Death Quotes

Tis time to die, when 'tis a shame to live.

~ Thomas Middleton

An eerie aspect of social media is the way the dead’s account lingers in digital space as a floating memorial. Friends post emotional farewells as if the departed will read them. But we all know that those words are for the rest of the world as if to flaunt their bond with the deceased like a new car or engagement ring. Just like any material possession that ceases production, a person’s value amplifies when they are dead. They have no future. They have no present. Their past becomes a limited resource that everyone is desperate to snag a piece of.

~ Maggie Georgiana Young

He remembered the old-timers from his navy days. Grizzled lifers who could soundly sleep while two meters away their shipmates played a raucous game of poker or watched the vids with the volume all the way up. Back then he'd assumed it was just learned behavior, the body adapting so it could get enough rest in an environment that never really had downtime. Now he wondered if those vets found the constant noise preferable. A way to keep their lost shipmates away. They probably went home after their twenty and never slept again.

~ James S.a. Corey

Fuck it,” said Private First Class Chris Barnes, raising his hand. “Let’s do it. This sounds like a great fucking idea. Who wants to get blown up?” They started laughing. Watt, Barker, Cortez, and Private First Class Shane Hoeck all raised their hands. They did not give a damn anymore. It was all so absurd to them, that they were going to drive up and down a road for the next eight hours as bomb magnets. The only thing that they could do was laugh. “Hooray! We’re going out to get blown up!” they sang. “Who’s on board? Hey, who wants to come get blown up? Woohoo! Yeah, dude, I am ready to go fucking die! We are all going to fucking die!

~ Jim Frederick

Are you okay, man?Yeah, I'm good.It's a lie. I wonder if I will ever be good again.

~ David Bellavia

Not very good with death? Father was a military man, and military men lived with death; lived for death; lived on death. To a professional soldier, oddly enough, death was life.

~ Alan Bradley

I headed for my office, but stopped when I saw my laptop on the couch. Sorrel had obviously borrowed it—again—without permission. I grabbed it, wondering what questionable site he’d left on the screen this time and making a mental note to run the anti-virus software. After taking a shower, putting on my pajamas, and fixing an ice cream sundae for dinner—yes, it was one of those days—I sat down at my desk and pulled up the web browser.

~ H.d. Smith

The ocean will swallow you whole and burp you out and not notice you were even there.

~ Nicola Yoon

This is why the oceans taste of salt. It is because of all the tears of mermaids for sailors who have died for their love. The oceans are salt with death and grief.

~ Jaxy Mono

Hope – that silly, stupid creature that lived within me, no matter how often I tried to beat it to death – lifted its nose and sniffed at the air.

~ Kendall Kulper

If anyone can overcome a fear for the ocean, you can, little lady. Courage is being scared to death and saddlin' up anyway.

~ Colleen Houck

I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave

~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the grave.

~ Washington Irving

Should you ever feel too lonely...listen for the roar of the sea- for in it are all those who've been and all those who are to come.

~ Simon Van Booy

Everyone is terrified of death, as we spend our whole lives avoiding it.

~ Kelly Zygmunt

Well...yeah. It just goes to show. (Peabody)Show what (Dallas)You should get dressed up, go dancing, drink grown-up cocktails, and have sex as much as you can before you're dead. (Peabody)

~ J.d. Robb

A friend comes over with a Ouija board.It spells out: Bourbon. Where’s the band?Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.

~ Kelli Russell Agodon

I wiped my hands on my apron and went to the window. Outside, the prairie reached out and touched the places where the sky came down. Though the winter was nearly over, there were patches of snow and ice everywhere. I looked at the long dirt road that crawled across the plains, remembering the morning that Mama had died, cruel and sunny. They had come for her in a wagon and taken her away to be buried. And then the cousins and aunts and uncles had come and tried to fill up the house. But they couldn’t.

~ Patricia Maclachlan

Ultimately, what I am seeking in the photograph taken of me... is Death: Death is the eidos of that Photograph

~ Ronald Barthes

Live a life of lies, die a death of truths.

~ Anthony Liccione

The walls were coming down around me, but still, I couldn't imagine telling the truth. Not now. It was too late. How can I tell Mom and Dad what we'd done? It would ruin everything. It would ruin their image of me; it would ruin every thought they'd ever had about who I was. It would be another death.Another loss. Another miscarriage.

~ Dana Reinhardt

Being a hero is the easiest way to meet a bullet with your name on it.

~ David Kendall

Myths of the heroes speak most eloquently of man's quest to choose life over death.

~ Dorothy Norman

I believe that we are arks of the covenant and our true nature is not rage or deceit or terror or logic or craft or even sorrow. It is longing.

~ Cormac Mccarthy

I thought once how Theocritus had sungOf the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,Who each one in a gracious hand appearsTo bear a gift for mortals, old or young;And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware,So weeping, how a mystic Shape did moveBehind me, and drew me backward by the hair;And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,--Guess now who holds thee?--Death, I said, But, there,The silver answer rang,--Not Death, but Love.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

This place looks like the last scene in Hamlet.

~ Patricia Briggs

To sue to live, I find I seek to die; And, seeking death, find life.

~ William Shakespeare

Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fairTo be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

~ William Shakespeare

The gospel of miracle that we preach promotes death and encourages corruption.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Death kills us once, worry kills us every day.

~ Marty Rubin

What are you worrying about? You are born to die anyway.

~ Saurbh Katyal

I owe my last breath to death but not one breath more.

~ Marty Rubin

One of life's great truths is this: when one is about to be struck by a speeding six-hundred pound Coke machine, one need worry about little else.

~ Stephen King

Weeping for the dead's a waste of breath -they're lucky, they can't die again.

~ Tony Harrison

It's lucky I was there. Then again, who am I kidding? I'm in most places at least once, and in 1943, I was just about everywhere.

~ Markus Zusak

Dad's death didn't hollow me out the way Helen's had. After all, everyone had assumed Dad was a goner back when he got kicked in the head as a child. Instead, he had cheated death and, despite his gimp and speech impediment, lived a long life doing pretty much what he wanted. He hadn't drawn the best of cards, but he'd played his hand darned well, so what was there to grieve over?

~ Jeannette Walls

A live broke man is 'luckier' than a dead rich man.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.

~ Aldous Huxley

How do I get past my fears? Make a life for myself? Risk loving someone? When death is all that waits for you, what's the point in trying to have a life?

~ Colleen Houck

Risks? I have lived with the prospect of assassination for years. What risks? All men die, rich and poor alike. But if I am to die, then let it be while I fight, not like some bullock in a pen waiting for the ax to fall.

~ David Gemmell