Death Quotes

The last three generations of our family, there hasn't been one natural death. There were eight of us children, born in the Ozark mountains. Today there only remain my mother, my sister and myself. The rest all died in various accidents. So you see my fate will get me sooner or later.
– Pearl White
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
– Alfred North Whitehead
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
– Elie Wiesel
There is a hereditary selective advantage to membership in a powerful group united by devout belief and purpose. Even when individuals subordinate themselves and risk death in common cause, their genes are more likely to be transmitted to the next generation than are those of competing groups who lack equivalent resolve.
– Edward O. Wilson
My mother used to tell me about vibrations. I didn't really understand too much of what that meant when I was just a boy. To think that invisible feelings, invisible vibrations existed scared me to death.
– Brian Wilson
Belief is the death of intelligence.
– Robert Anton Wilson
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
Death the last voyage, the longest, and the best.
– Thomas Wolfe
My attitude about Hollywood is that I wouldn't walk across the street to pull one of those executives out of the snow if he was bleeding to death. Not unless I was paid for it. None of them ever did me any favors.
– James Woods
Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!
– Virginia Woolf
To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.
– William H. Walton
Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, respect me, I'm a respectable grown-up, and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.
– Wendy Wasserstein
Yes, death is strong, but look you, the strongest, Stronger is music than death.
– Franz Werfel
If y'all fresh to death, then I'm deceased.
– Kanye West
That fateful stretch of road has since been dubbed the Highway of Death.
– John Whitehead
Death, the cliche assures us, is the great leveler; but it obviously levels some a great deal more than others.
– Alden Whitman
The stench of death massaged my skin; it took years to wash away.
– James Wilde
My country, wounded to the heart, could I but flash along thy soul, electric power to rive apart, the thunder-clouds that round thee roll, and, by my burning words, uplift, thy life from out Death's icy drift, till the full splendors of our age, shone round thee for thy heritage.
– Jane Wilde
Tis midnight, falls the lamp-light dull and sickly, on a pale and anxious crowd, through the court, and round the judges, thronging thickly, with prayers none dare to speak aloud. Two youths, two noble youths, stand prisoners at the bar- You can see them through the gloom- In pride of life and manhood's beauty, there they are awaiting their death doom.
– Jane Wilde
No, Stalin did not die. He thinks that death can be fixed. We removed him from the mausoleum. But how do we remove Stalin from Stalin's heirs?
– Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Less base the fear of death than fear of life.
– Edward Young
A lawyer I once knew told me of a strange case, a suffragette who had never married. After her death, he opened her trunk and discovered 50 wedding gowns.
– Marguerite Young
No evil is honorable: but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.
– Citium Zeno
Duty is heavy as a mountain but
Death is lighter than a feather.
– Japanese Proverb
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one --
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.
– Hindu Spiritual
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
– Laurence Robert Binyon
In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
– Alain de Botton
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
– George Gordon Byron
Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality.
– Emily Dickinson
All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
– Joseph Epstein
Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
– Thomas F. Healey
“I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible, thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death.”
– James Hurst
If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.
– Edward Vernon Rickenbacker
History, insofar as it accustoms human beings to comprehend the whole of the past and to hasten forward with its conclusions into the far future, conceals the boundaries of birth and death, which enclose the life of the human being so narrowly and oppressively, and with a kind of optical illusion, expands his short existence into endless space, leading the individual imperceptibly over into humanity.
– Friedrich von Schiller
All are equal
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
– James Shirley
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
– Socrates
The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him. If it were not for the laws of the land, we should soon see a massacre of the righteous. Jesus was watched by his enemies, who were thirsting for his blood: his disciples must not look for favour where their Master found hatred and death.
– C. H.Spurgeon
Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst of Evils.
– General John Stark
Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires.
– Wallace Stevens
'Humph!' grunted Mr. Romford, seeing his worst fears about to be realized. He had dreamt that he had timbled over a poodle in the drawing-room, and squirted a bottle of porter right into a lady's face. 'Who's goin' besides ourselves?' asked Romford, wishing to know the worst at once. 'Better be killed than frightened to death,' thought he.
– Robert Smith Surtees
Death is the end of life; ah why
Should life all labour be? . . .
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence - ripen, fall, and cease;
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
For my own part, I declare I know nothing whatever about it. But to look at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? If we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. One thing undoubtedly true in this reasoning is this: that while we are alive we cannot get to a star, any more than when we are dead we can take the train.
– Vincent van Gogh
According to other writers, it is the women who last longest in sieges, the young men who soonest fall into that deadly lethargy that precedes actual death. But the account is accurate enough: that is what a siege is like. Moreover, that is what it is meant to be like. When a city is encircled and deprived of food, it is not the expectation of the attackers that the garrison will hold out until individual soldiers... drop dead in the streets. The death of ordinary inhabitants of the city is expected to force the hand of the civilian or military leadership. The goal is surrender; the means is not the defeat of the enemy army, but the fearful spectacle of the civilian dead.
– Michael Walzer
Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heaven invites,Hell threatens.
– Edward Young
How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country!
– Joseph Addison
Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
– Aeschylus
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
– Woody Allen
Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
– Sir Francis Bacon
Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death.
– Lyman Beecher
For certain is death for the born
And certain is birth for the dead;
Therefore over the inevitable
Thou shouldst not grieve.
– Bhagavad Gita
Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
– Bertolt Brecht
Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life.
– Adele Brookman
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
– James F. Byrnes
I've been accused of every death except the casualty list of the World War.
– Al Capone
The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself is beneficial, but there is a great difference between peace and servitude. Peace is freedom in tranquillity, servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve spirits [of the dead]?...While you do not know life, how can you know about death?
– Confucius
We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming.
– Don DeLillo
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou thinkst, thou dost overthrow,
die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
– John Donne
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
– Epicurus
Death comes to all
But great achievements raise a monument
Which shall endure until the sun grows old.
– George Fabricius
Death hath so many doors to let out life.
– John Fletcher
Never knock on Death's door: ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!
– Matt Frewer
To judge the real importance of an individual, we should think of the effect his death would produce.
– Peter de Gaston Levis
Is there life before death?
– Graffito
Repetition is the death of art.
– Robin Green
Sex should be wild. Unfettered and free. We're animals, aren't we? And, basically, we're all wolves in sheep's fur. I always wanted more. Not frequency, I am not talking about frequency; although that would have been great, too. I wanted more intensity. I wanted to be out there, outside myself, outside my skin. I wanted sex to be like robbing life out of the jaws of death!
– Robin Green
Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.
– Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
Deep is a wounded heart, and strong
A voice that cries against a mighty wrong;
And full of death as a hot wind's blight,
Doth the ire of a crushed affection light.
– Felicia Hermans
Even when someone battles hard, there is an equal portion for one who lingers behind, and in the same honor are held both the coward and the brave man; the idle man and he who has done much meet death alike.
– Homer
It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair. But when dogs shame the gray head and gray chin and nakedness of an old man killed, it is the most piteous thing that happens among wretched mortals.
– Homer
It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland.
– Horace
Death … It’s the only thing we haven’t succeeded in completely vulgarizing.
– Aldous Huxley
If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.
– Angelina Jolie
Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.
– Frances Moore Lappe
The first condition of immortality is death.
– Stanislaw J. Lec
You think Nature is some Disney movie? Nature is a killer. Nature is a bitch. It's feeding time out there 24 hours a day, every step that you take is a gamble with death. If it isn't getting hit with lightning today, it's an earthquake tomorrow or some deer tick carrying Lime disease. Either way, you're ending up on the wrong end of the food chain.
– Jeff Melvoin
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
– Plato
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
– Plato
The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
– Publilius Syrus
As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
– Publilius Syrus
I hate life, I hate death and everything in between just doesn't interest me.
– Chris Rapier
It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.
– Mary Renault
The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.
– Theodore Roosevelt
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
– Bertrand Russell
Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.
– A. Sachs
He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
– Saki
The fact that we don't know this man, isn't important really. Cause his experience is our experience, and his fate is our fate. Vani tass, vani tatum, et omni i vani tass, says the preacher. All is vanity I think that's a pretty good epitaph for all of us. When we're stripped of all our worldly possessions and all our fame, family, friends, we all face death alone. But it's that solitude in death that's our common bond in life. I know it's ironic, but that's just the way things are. Vani tass, vani tatum, et omni i vani tass. Only when we understand all is vanity, only then, it isn't.
– Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
You've been listening to the adagio from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. I think Ludwig pretty much summed up death in this one. You know, he had lost just about all his hearing when he wrote it, and I've often wondered if that didn't help him tune into the final silence of the great beyond.
– Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
I am going to concentrate on what's important in life. I'm going to strive everyday to be a kind and generous and loving person. I'm going to keep death right here, so that anytime I even think about getting angry at you or anybody else, I'll see death and I'll remember.
– Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
Death is the enemy. I spent 10 years of my life singlemindedly studying, practicing, fighting hand to hand in close quarters to defeat the enemy, to send him back bloodied and humble and I am not going to roll over and surrender.
– Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
And come he slow, or come he fast,
It is but death who comes at last.
– Sir Walter Scott
Life without the courage for death is slavery.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks.
– Eric Sevareid
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,--'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
– William Shakespeare
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
– William Shakespeare
This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.... There is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.
– William Shakespeare
I would fain die a dry death.
– William Shakespeare
Death is not the worst thing; rather, when one who craves death cannot attain even that wish.
– Sophocles
Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, ease after war, death after life does greatly please.
– Edmund Spenser
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
– Joseph Stalin