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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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It was one thing to live in a world where death stood a distant figure, quite another to hold it in your hands.
- David Wroblewski
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
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She cannot possibly be dead, people do not just die
- John Green
Looking for Alaska
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Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.
- Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory
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You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'

Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'

The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.
- J.D. Salinger
Nine Stories
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Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life--
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight--
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen,
as you yourself are the mirror and image
of those who did not live as long as you
and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Selected Poems
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I just took [my cancer diagnosis] as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought "ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this?" and I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it.
- Iain M. Banks
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Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
- Alexander Pope
Poems Collected
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But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
- Andrew Marvell
The Complete Poems
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They said she killed herself.Everyone was saying It. What started out as a rumor, quietly whispered among small gatherings of polite people, quickly grew into something that was openly discussed in a large gatherings of impolite people. I was so sick of hearing them talk about It. They questioned me. Over and over again, trying to find out If i knew what happened. But my answers didn't change. Yet It never failed-someone else would ask, as if one day my reply would suddenly be different. I didn't know, but i should have...and I've been haunted ever since.
- Jessica Verday
The Hollow
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When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?
- Cormac McCarthy
The Road
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The foolish rush to end their lives.
Only the steadfast soul survives.
- Christine de Pizan
Lyric Poetry (Garland Library of Medieval Literature)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.
- Ann-Marie MacDonald
Fall on Your Knees
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You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.
- Peter S. Beagle
A Fine and Private Place
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Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.
- Stevie Smith
Selected Poems of Stevie Smith
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There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and woman to fill our day;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers & Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
- Rudyard Kipling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When I was a little girl,' I said, sitting down, 'the wallpaper in my room had pictures of Noah's story.' [...]
You know what's weird though? It's weird that the ark would be such a kids' story, you know? I mean, it's...really a story about death. Every person who isn't in Noah's family? They die. Every animal, apart from two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It's the worst tragedy ever,' I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest.[...] 'What the hell,'I said, 'pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper?
- Adam Rex
The True Meaning of Smekday
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Live, die, something else lives. The very soil humanity walks upon is built up from death. Digging into a flowerbed means digging into bones.
- M. Jones
Frankie & Formaldehyde
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I were a lesbian, I’d probably be one of those lipstick lesbians, which I of course had in my pocket for touch-ups later.
- M S M Barkawitz
Feeling Lucky
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You never would get through to the end of being a father, no matter where you stored your mind or how many steps in the series you followed. Not even if you died. Alive or dead a thousand miles distant, you were always going to be on the hook for work that was neither a procedure nor a series of steps but, rather, something that demanded your full, constant attention without necessarily calling you to do, perform, or say anything at all.
- Michael Chabon
Telegraph Avenue
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But he calls down a blessing on the blossom of the may,
Because it comes in beauty, and in beauty blows away.
- W.B. Yeats
Stories of Red Hanrahan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.
- Criss Jami
Healology
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I Must Go

If I must go to heaven's end
Climbing the ages like a stair,
Be near me and forever bend
With the same eyes above me there;
Time will fly past us like leaves flying,
We shall not heed, for we shall be
Beyond living, beyond dying,
Knowing and known unchangeably.
- Sara Teasdale
Flame and Shadow
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was one thing to live in a world where death stood a distant figure, quite another to hold it in your hands.
- David Wroblewski
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She cannot possibly be dead, people do not just die
- John Green
Looking for Alaska
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.
- Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'

Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'

The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.
- J.D. Salinger
Nine Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life--
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight--
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen,
as you yourself are the mirror and image
of those who did not live as long as you
and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Selected Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I just took [my cancer diagnosis] as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought "ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this?" and I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it.
- Iain M. Banks
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
- Alexander Pope
Poems Collected
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
- Andrew Marvell
The Complete Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They said she killed herself.Everyone was saying It. What started out as a rumor, quietly whispered among small gatherings of polite people, quickly grew into something that was openly discussed in a large gatherings of impolite people. I was so sick of hearing them talk about It. They questioned me. Over and over again, trying to find out If i knew what happened. But my answers didn't change. Yet It never failed-someone else would ask, as if one day my reply would suddenly be different. I didn't know, but i should have...and I've been haunted ever since.
- Jessica Verday
The Hollow
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?
- Cormac McCarthy
The Road
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The foolish rush to end their lives.
Only the steadfast soul survives.
- Christine de Pizan
Lyric Poetry (Garland Library of Medieval Literature)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.
- Ann-Marie MacDonald
Fall on Your Knees
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.
- Peter S. Beagle
A Fine and Private Place
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.
- Stevie Smith
Selected Poems of Stevie Smith
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and woman to fill our day;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers & Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
- Rudyard Kipling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When I was a little girl,' I said, sitting down, 'the wallpaper in my room had pictures of Noah's story.' [...]
You know what's weird though? It's weird that the ark would be such a kids' story, you know? I mean, it's...really a story about death. Every person who isn't in Noah's family? They die. Every animal, apart from two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It's the worst tragedy ever,' I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest.[...] 'What the hell,'I said, 'pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper?
- Adam Rex
The True Meaning of Smekday
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Live, die, something else lives. The very soil humanity walks upon is built up from death. Digging into a flowerbed means digging into bones.
- M. Jones
Frankie & Formaldehyde
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I were a lesbian, I’d probably be one of those lipstick lesbians, which I of course had in my pocket for touch-ups later.
- M S M Barkawitz
Feeling Lucky
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You never would get through to the end of being a father, no matter where you stored your mind or how many steps in the series you followed. Not even if you died. Alive or dead a thousand miles distant, you were always going to be on the hook for work that was neither a procedure nor a series of steps but, rather, something that demanded your full, constant attention without necessarily calling you to do, perform, or say anything at all.
- Michael Chabon
Telegraph Avenue
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But he calls down a blessing on the blossom of the may,
Because it comes in beauty, and in beauty blows away.
- W.B. Yeats
Stories of Red Hanrahan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.
- Criss Jami
Healology
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I Must Go

If I must go to heaven's end
Climbing the ages like a stair,
Be near me and forever bend
With the same eyes above me there;
Time will fly past us like leaves flying,
We shall not heed, for we shall be
Beyond living, beyond dying,
Knowing and known unchangeably.
- Sara Teasdale
Flame and Shadow
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was one thing to live in a world where death stood a distant figure, quite another to hold it in your hands.
- David Wroblewski
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She cannot possibly be dead, people do not just die
- John Green
Looking for Alaska
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.
- Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'

Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'

The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.
- J.D. Salinger
Nine Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life--
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight--
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen,
as you yourself are the mirror and image
of those who did not live as long as you
and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Selected Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I just took [my cancer diagnosis] as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought "ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this?" and I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it.
- Iain M. Banks
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
- Alexander Pope
Poems Collected
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
- Andrew Marvell
The Complete Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They said she killed herself.Everyone was saying It. What started out as a rumor, quietly whispered among small gatherings of polite people, quickly grew into something that was openly discussed in a large gatherings of impolite people. I was so sick of hearing them talk about It. They questioned me. Over and over again, trying to find out If i knew what happened. But my answers didn't change. Yet It never failed-someone else would ask, as if one day my reply would suddenly be different. I didn't know, but i should have...and I've been haunted ever since.
- Jessica Verday
The Hollow
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?
- Cormac McCarthy
The Road
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The foolish rush to end their lives.
Only the steadfast soul survives.
- Christine de Pizan
Lyric Poetry (Garland Library of Medieval Literature)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.
- Ann-Marie MacDonald
Fall on Your Knees
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.
- Peter S. Beagle
A Fine and Private Place
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.
- Stevie Smith
Selected Poems of Stevie Smith
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and woman to fill our day;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers & Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
- Rudyard Kipling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When I was a little girl,' I said, sitting down, 'the wallpaper in my room had pictures of Noah's story.' [...]
You know what's weird though? It's weird that the ark would be such a kids' story, you know? I mean, it's...really a story about death. Every person who isn't in Noah's family? They die. Every animal, apart from two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It's the worst tragedy ever,' I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest.[...] 'What the hell,'I said, 'pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper?
- Adam Rex
The True Meaning of Smekday
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Live, die, something else lives. The very soil humanity walks upon is built up from death. Digging into a flowerbed means digging into bones.
- M. Jones
Frankie & Formaldehyde
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I were a lesbian, I’d probably be one of those lipstick lesbians, which I of course had in my pocket for touch-ups later.
- M S M Barkawitz
Feeling Lucky
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You never would get through to the end of being a father, no matter where you stored your mind or how many steps in the series you followed. Not even if you died. Alive or dead a thousand miles distant, you were always going to be on the hook for work that was neither a procedure nor a series of steps but, rather, something that demanded your full, constant attention without necessarily calling you to do, perform, or say anything at all.
- Michael Chabon
Telegraph Avenue
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But he calls down a blessing on the blossom of the may,
Because it comes in beauty, and in beauty blows away.
- W.B. Yeats
Stories of Red Hanrahan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.
- Criss Jami
Healology
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I Must Go

If I must go to heaven's end
Climbing the ages like a stair,
Be near me and forever bend
With the same eyes above me there;
Time will fly past us like leaves flying,
We shall not heed, for we shall be
Beyond living, beyond dying,
Knowing and known unchangeably.
- Sara Teasdale
Flame and Shadow
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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