quotations about death
There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.
ROGER ZELAZNY
This Immortal
It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.
UMBERTO ECO
The Island of the Day Before
As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that death's image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling, and I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity...of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that --- young as I am -- I may not live to see another day. Yet no one of all my acquaintances could say that in company I am morose or disgruntled.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
letter to Leopold Mozart, Apr. 4, 1787
When you look at a corpse you can always sense your own breath better.
ZONA GALE
"Miggy"
In statistics, what disappears behind rows of numbers is death.
GUNTER GRASS
Crabwalk
The dead's dead ... get 'em in the ground and look to the live ones.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
There is no god but death.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Elizabeth the Queen
Sweet lovely death
I am waiting for your breath
Come sweet death, one last caress
METALLICA
"Last Caress"
Death is the side of life which is turned away from us.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
letter to W. von Hulewicz, The Duino Elegies
When bones and flesh have finished their business together,
we lay them carefully, in positions they're willing to keep,
and cover them over.
Their eyes and ours won't meet anymore. We hope.
SARAH LINDSAY
"Shanidar, Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower
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
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
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"
Death is an antidote for this life, and it makes another more stable form of life which is insoluble in everything.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Death is a fisherman, the world we see
His fish-pond is, and we the fishes be;
His net some general sickness; howe'er he
Is not so kind as other fishers be;
For if they take one of the smaller fry,
They throw him in again, he shall not die:
But death is sure to kill all he can get,
And all is fish with him that comes to net.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733
After a person dies, there is always something like a feeling of stupefaction, so difficult is it to comprehend this unexpected advent of nothingness and to resign oneself to believing it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
Alone in a room
needless I sit
I close my eyes
and try to forget
Death is calling
get in line
JAY REATARD
"Death Is Forming", Blood Visions
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
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
JOHN KEATS
epitaph for himself
Death augments distance and dulls the memory. Death reconciles.
LEONID ANDREYEV
He Who Gets Slapped