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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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Time doesn’t heal all wounds. We both know that’s bullshit; it comes from people who have nothing comforting or original to say.
- Adam Silvera
History Is All You Left Me
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In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
- Carlos Castaneda
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
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My grandmother said, ‘It doesn’t really matter where you had to go, where you got the ring, or where you played the Super Bowl, all that matters is that you put in the work, you deserved it, and you earned it.
- Vernon Davis
Playing Ball: Life Lessons from My Journey to the Super Bowl and Beyond
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.
- Don DeLillo
White Noise
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It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains... If only one could leave this life slowly!
- Roman Payne
Hope and Despair
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I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
- John Donne
Meditation XVII - Meditation 17
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist- that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the... cosmos... gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.
- H. P. Lovecraft
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival.
- Gemma Malley
The Declaration
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things – even tragedy – with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.
- Michel Houellebecq
The Elementary Particles
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There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
- Jean Rhys
Wide Sargasso Sea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I wonder if I'll ever have to decide which is worse, life as we're living or no life at all.
- Susan Beth Pfeffer
Life As We Knew It
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
the worst thing," he told me,
"is bitterness, people end up so
bitter.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can.
- Yann Martel
Life of Pi
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Everything that happens before Death is what counts.
- Ray Bradbury
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create.
- Mohsin Hamid
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's better to burn out than to fade away.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.
- Donna Tartt
The Secret History
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.
- Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?
- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Time doesn’t heal all wounds. We both know that’s bullshit; it comes from people who have nothing comforting or original to say.
- Adam Silvera
History Is All You Left Me
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
- Carlos Castaneda
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My grandmother said, ‘It doesn’t really matter where you had to go, where you got the ring, or where you played the Super Bowl, all that matters is that you put in the work, you deserved it, and you earned it.
- Vernon Davis
Playing Ball: Life Lessons from My Journey to the Super Bowl and Beyond
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.
- Don DeLillo
White Noise
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains... If only one could leave this life slowly!
- Roman Payne
Hope and Despair
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
- John Donne
Meditation XVII - Meditation 17
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist- that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the... cosmos... gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.
- H. P. Lovecraft
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival.
- Gemma Malley
The Declaration
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things – even tragedy – with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.
- Michel Houellebecq
The Elementary Particles
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
- Jean Rhys
Wide Sargasso Sea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I wonder if I'll ever have to decide which is worse, life as we're living or no life at all.
- Susan Beth Pfeffer
Life As We Knew It
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
the worst thing," he told me,
"is bitterness, people end up so
bitter.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can.
- Yann Martel
Life of Pi
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Everything that happens before Death is what counts.
- Ray Bradbury
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create.
- Mohsin Hamid
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's better to burn out than to fade away.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.
- Donna Tartt
The Secret History
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.
- Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?
- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Time doesn’t heal all wounds. We both know that’s bullshit; it comes from people who have nothing comforting or original to say.
- Adam Silvera
History Is All You Left Me
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
- Carlos Castaneda
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My grandmother said, ‘It doesn’t really matter where you had to go, where you got the ring, or where you played the Super Bowl, all that matters is that you put in the work, you deserved it, and you earned it.
- Vernon Davis
Playing Ball: Life Lessons from My Journey to the Super Bowl and Beyond
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.
- Don DeLillo
White Noise
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains... If only one could leave this life slowly!
- Roman Payne
Hope and Despair
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
- John Donne
Meditation XVII - Meditation 17
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist- that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the... cosmos... gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.
- H. P. Lovecraft
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival.
- Gemma Malley
The Declaration
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things – even tragedy – with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.
- Michel Houellebecq
The Elementary Particles
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
- Jean Rhys
Wide Sargasso Sea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I wonder if I'll ever have to decide which is worse, life as we're living or no life at all.
- Susan Beth Pfeffer
Life As We Knew It
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
the worst thing," he told me,
"is bitterness, people end up so
bitter.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can.
- Yann Martel
Life of Pi
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Everything that happens before Death is what counts.
- Ray Bradbury
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create.
- Mohsin Hamid
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's better to burn out than to fade away.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.
- Donna Tartt
The Secret History
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.
- Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?
- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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23
24
25
26
27
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