of time, and we engage in activities designed to “kill time.” Time that passes slowly creates insufferable boredom; time that passes to quickly makes us aware of our accelerated death march. A person’s perspective on time depends mostly on what they are most afraid of, boredom or death.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The world slides, the world goes, and death makes equal the rich and the poor

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Be assured that any hurt to your spirit will pass in time. It is the nature of Death to take, but the nature of Life to give.

~ Garth Nix

Death is permanent. There’s no coming back if you get off the ferryman’s boat.

~ Martha Sweeney

Birth is not a beginning; it’s a continuation. That lends tremendous comfort because we then understand that, equally true, death is not an end; it’s merely a continuation.

~ Laurie Buchanan

The tragedy of life is not death, but fearing to live, allowing parts of us to wilt and die instead of flower and rejoice.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

An old Celtic proverb boldly places death right at the center of life. ‘Death is the middle of a long life,’ they used to say. Ancient people did things like that; they put death at the center instead of casting it out of sight and leaving such an important subject until the last possible moment. Of course, they lived close to nature and couldn’t help but see how the forest grew from fallen trees and how death seemed to replenish life from fallen members. Only the unwise and the overly fearful think that death is the blind enemy of life.

~ Michael Meade

Without warning, David was visited by an exact vision of death: a long hole in the ground, no wider than your body, down which you are drawn while the white faces above recede. You try to reach them but your arms are pinned. Shovels put dirt into your face. There you will be forever, in an upright position, blind and silent, and in time no one will remember you, and you will never be called by any angel. As strata of rock shift, your fingers elongate, and your teeth are distended sideways in a great underground grimace indistinguishable from a strip of chalk. And the earth tumbles on, and the sun expires, and unaltering darkness reigns where once there were stars.

~ John Updike

Death, it turns out, is the mother of all conflicts.

~ Mark Z. Danielewski

By not talking about death with our loved ones, not being clear through advanced directives, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and funeral plans, we are directly contributing to this future ... and a rather bleak present, at that. Rather than engage in larger societal discussions about dignified ways for the terminally ill to end their lives, we accept intolerable cases like that of Angelita, a widow in Oakland who covered her head with a plastic bag because the arthritic pain of her gnarled joints was too much to bear. Or that of Victor in Los Angeles, who hung himself from the rafters of his apartment after his third unsuccessful round of chemotherapy, leaving his son to discover his body. Or the countless bodies with decubitus ulcers, more painful for me to care for them even babies or suicides. When these bodies come into the funeral home, I can only offer my sympathy to their living relatives, and promise to work to ensure that more people are not robbed of a dignified death by a culture of silence.

~ Caitlin Doughty

Death is our friend, precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Obviously the raven with the unquenchable itch was at it again, playing tricks on the world and its creatures. Once by air, he thought, and now by water.

~ Mordecai Richler

We die a day at a time

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Verily, there is no dishonor in death at the hands of a far superior enemy.

~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

An African who loses the ability to die with dignity is a lost man.

~ Henning Mankell

If you’ve never been close to death, life probably seems pretty solid. The truth is, it can be destroyed in an instant, like a photograph. One moment your world is slick and shiny. But then the Universe crumples everything into a ball. And even if you don’t get crushed, if you fight to straighten things out, your life will never be the same again.

~ Paula Stokes

Death is the great incorruptible corruptor

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Top question of the dying: What made me sick?

~ Steven Magee

Love doesn’t die with death. Love is like liquid; when it pours out, it seeps into others’ lives. Love changes form and shape. Love gets into everything. Death doesn’t conquer all; love does. Love wins every single time. Love wins by lasting through death. Love wins by loving more, loving again, loving without fear.

~ Kate O'neill

Dave learned that Death is the opposite of peace: it’s struggle, it’s ugly, it’s horrific, it’s dirty. And ultimately, Death is emptiness.

~ Emily Bleeker

It's not that people don't know when they'll die. It's that they don't seem to know they'll die.

~ Raheel Farooq

He’d seen a lot of bizarre items left at gravesides, like a carton of eggs, a pair of reading glasses, a bag of licorice, smooth stones, a spoon.

~ Sheri Webber

Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame.

~ Jane Austen

The stony silence of death, trapped by the original gravity of our sins,and the perpetuity of a long, leisurely yawn, a world where blood and bone no longer matter.

~ Brian D'ambrosio

And what after all, is death?? 'Tis but a cessation from mortal life; 'tis but the finishing of an appointed course; the refreshing inn after a fatiguing journey; the end of a life of cares and troubles; and, if happy, the beginning of a life of immortal happiness.

~ Samuel Richardson

Only the dead, can speak about their world.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Death occurs in unexpected times.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Die in a good way, obviously.

~ Mindy Kaling

I will simply die, as you will simply die, when our hearts stop beating. And instead of the fires of Hell or the clouds of Heaven, there will be a chorus of hungry worms or fish, depending on how we go. Isn’t that what really terrifies you most of all, why you force yourself against all reason to believe in such tales? It’s because you’re afraid of the nothingness at the end. You’re ashamed of it.

~ Cliff James

She died in my arms saying, “I don’t want to die.” That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we could never have war anymore.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

A shade flickered to my left, an eerie shadow balanced even more precariously on the railing than I. Her plimsolls struggled to grip the same rail my fingers now held. I knew her face, just as I knew her death; I’d watched it often enough, those times I’d been unable to avoid crossing here. Nerys was always here, tied to the moment of her death, an echo, forever hurtling down into those waters, only to reappear an instant later, once more wavering on the rails.

~ Hazel Butler

Death is a misery.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita