quotations about death
Tell me the truth about death. I don't know what it is. We have them, then they are gone but they stay in our minds. Their stories are part of us as long as we live and as long as we tell them or write them down.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
Good Housekeeping, May 2011
Death is the side of life which is turned away from us.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
letter to W. von Hulewicz, The Duino Elegies
Death--a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
JOHN KEATS
epitaph for himself
It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Smiley's People
Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path -- these he cannot meet again.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The Necessity of Atheism
The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
LI BAI
"The Old Dust"
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
Oh, sure, I've come close to dying a few times, but usually I was having so much fun at the time that I barely noticed the danger.
BUZZ ALDRIN
No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon
The dead body makes the living one obscene. It's why we close the eyes, too. The dead shouldn't have to look on the lewd aliveness of things.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
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
Certain, when I was born, so long ago,
Death drew the tap of life and let it flow;
And ever since the tap has done its task,
And now there's little but an empty cask.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
Death augments distance and dulls the memory. Death reconciles.
LEONID ANDREYEV
He Who Gets Slapped
Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
EMILY DICKINSON
"Death is a Dialogue"
Death lies dormant in each of us and will bloom in time.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Bell Jar
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
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"