quotations about death
When a great life sets it leaves an afterglow on the sky far into the night.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
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"
Unjustly men hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
Sweet lovely death
I am waiting for your breath
Come sweet death, one last caress
METALLICA
"Last Caress"
Death to the wicked is all loss, to the righteous all gain.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Death is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.
DON DELILLO
White Noise
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
Old man death sits all alone
In quiet contemplation
Picking at his blackened nails
Waiting for his next victim
Watching as your life force drains
VENOM
"Death & Dying", Metal Black
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
There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.
ROGER ZELAZNY
This Immortal
Life is hard, but death is even harder.
PETER KREEFT
Between Heaven and Hell
Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?
EURIPIDES
Phrixus [fragment]
Even as a child I was fascinated by death, not in a spiritual sense, but in an aesthetic one. A hamster or guinea pig would pass away, and, after burying the body, I'd dig it back up: over and over, until all that remained was a shoddy pelt. It earned me a certain reputation, especially when I moved on to other people's pets. "Igor," they called me. "Wicked, spooky." But I think my interest was actually fairly common, at least among adolescent boys. At that age, death is something that happens only to animals and grandparents, and studying it is like a science project.
DAVID SEDARIS
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
Death cannot touch the higher consciousness of man ... it can only separate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated from those who have passed onwards, but ... there is no such thing as Death at all.
ANNIE WOOD BESANT
Death--and After
Life is a waste of woes,
And Death a river deep,
That ever onward flows,
Troubled, yet asleep.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"Lines To --", Imogen and Other Poems
Death is the only god that comes when you call.
ROGER ZELAZNY
"24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai"