DEATH QUOTES XVIII

quotations about death

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


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"


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"


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

JOHN THORNTON

Maxims and Directions for Youth


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 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


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


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


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

LI BAI

"The Old Dust"


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


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 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


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


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


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


When a house has just lost its soul, a stricken silence falls over the sudden emptiness that no one will fill again. And all the noises that may be made later in that house will be like a scandalous din, ugly echoes from one room to another, from one corridor to another, sharp and discordant as if the walls are no longer able to absorb any music once the source of harmony has been taken away. But this strange detail about the power of death can only be picked up by ears that are very attentive to the smallest murmurs of life. Rational people go through these empty spaces with the serenity of a lawyer, and their indulgent smiles categorise you if you decide to point out in their presence that there is something lacking in the atmosphere.

PIERRE MAGNAN

The Messengers of Death


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

THOMAS CAMPBELL

Hallowed Ground


Now that you are dead,
You are splendid.
Photographs of people who have just died
Are worth twenty percent more,
And for suicides
There is an additional five percent.
Now that you are dead
You are much in demand.

KOBO ABE

The Ghost is Here


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


Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

JOHN KEATS

epitaph for himself