Death Quotes

What the myth founds is a double existence between the upper world and the underworld: a dimension of death is introduced into life, and a dimension of life is introduced into death.

~ Walter Burkert

Leaving the world without keeping an heirloom is a degradation of the divine purpose.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Many are called, few are chosen.

~ Paul Hoffman

On whose authority, who gives the right to religion, the law, medicine, the others, to choose on my behalf but without consulting me, the way, the place and the time I am allowed to die?

~ Alexandros Velios

It is uncertain where Death will await you,there expect it everywhere.

~ Seneca

The glories of our blood and stateAre shadows, not substantial things;There is no armor against Fate.Death lays his icy hand on kings...

~ James Shirley

It's like a lion at the door;And when the door begins to crack,It's like a stick across you back;And when your back begins to smart,It's like a penknife in your heart;And when your heart begins to bleed,You're dead, and dead, and dead, indeed.

~ John Newberry

The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive - perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.

~ Mignon Mclaughlin

Death with dignity is our society's expression of the uni­versal yearning to achieve a graceful triumph over the stark and often repugnant finality of life's last sputterings. But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhythms. Not death but disease is the real enemy, disease the malign force that requires confron­tation. Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting bat­tle has been lost. Even the confrontation with disease should be approached with the realization that many of the sicknesses of our species are simply conveyances for the inexorable journey by which each of us is returned to the same state of physical, and perhaps spiritual, nonexistence from which we emerged at conception. Every triumph over some major pathology, no matter how ringing the victory, is only a reprieve from the inevitable end.

~ Sherwin B. Nuland

...my patient needed a great deal of reassurance that there had been nothing unusual about the way her mother died, that she had not done something wrong to prevent her mother from experiencing that spiritual death with dignity that she had anticipated. All of her efforts and expectations had been in vain, and now this very intelligent woman was in despair. I tried to make clear to her that the belief in the probability of death with dignity is our, and society's, attempt to deal with the reality of what is all too frequently a series of destructive events that involve by their very nature the disintegration of the dying person's humanity. I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.

~ Sherwin B. Nuland

The wheel of life: one generation rises like summer wheat, then withers and falls to seed. The wheel turns - birth, youth, adulthood, parenthood, senescence, death - driven by genetic machinery set in motion so many eons ago. For all its subtleties and infinite beauty, life has but one purpose: to keep the wheel turning.

~ Frank Vertosick Jr.

Though everyone may yearn for a tranquil death, the basic instinct to stay alive is a far more powerful force

~ Sherwin B. Nuland

The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And, in a war that you cannot win, you don't want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don't want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knew how to fight for territory when he could and how to surrender when he couldn't, someone who understood that the damage is greatest if all you do is fight to the bitter end.

~ Atul Gawande

There is one essential requirement for being close with a dying person: the letting go of self-concern.

~ Robert Martensen

Medicine no doubt, has helped us a lot to cure so many diseases, but death still remains an incurable one!

~ Mehek Bassi

Death may be due to a wide variety of diseases and disorders, but in every case the underlying physiological cause is a breakdown in the body's oxygen cycle.

~ Dr. Milton Helpern

There is no way to deter old age from its grim duty, but a life of accomplishments makes up in quality for what it cannot add in quantity.

~ Dr. Sherwin Nuland

Now that Karen has been resurrected, I can travel beyond the black mirror. I can discover who I have lost with thefloating hearts and severed heads of my medicine. I must now whisper my other friends back too. I’m sad they’re gone…sad and blue.

~ Nicholaus Patnaude

She navigated away from the Parish Council message board and dropped into her favorite medical website, where she painstakingly entered the words brain and death in the search box.The suggestions were endless. Shirley scrolled through the possibilities, her mild eyes rolling up and down, wondering to which of these deadly conditions, some of them unpronounceable, she owed her present happiness.

~ J.k. Rowling

Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells

~ Yann Martel

I think back to the day I stood before my wife's grave for the final time, and turned away from it without regret, because I knew that what she was was not contained in that hole in the ground. I entered a new life and found her again, in a woman who was entirely her own person. When this life is done, I'll turn away from it without regret as well, because I know she waits for me, in another, different life.

~ John Scalzi

A mist rises from a nearby mound. It could be me, that mist, or simply the caretaker’s mower-dust. If the breeze blows just right, I’ll ghost your solid, entwine your hair. Promise me you won’t shampoo, but carry me along, tiny dust-particles of me.

~ Chila Woychik

I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that?

~ Mitch Albom

Death gets a bad rap. People think that euthanasia is putting their pets “down” when it really is lifting us up. In the first moment, when we come back to earth, we remember the comfort of the Heaven we came from and this is why we cry when we are born. When we are born in Heaven we come in laughing not crying! In birth we have the passage and then the pain. In death we have the pain and then the passage.

~ Kate Mcgahan

Disappointment is like a death! In most cases both are not preplanned. They both come when they will come. Only that the former builds up experiences by the latter stops all form of experiences.

~ Femi Olalekan Erejuwa Komolafe

Fear not the phantom of death, My Countrymen, for his greatnessAnd mercy will refuse to approachYour smallness; and dread not the Dagger, for it will decline to beLodged in your shallow hearts.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Some topics seem to be nothing but philosophical circles designed to lure the unsuspecting ant to its death.

~ D.e. Navarro

We need a shroud. A shroud for the son of Hermes.

~ Rick Riordan

We born on date we ll die on date but not the same date or same day never.

~ Thobias Claudy

You can't kill me. Even if you could, you can't bring yourself to do it. You'll hesitate. Again.

~ Richelle Mead

Caring is weakness, and weakness is death.

~ Adrienne Dewolfe

Comfort me by a solemn Assurance, that when the little Parlour in which I sit at this Instant, shall be reduced to a worse furnished Box, I shall be read, with Honour, by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.

~ Henry Fielding

Fame had kept me from getting laid that night. Fame would make it so other people would bother me, follow me around with cameras, be all up in my shit, keep me from doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. Fame could even potentially kill me. It killed a lot of people: John Lennon, Princess Diana, Selena.

~ A.d. Aliwat

Opulence and fame will shorten your life, ask for long life, and you'll enjoy the former in small quantities, for it is a substitute.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Integrity of life is fame's best friend,Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end.

~ John Webster

Missing what most of the time? The babbling faceless agora, the fame, the parties, the pop of flash bulbs? The lovers, the gaiety, the champagne? The solitude carved out of celebrity, poring over charts by a single lamp on a wide desk in a venerable hotel? Room service, coffee before dawn? The company of one friend, two? The choice: All of it or not? Some or none? Now, not now, maybe later?

~ Peter Heller

Lovers die inward that their flames conceal.

~ John Webster

I'm not talking about the scars that separate your skin, Parker. I'm not blind, I can see those. I'm talking about the scars much deeper than that. The scars that exist within you. The ones you actually try to hide.

~ Whitney Barbetti

Life is not just black and white, there are a million shades in between.

~ Hanif Hassan Barbhuiya

Last breath is rare, therefore expensive. However, we prefer to stay poor ... (Dernier soupir est rare, donc cher. - Pourtant, on préfère rester pauvre...)

~ Charles De Leusse