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
Odd, isn’t it? You know when your birthday is, but not your death day, even though you pass the date year after year, never suspecting that some day…
- Mary Downing Hahn
The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall
I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.
- Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
Someone once said that death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live. I could tell you who said it, but who the hell really cares.
- One tree hill haley james scott
There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
- Alice Walker
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology
I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.
So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born.
You are afraid to die?'
Yes, everyone is.'
But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars when they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structures.
- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Carmilla
But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there.
- Susan Beth Pfeffer
Life As We Knew It
To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and when they suddenly go away forever, nothing feels solid any more.
A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.
- Caitlin Doughty
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
If no one knows when a person is going to die, how can we say he died prematurely?
As Luke knelt down beside his corpse, Clary couldn’t help but remember what he had said about having loved Valentine once, about having been his closest friend. Luke, she thought with a pang. Surely he couldn’t be sad — or even grieved?
But then again, perhaps everyone should have someone to grieve for them, and there was no one else to grieve for Valentine.
But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.
- Nicholson Baker
The Anthologist
With the rum bottle empty, Marsh had moved on to the Guinness in the kitchen cupboard. After a bottle and a half, he’d decided that action was required.the most satisfying sort of action he could think of was ending the little boy’s life.
- Mark Ellis
Death of an Officer
Tell her this
And more,—
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With surplus of toys.
- Stephen Crane
The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane
My house says to me, "Do not leave me, for here dwells your past."
And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future."
And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death will change all things.
Dr. Webb says that losing a sibling is oftentimes much harder for a person than losing any other member of the family. "A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future," he says. "Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with--a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.
- John Corey Whaley
Where Things Come Back
[W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.
- Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.
There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding.
- Jhumpa Lahiri
Unaccustomed Earth
Only those few who are able to surpass their fear of death completely can fully experience the highest forms of life; not the mundane life of the mortal, but the godly life of the resurrected.
- Zeena Schreck
Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.
When the dead do walk seek water's run,
for this the Dead will always shun.
Swift river's best or broadest lake
to ward the dead and have and make.
If water fails thee, fire's thy friend,
if neither guards it will be thy end.
Odd, isn’t it? You know when your birthday is, but not your death day, even though you pass the date year after year, never suspecting that some day…
- Mary Downing Hahn
The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall
I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.
- Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
Someone once said that death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live. I could tell you who said it, but who the hell really cares.
- One tree hill haley james scott
There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
- Alice Walker
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology
I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.
So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born.
You are afraid to die?'
Yes, everyone is.'
But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars when they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structures.
- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Carmilla
But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there.
- Susan Beth Pfeffer
Life As We Knew It
To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and when they suddenly go away forever, nothing feels solid any more.
A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.
- Caitlin Doughty
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
If no one knows when a person is going to die, how can we say he died prematurely?
As Luke knelt down beside his corpse, Clary couldn’t help but remember what he had said about having loved Valentine once, about having been his closest friend. Luke, she thought with a pang. Surely he couldn’t be sad — or even grieved?
But then again, perhaps everyone should have someone to grieve for them, and there was no one else to grieve for Valentine.
But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.
- Nicholson Baker
The Anthologist
With the rum bottle empty, Marsh had moved on to the Guinness in the kitchen cupboard. After a bottle and a half, he’d decided that action was required.the most satisfying sort of action he could think of was ending the little boy’s life.
- Mark Ellis
Death of an Officer
Tell her this
And more,—
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With surplus of toys.
- Stephen Crane
The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane
My house says to me, "Do not leave me, for here dwells your past."
And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future."
And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death will change all things.
Dr. Webb says that losing a sibling is oftentimes much harder for a person than losing any other member of the family. "A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future," he says. "Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with--a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.
- John Corey Whaley
Where Things Come Back
[W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.
- Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.
There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding.
- Jhumpa Lahiri
Unaccustomed Earth
Only those few who are able to surpass their fear of death completely can fully experience the highest forms of life; not the mundane life of the mortal, but the godly life of the resurrected.
- Zeena Schreck
Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.
When the dead do walk seek water's run,
for this the Dead will always shun.
Swift river's best or broadest lake
to ward the dead and have and make.
If water fails thee, fire's thy friend,
if neither guards it will be thy end.
Odd, isn’t it? You know when your birthday is, but not your death day, even though you pass the date year after year, never suspecting that some day…
- Mary Downing Hahn
The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall
I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.
- Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
Someone once said that death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live. I could tell you who said it, but who the hell really cares.
- One tree hill haley james scott
There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
- Alice Walker
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology
I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.
So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born.
You are afraid to die?'
Yes, everyone is.'
But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars when they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structures.
- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Carmilla
But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there.
- Susan Beth Pfeffer
Life As We Knew It
To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and when they suddenly go away forever, nothing feels solid any more.
A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.
- Caitlin Doughty
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
If no one knows when a person is going to die, how can we say he died prematurely?
As Luke knelt down beside his corpse, Clary couldn’t help but remember what he had said about having loved Valentine once, about having been his closest friend. Luke, she thought with a pang. Surely he couldn’t be sad — or even grieved?
But then again, perhaps everyone should have someone to grieve for them, and there was no one else to grieve for Valentine.
But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.
- Nicholson Baker
The Anthologist
With the rum bottle empty, Marsh had moved on to the Guinness in the kitchen cupboard. After a bottle and a half, he’d decided that action was required.the most satisfying sort of action he could think of was ending the little boy’s life.
- Mark Ellis
Death of an Officer
Tell her this
And more,—
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With surplus of toys.
- Stephen Crane
The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane
My house says to me, "Do not leave me, for here dwells your past."
And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future."
And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death will change all things.
Dr. Webb says that losing a sibling is oftentimes much harder for a person than losing any other member of the family. "A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future," he says. "Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with--a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.
- John Corey Whaley
Where Things Come Back
[W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.
- Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.
There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding.
- Jhumpa Lahiri
Unaccustomed Earth
Only those few who are able to surpass their fear of death completely can fully experience the highest forms of life; not the mundane life of the mortal, but the godly life of the resurrected.
- Zeena Schreck
Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.
When the dead do walk seek water's run,
for this the Dead will always shun.
Swift river's best or broadest lake
to ward the dead and have and make.
If water fails thee, fire's thy friend,
if neither guards it will be thy end.
