Death Quotes

“Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.”
― Walter Savage Landor

“We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“As I accepted my death and dissolution into God's love, the insectoids began feeding on my heart, devouring the feelings of love and surrender. They were interested in emotion. As I was holding on to my last thought - that God is love - they asked, "Even here? Even here?”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies

“That bodies should be lent us, while they can afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge, or doing good to our fellow creatures, is a kind and benevolent act of God - when they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure-instead of an aid, become an encumbrance and answer none of the intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“The lapse of ages changes all things - time - language - the earth - the bounds of the sea - the stars of the sky, and everything 'about, around, and underneath' man, except man himself, who has always been and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment. All the discoveries which have yet been made have multiplied little but existence.”
― Lord Byron

“If it is true that by death we once more become what we were before being, would it not have been better to abide by that pure possibility, not to stir from it? What use was this detour, when we might have remained forever in an unrealized plenitude?”
― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“When you die, she thought now, you can no longer give love. You can't give love anymore. She wouldn't be able to love her children. It struck her suddenly as the very worst thing about death, worse than not being able to breathe or laugh or kiss. A kind of existential suffocation, to not be able to give her children her love anymore.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“A dead dog is more quiet than a house on the steppes, a chair in a empty room.”
― Per Petterson, Jeg forbanner tidens elv

“Erik, Erik! I saved your life! Remember? You were scentenced to death! But for me you would be dead by now. ”
― Gaston Leroux

“The man now retrieved a linen cloth and stuffed it deep into Katherine’s mouth. “Death,” he
whispered to her, “should be a quiet thing.”
― Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol

“Why are you crying? This isn't the end. Death isn't goodbye forever.”
― Julie Kagawa, Night of the Dragon

“Corpses sour you. They are bad for objectivity.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“The Angel of Death is the invisible Angel of Life. ”
― Henry Mills Alden

“I believe there are ways whose ends are life instead of death.”
― William Saroyan

“Across Ackar and Lett, the ordinary folk were tired of the wars of aggression of the Dewar dynasty. They had lost too many fathers, brothers and sons on foreign soil. It was clear that the new King was no warrior, and most of the population thought that a good thing. Maybe for the first time in generations they could have a good king rather than a warrior king.
I now commit as my coronation promise that whilst I am King, no armies from Ackar and Lett will seek domination over our neighbours. The treaties are written in ink. I will now seal them with my blood.”
― Robert Reid, White Light Red Fire

“While he was waiting, leaning on the counter at a coffee place, he remembered the dream he'd had the night before about Antonio Jones, who had been dead for several years now. As before, he asked himself what Jones could have died of, and the one answer that occurred to him was old age. One day, walking down some street in Brooklyn, Antonio Jones had felt tired, sat down on the sidewalk, and a second later stopped existing.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

“Trees still grow after letting dead things go.”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever....”
― Stevie Smith

“It’s when I have to acknowledge the past and all of those nameless, faceless people I’d assassinated, that I unravel inside.”
― Cheyenne McCray, The First Sin

“He knew that his father had finally run hard enough and long enough to wear down the frontiers between the worlds, he had run clear out of his skin and into the arms of his wife, to whom he had proved, once and for all, the superiority of his love. Some migrants are happy to depart.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“The sum of his life was a unique melody, hauntingly beautiful and powerful.”
― Ann Marston, Kingmaker's Sword

“Open questions like love, life, death, struggle and sex are our experiences, our opinions are not answers but they still remain mysterious unanswered questions. Let it be Open. ”
― Santosh Kalwar

“Shouldn't we be speaking of something more important than life and death?”
― Gustav Meyrink, Angel of the West Window

“The air between us crackles, as it does when you speak of your beloved dead. But it’s hard to know what to say next.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.

- Adonais”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Give yourself a gift: the present moment. People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now. And just as mortal. What does it matter to you if they say -x- about you, or think -y-?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Awareness of mortality exerts a unique power to focus the mind and heart on essentials.”
― Columba Stewart, Prayer and Community: The Benedictine Tradition

“Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, a kind of moaning, yet very happy, and right then, when Strunk made that high happy moaning sound, when he went Ahhooooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen black bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone. Oh shit, Rat Kiley said, the guy's dead. The guy's dead, he kept saying, which seemed profound - the guy's dead. I mean really.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“After you passed away, the people who miss you all became connected.”
― Hiro Arikawa, The Travelling Cat Chronicles

“and if I ever touched a life i hope that life knows/that i know that touching was and still is and will always/be the true/revolution.”
― Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry, 1968-1998