DEATH QUOTES XVIII

quotations about death

Death to the wicked is all loss, to the righteous all gain.

JOHN THORNTON

Maxims and Directions for Youth


Men believe death's elections to be a thing inscrutable yet every act invites the act which follows and to the extent that men put one foot before the other they are accomplices in their own deaths as in all such facts of destiny.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

The Crossing


Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible war motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the dilated spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbèd ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling -- 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathèd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Measure for Measure


Feeling funny in my mind, Lord
I believe I'm fixing to die
Well, I don't mind dying
But I hate to leave my children crying
Well, I look over yonder to that burying ground
Look over yonder to that burying ground
Sure seems lonesome, Lord, when the sun goes down

BOB DYLAN

"Fixin' To Die"


I cannot tell you if the dead,
Who loved us fondly when on earth,
Walk by our side, sit at our hearth,
By ties of old affection led....
But this I know--in many dreams
They come to us from realms afar,
And leave the golden gates ajar
Through which immortal glory streams.

ALBERT LAIGHTON

"The Dead"


That is the gods' work, spinning threads of death
through the lives of mortal men,
an all to make a song for those to come.

HOMER

The Odyssey


Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the future, with no possible chance of escape.

DAVID GERROLD

The Man Who Folded Himself


Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong.

GRAHAM GREENE

The Honorary Consul


We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time; it does not occur to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned and can mean that death -- or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again -- may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon whose time-table, hour by hour, has been settled in advance.

MARCEL PROUST

The Guermantes Way


Scientists have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is life after death -- though they say it's virtually impossible to get decent Chinese food.

DAVID LETTERMAN

Late Show with David Letterman, October 13, 2014


Unjustly men hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.

AESCHYLUS

fragment


Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force.

YODA

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith


The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.

LI BAI

"The Old Dust"


Dying makes what is left of living seem precious. The dying, and those about to die, feel that these last moments must be made beautiful. The cannot be permitted to include the bitterness and the enmities of the living that seem so inexhaustible. So often we hear people who, in dying, resign the old enmities and ask and grant forgiveness. Through such forgiveness they help to make dying beautiful. And, incidentally, they offer a lesson to those who go on living the apparently inexhaustibel life.

JOHN DANIEL BARRY

"The Dead", Reactions and Other Essays


Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

letter to Cecil Spring-Rice, Mar. 12, 1900


A man dies not for the many wounds that pierce his
breast, unless it be that life's end keep pace with
death, nor by sitting on his hearth at home doth he the
more escape his appointed doom.

AESCHYLUS

fragment


To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.

THOMAS CAMPBELL

Hallowed Ground


Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays


Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

JOHN KEATS

epitaph for himself


How terrible is Death to one man, yet to another it appears the greatest providence in nature; even to all ages and conditions it is the wish of some, relief of many, and the end of all. It puts us all upon a level; the prince and peasant are doomed to the same fate.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine