Famous Quotes

…the longer I think about it the more it seems to me that we who are still alive are unreal in the eyes of the dead, that only occasionally, in certain lights and atmospheric conditions, do we appear in their field of vision.

~ W.g. Sebald

He danced with the sky instead, and the sky dropped him like a rotten plum.

~ Laini Taylor

Sometimes I hear the world discussed as the realm of men. This is not my experience. I have watched men fall to the ground like leaves. They were swept up as memories, and burned. History owns them. These men were petrified in both senses of the word: paralyzed and turned to stone. Their refusal to express feeling killed them. Anachronistic men. Those poor, poor boys.

~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

There was something about other people's grief that was so exposing, so personal, that she felt she shouldn't be looking.

~ Jane Fallon

If only certain things had been preventable, his life would have unfurled in front of him as intended, like a lush Oriental carpet. No surprises, no detours. Just a thick tapestry of days and nights that at the end of his time on earth, he could roll up and proudly claim as his own.

~ Shilpa Agarwal

If you truly live, you will never truly die!

~ Melanie M. Grace

When my mother passed away several years ago—well, wait a minute. Actually, she didn’t ‘pass away.’ She died. Something about that verb, ‘to pass away’ always sounds to me as if someone just drifted through the wallpaper. No, my mother did not pass away. She definitely died.

~ Steve Allen

If there is nothing else there is this: to be inundated, consumed.

~ Peter Heller

Who said, 'All Time's delightHath she for narrow bed;Life's troubled bubble broken'? ---That's what I said.

~ Walter De La Mare

Dark circles under my eyes sink deeper and deeper into my skull, in contrast to my pale skin there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse.

~ Dee Remy

Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents: how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture?But I was doomed to live

~ ;Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

The best way to be appreciative for your life is to live it; don't die for any other reason but love. Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.

~ Mike Norton

His [Death] voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty.

~ Martine Leavitt

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?

~ C.s. Lewis

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,And therefore I forbid my tears.

~ William Shakespeare

The amazing miracle of death, when one second you're walking and talking, and the next second you're an object.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Losing a mate to death is devastating but it's not a personal attack like divorce. When somebody you love stops loving you and walks away, it's an insult beyond comparison.

~ Sue Merrell

Human beings are the only ones in nature who are aware that they will die. For that reason and only for that reason, I have a profound respect for the human race, and I believe that its future is going to be much better than its present. Even knowing that their days are numbered and that everything will end when they least expect it, people make of their lives a battle that is worthy of a being with eternal life. What people regard as vanity-leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to prevent one's name from being forgotten- I regard as the highest expression of human dignity.

~ Paulo Coelho

Flowers, cold from the dew,And autumn's approaching breath,I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids,Which haven't faded yet.In their nights, fragrantly resinous,Entwined with delightful mystery,They will breathe in her springlikeExtraordinary beauty.But in a whirlwind of sound and fire,From her shing head they will flutterAnd fall—and before herThey will die, faintly fragrant still.And, impelled by faithful longing,My obedient gaze will feast upon them—With a reverent hand,Love will gather their rotting remains.

~ Anna Akhmatova

The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true

~ Leo Tolstoy

Still, being fragile creatures, humans always try to hide from themselves the certainty that they will die. They do not see that it is death itself that motivates them to do the best things in their lives. They are afraid to step into the dark, afraid of the unknown, and their only way of conquering that fear is to ignore the fact that their days are numbered. They do not see that with an awareness of death, they would be able to be even more daring, to go much further in their daily conquests, because then they would have nothing to lose- for death itself is inevitable.

~ Paulo Coelho

Someday you will die, and until you know that, you're useless to me.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

This was their way of honoring the dead. The story over, the demands of their own hard, rough lives began to re-assert themselves in their hearts, in their nerves, their blood and appetites. Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

~ Richard Adams

If you heard your lover scream in the next roomand you ran in and saw his pinkie on the floor, in a small puddle of blood.You wouldn't rush to the pinkie and say, 'Darling, are you OK? 'No, you'd wrap your arms around his shoulders and worry about the pinkie later.The same holds true if you heard the scream, ran in and saw his hand or -god forbid- his whole arm.But suppose you hear your lover scream in the next room, and you run in and his head is on the floor next to his body.Which do you rush to and comfort first?

~ Jeffrey Mcdaniel

Everything- even me, and one day even Charlotte- must come to end.

~ Avery Williams

Was there any meaning to life or to war, that two men should sit together and jump within seconds of each other and yet never meet on the ground below?

~ David Kenyon Webster

The grave and the image are equally links with the irrecoverable and symbols for the unimaginable.

~ C.s. Lewis

My father will find you and kill you for what you have done.” She said to him solemnly.Maligo towered over her, a leering smile twisting his dark face.“You would have to consider yourself lucky if you ever see your father again. Even if it is while he watches me take your life.” He snarled, allowing a haughty smirk creep across his face.

~ B.c. Morin

Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future.

~ Dan Chaon

It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

~ Oscar Wilde

I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come. Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out.

~ Markus Zusak

Life is the death of all of us.' - Tristan

~ Rowan Speedwell

People aren't often asked to make life or death decisions. There are no causes to die for. You can go through life never knowing which of your friends would really come through for you

~ Bella Pollen

I doubt love can do little else, if it cannot bring back people back from the dead.

~ James Potter

But in battle you cannot tell another when it is his time to enter the World-to-Come, nor is it possible to keep any man in this world when he wishes to leave it behind.

~ Alice Hoffman

But unless we determine to take action,' said the old man querulously, as if struggling against something deeply insouciant in his nature, 'then we shall all be destroyed, we shall all die. Surely we care about that?' 'Not enough to want to get killed over it,' said Ford.

~ Douglas Adams

I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it–our life–hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.‘But let all this threaten to become impossible for ever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! If only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.‘The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.

~ Marcel Proust

The kiss. Oh, the kiss. What a perfect, unnerving, luscious kiss. He made me feel unhinged . . . like he could take me apart and put me back together again and again.

~ Chelsie Shakespeare

When we can't understand the science behind something in this world, we make up mythological entities that we can relate to. We personify the forces of nature that mystify us, using our boundless imaginations to comfort us and make us feel like we have some control over these things that are much bigger than we are.

~ Chelsie Shakespeare