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QUOTES ABOUT DEATH

Death is one of the few experiences that unites every human life, yet it remains deeply personal and profoundly mysterious. Across cultures, generations, and beliefs, writers, philosophers, and artists have tried to capture its meaning in words. The following quotes explore death from many angles—grief and acceptance, fear and peace, endings and new beginnings.   ◀ Back
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When a country is defeated, there remain only mountains and rivers, and on a ruined castle in spring only grasses thrive. I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.

A thicket of summer grass
Is all that remains
Of the dreams and ambitions
Of ancient warriors.
- Matsuo Bashō
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
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They were people whose lives were slow, who did not see themselves growing old, or falling sick, or dying, but who disappeared little by little in their own time, turning into memories, mists from other days, until they were absorbed into oblivion.
- Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
Love in the Time of Cholera
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How come some stories have an ending when they never had a starting?
- Neeraj Agnihotri
In The Name Of Blasphemy
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He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.
- Jack London
White Fang
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Death is impatient and thoughtless. It barges into your room when you are right in the middle of something, and it doesn't bother to wipe its boots.
- Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume
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WHEN SOMEBODY GOES AWAY THERE'S THINGS YOU WANT TO TELL THEM. WHEN SOMEBODY DIES MAYBE THAT'S THE WORST THING. YOU WANT TO TELL THEM THINGS THAT HAPPEN AFTER.
- Louise Fitzhugh
Harriet the Spy
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You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.
But… If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist… then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Then on your tombstone, where you only get a little bit of space to sum up your life, some wax-faced creep chisels a set of meaningless numbers instead of poetry or a secret love or the name of your favorite candy.

In the end, all you get is a few words.
- Scott Nicholson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I will see you in the stars.
- Amie Kaufman
Aurora's End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death... . I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness.
- Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My sister, Judy, has always said that she would like to lie in state, propped up in her coffin with her eyes blared wide open, face fixed in a big grin, and have a taped greeting for all her mourners. Something real upbeat and, well, live-sounding, like: 'He-e-e-ey!Cuteshoestellyomamahi!
- Jill Conner Browne
The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love: A Fallen Southern Belle's Look at Love, Life, Men, Marriage, and Being Prepared
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's peculiar to me,' she said, 'that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying. Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying to prolong life instead of finding pleasant ways to end it? There must be a hell of a lot of people in the world like me - who want to die but haven't got the guts -
- Horace McCoy
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Time has always been the greatest ally to Truth, because Time eventually relieves and reveals all.
- Suzy Kassem
Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We're in the Maker's keeping. Even if we die trying, death is just another way out. But you? You'll just turn to dust.
- Andrew Peterson
The Warden and the Wolf King
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life—achieving a sense of peace within oneself.
- Oliver Sacks
Gratitude
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious
- Yann Martel
Life of Pi
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I'll sell them for a dollar
They're worth so much more after I'm a goner
And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin'
Funny when you're dead how people start listenin
- Kimberly Perry
If I Die Young: Piano/Vocal/Guitar
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister.

"Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "That's just the way things are. Life's a funny business." Death, he supposed, was the punch line.
- Lauren Oliver
Liesl & Po
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That is, Jack thought, the way of life. The horror changes us, because we can never forget. Cursed with memory. It starts when we're old enough to know what death is and realize that sooner or later we'll lose everyone we love. We're never the same. But somehow we're all right. We go on.
- Dean Koontz
Winter Moon
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you can overcome love, you can overcome fear. If you can overcome fear, you can overcome death.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If that’s the case, I understand why emotions are hard for you. You’ve numbed yourself to make room for the grief you carry.
- Brent Jones
The Fifteenth of June
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Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty.

Cento volte ho impugnato una lama per conficcarmela nel cuore. Si dice di una nobile razza i cavalli,che quando si sentono accaldati e affaticati, si aprono istintivamente una vena, per respirare più liberamente. Spesso anche io vorrei aprirmi una vena che mi desse libertà eterna.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They suffered with his death and she - she suffered with their reaction to it.
- Haidji
SG - Suicide Game
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is a state of mind---many people on Earth spend their entire lives dead.
- Gabrielle Zevin
Elsewhere
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When a country is defeated, there remain only mountains and rivers, and on a ruined castle in spring only grasses thrive. I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.

A thicket of summer grass
Is all that remains
Of the dreams and ambitions
Of ancient warriors.
- Matsuo Bashō
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They were people whose lives were slow, who did not see themselves growing old, or falling sick, or dying, but who disappeared little by little in their own time, turning into memories, mists from other days, until they were absorbed into oblivion.
- Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
Love in the Time of Cholera
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How come some stories have an ending when they never had a starting?
- Neeraj Agnihotri
In The Name Of Blasphemy
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.
- Jack London
White Fang
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is impatient and thoughtless. It barges into your room when you are right in the middle of something, and it doesn't bother to wipe its boots.
- Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
WHEN SOMEBODY GOES AWAY THERE'S THINGS YOU WANT TO TELL THEM. WHEN SOMEBODY DIES MAYBE THAT'S THE WORST THING. YOU WANT TO TELL THEM THINGS THAT HAPPEN AFTER.
- Louise Fitzhugh
Harriet the Spy
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.
But… If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist… then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Then on your tombstone, where you only get a little bit of space to sum up your life, some wax-faced creep chisels a set of meaningless numbers instead of poetry or a secret love or the name of your favorite candy.

In the end, all you get is a few words.
- Scott Nicholson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I will see you in the stars.
- Amie Kaufman
Aurora's End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death... . I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness.
- Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My sister, Judy, has always said that she would like to lie in state, propped up in her coffin with her eyes blared wide open, face fixed in a big grin, and have a taped greeting for all her mourners. Something real upbeat and, well, live-sounding, like: 'He-e-e-ey!Cuteshoestellyomamahi!
- Jill Conner Browne
The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love: A Fallen Southern Belle's Look at Love, Life, Men, Marriage, and Being Prepared
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's peculiar to me,' she said, 'that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying. Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying to prolong life instead of finding pleasant ways to end it? There must be a hell of a lot of people in the world like me - who want to die but haven't got the guts -
- Horace McCoy
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Time has always been the greatest ally to Truth, because Time eventually relieves and reveals all.
- Suzy Kassem
Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We're in the Maker's keeping. Even if we die trying, death is just another way out. But you? You'll just turn to dust.
- Andrew Peterson
The Warden and the Wolf King
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life—achieving a sense of peace within oneself.
- Oliver Sacks
Gratitude
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious
- Yann Martel
Life of Pi
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I'll sell them for a dollar
They're worth so much more after I'm a goner
And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin'
Funny when you're dead how people start listenin
- Kimberly Perry
If I Die Young: Piano/Vocal/Guitar
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister.

"Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "That's just the way things are. Life's a funny business." Death, he supposed, was the punch line.
- Lauren Oliver
Liesl & Po
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That is, Jack thought, the way of life. The horror changes us, because we can never forget. Cursed with memory. It starts when we're old enough to know what death is and realize that sooner or later we'll lose everyone we love. We're never the same. But somehow we're all right. We go on.
- Dean Koontz
Winter Moon
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you can overcome love, you can overcome fear. If you can overcome fear, you can overcome death.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If that’s the case, I understand why emotions are hard for you. You’ve numbed yourself to make room for the grief you carry.
- Brent Jones
The Fifteenth of June
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty.

Cento volte ho impugnato una lama per conficcarmela nel cuore. Si dice di una nobile razza i cavalli,che quando si sentono accaldati e affaticati, si aprono istintivamente una vena, per respirare più liberamente. Spesso anche io vorrei aprirmi una vena che mi desse libertà eterna.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They suffered with his death and she - she suffered with their reaction to it.
- Haidji
SG - Suicide Game
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is a state of mind---many people on Earth spend their entire lives dead.
- Gabrielle Zevin
Elsewhere
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When a country is defeated, there remain only mountains and rivers, and on a ruined castle in spring only grasses thrive. I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.

A thicket of summer grass
Is all that remains
Of the dreams and ambitions
Of ancient warriors.
- Matsuo Bashō
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They were people whose lives were slow, who did not see themselves growing old, or falling sick, or dying, but who disappeared little by little in their own time, turning into memories, mists from other days, until they were absorbed into oblivion.
- Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
Love in the Time of Cholera
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How come some stories have an ending when they never had a starting?
- Neeraj Agnihotri
In The Name Of Blasphemy
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.
- Jack London
White Fang
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is impatient and thoughtless. It barges into your room when you are right in the middle of something, and it doesn't bother to wipe its boots.
- Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
WHEN SOMEBODY GOES AWAY THERE'S THINGS YOU WANT TO TELL THEM. WHEN SOMEBODY DIES MAYBE THAT'S THE WORST THING. YOU WANT TO TELL THEM THINGS THAT HAPPEN AFTER.
- Louise Fitzhugh
Harriet the Spy
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.
But… If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist… then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Then on your tombstone, where you only get a little bit of space to sum up your life, some wax-faced creep chisels a set of meaningless numbers instead of poetry or a secret love or the name of your favorite candy.

In the end, all you get is a few words.
- Scott Nicholson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I will see you in the stars.
- Amie Kaufman
Aurora's End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death... . I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness.
- Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My sister, Judy, has always said that she would like to lie in state, propped up in her coffin with her eyes blared wide open, face fixed in a big grin, and have a taped greeting for all her mourners. Something real upbeat and, well, live-sounding, like: 'He-e-e-ey!Cuteshoestellyomamahi!
- Jill Conner Browne
The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love: A Fallen Southern Belle's Look at Love, Life, Men, Marriage, and Being Prepared
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's peculiar to me,' she said, 'that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying. Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying to prolong life instead of finding pleasant ways to end it? There must be a hell of a lot of people in the world like me - who want to die but haven't got the guts -
- Horace McCoy
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Time has always been the greatest ally to Truth, because Time eventually relieves and reveals all.
- Suzy Kassem
Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We're in the Maker's keeping. Even if we die trying, death is just another way out. But you? You'll just turn to dust.
- Andrew Peterson
The Warden and the Wolf King
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life—achieving a sense of peace within oneself.
- Oliver Sacks
Gratitude
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious
- Yann Martel
Life of Pi
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I'll sell them for a dollar
They're worth so much more after I'm a goner
And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin'
Funny when you're dead how people start listenin
- Kimberly Perry
If I Die Young: Piano/Vocal/Guitar
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister.

"Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "That's just the way things are. Life's a funny business." Death, he supposed, was the punch line.
- Lauren Oliver
Liesl & Po
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That is, Jack thought, the way of life. The horror changes us, because we can never forget. Cursed with memory. It starts when we're old enough to know what death is and realize that sooner or later we'll lose everyone we love. We're never the same. But somehow we're all right. We go on.
- Dean Koontz
Winter Moon
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you can overcome love, you can overcome fear. If you can overcome fear, you can overcome death.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If that’s the case, I understand why emotions are hard for you. You’ve numbed yourself to make room for the grief you carry.
- Brent Jones
The Fifteenth of June
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty.

Cento volte ho impugnato una lama per conficcarmela nel cuore. Si dice di una nobile razza i cavalli,che quando si sentono accaldati e affaticati, si aprono istintivamente una vena, per respirare più liberamente. Spesso anche io vorrei aprirmi una vena che mi desse libertà eterna.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They suffered with his death and she - she suffered with their reaction to it.
- Haidji
SG - Suicide Game
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is a state of mind---many people on Earth spend their entire lives dead.
- Gabrielle Zevin
Elsewhere
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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102
103
104
105
106
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