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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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He cannot become old, for he has never been young; he cannot become young, for he has already become old; in a way he cannot die, for he has never lived; in a way he cannot live, for he is already dead.
- Søren Kierkegaard
Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
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Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.
- Mary Roach
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
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That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.
- Samuel Johnson
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…She kissed me on my thin lips and all my words were pushed back into my mouth.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered, “but I need to lose the shackles of this multitude of hearts.
- Andrew Davidson
The Gargoyle
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We never actively remember death,' Odenigbo said. The reason we live as we do is because we do not remember that we will die. We will all die.
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun
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Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.
- Simone de Beauvoir
The Ethics of Ambiguity
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I used to love you
I still do
So Selfish
I love the old you
The you that didnt shoot drugs
...The you that didnt get beat on by men
You laugh in my face and call me a fool
But its true
I still love you
Sometimes,I can see the old you
When your eyes flash
When you almost look alive
- Henry Rollins
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Fireheart tensed, waiting for whatever had hunted down these apprentices to emerge from the trees and attack, but nothing stirred. Feeling as if his legs hardly belonged to him, he sprang down and stumbled across to Swiftpaw.
The apprentice lay on his side, his legs splayed out. His black-and-white fur was torn, and his body was covered with dreadful wounds, ripped by teeth far bigger than any cat's. His jaws still snarled and his eyes glared. He was dead, and Fireheart could see that he had died fighting.
- Erin Hunter
A Dangerous Path
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I took his poor, broken head into my lap and cradled it.

'Your good looks are gone,' I told him. 'But you mustn't worry about it. This unsightly condition is only temporary. Don't be sad. Don't fear. I will place you somewhere where the fish and the birds can strip away all this broken flesh. It will soon be gone. Then you will be a handsome skull and handsome bones. I will put you in good order and you can rest in the Sunlight and the Starlight. The Statues will look down on you with Blessing. I am sorry that I was angry with you. Forgive me.
- Susanna Clarke
Piranesi
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.
- Criss Jami
Venus in Arms
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories.
- Arthur Golden
Memoirs of a Geisha
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
His life had been spent pursuing excellence and amassing a great fortune, but now that it was ending, there was no one he was inclined to share it with.
- Steven Decker
One More Life to Live
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
After sixty-one years together, she simply clutched my hand and exhaled.
- Sara Gruen
Water for Elephants
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You think the final act of love is setting them free to Rainbow Bridge? That is not the final act of love. The final act of love is releasing them from your leash of grief so they can be free in the heaven on the other side of the Bridge. Until you resolve your grief, you bind them to you in the land between Heaven and Earth while they wait, suspended between the worlds, for you to heal. When you are free of your grief, they are free of your grief.
- Kate McGahan
JACK McAFGHAN: Reflections on Life with my Master
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people seek it.
- David Gemmell
Fall of Kings
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I can just close my eyes and let myself fall into oblivion. Maybe I'll hit the exact same rocks and my blood will mingle with his and maybe there's some kind of life after death and he's waiting for me there with his hand outstretched just like mine.
But...
I don't want to die.
I try to twist my body backwards and pain shoots up my neck.
It's too late.
I chose life too late.
- Cat Clarke
Undone
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)
- Franz Wright
Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there's no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.
- Anthony Swofford
Jarhead: a Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A man without trust might as well be dead.
- Robert Jordan
Lord of Chaos
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is a line in Verlaine I shall not recall again,
There is a street close by forbidden to my feet,
There's a mirror that's seen me for the very last time,
There is a door that I have locked till the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I have them before me)
There are some that I shall never open now.
This summer I complete my fiftieth year;
Death is gnawing at me ceaselessly.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Dreamtigers
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How do you tell if something's alive? You check for breathing.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ros was dead.

He had loved heroin more than it loved him. I was shocked beyond imagining; he was the first of my friends to fall.
- Craig Ferguson
American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He cannot become old, for he has never been young; he cannot become young, for he has already become old; in a way he cannot die, for he has never lived; in a way he cannot live, for he is already dead.
- Søren Kierkegaard
Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.
- Mary Roach
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.
- Samuel Johnson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
…She kissed me on my thin lips and all my words were pushed back into my mouth.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered, “but I need to lose the shackles of this multitude of hearts.
- Andrew Davidson
The Gargoyle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We never actively remember death,' Odenigbo said. The reason we live as we do is because we do not remember that we will die. We will all die.
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.
- Simone de Beauvoir
The Ethics of Ambiguity
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I used to love you
I still do
So Selfish
I love the old you
The you that didnt shoot drugs
...The you that didnt get beat on by men
You laugh in my face and call me a fool
But its true
I still love you
Sometimes,I can see the old you
When your eyes flash
When you almost look alive
- Henry Rollins
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Fireheart tensed, waiting for whatever had hunted down these apprentices to emerge from the trees and attack, but nothing stirred. Feeling as if his legs hardly belonged to him, he sprang down and stumbled across to Swiftpaw.
The apprentice lay on his side, his legs splayed out. His black-and-white fur was torn, and his body was covered with dreadful wounds, ripped by teeth far bigger than any cat's. His jaws still snarled and his eyes glared. He was dead, and Fireheart could see that he had died fighting.
- Erin Hunter
A Dangerous Path
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I took his poor, broken head into my lap and cradled it.

'Your good looks are gone,' I told him. 'But you mustn't worry about it. This unsightly condition is only temporary. Don't be sad. Don't fear. I will place you somewhere where the fish and the birds can strip away all this broken flesh. It will soon be gone. Then you will be a handsome skull and handsome bones. I will put you in good order and you can rest in the Sunlight and the Starlight. The Statues will look down on you with Blessing. I am sorry that I was angry with you. Forgive me.
- Susanna Clarke
Piranesi
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.
- Criss Jami
Venus in Arms
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories.
- Arthur Golden
Memoirs of a Geisha
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
His life had been spent pursuing excellence and amassing a great fortune, but now that it was ending, there was no one he was inclined to share it with.
- Steven Decker
One More Life to Live
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
After sixty-one years together, she simply clutched my hand and exhaled.
- Sara Gruen
Water for Elephants
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You think the final act of love is setting them free to Rainbow Bridge? That is not the final act of love. The final act of love is releasing them from your leash of grief so they can be free in the heaven on the other side of the Bridge. Until you resolve your grief, you bind them to you in the land between Heaven and Earth while they wait, suspended between the worlds, for you to heal. When you are free of your grief, they are free of your grief.
- Kate McGahan
JACK McAFGHAN: Reflections on Life with my Master
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people seek it.
- David Gemmell
Fall of Kings
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I can just close my eyes and let myself fall into oblivion. Maybe I'll hit the exact same rocks and my blood will mingle with his and maybe there's some kind of life after death and he's waiting for me there with his hand outstretched just like mine.
But...
I don't want to die.
I try to twist my body backwards and pain shoots up my neck.
It's too late.
I chose life too late.
- Cat Clarke
Undone
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)
- Franz Wright
Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there's no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.
- Anthony Swofford
Jarhead: a Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A man without trust might as well be dead.
- Robert Jordan
Lord of Chaos
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is a line in Verlaine I shall not recall again,
There is a street close by forbidden to my feet,
There's a mirror that's seen me for the very last time,
There is a door that I have locked till the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I have them before me)
There are some that I shall never open now.
This summer I complete my fiftieth year;
Death is gnawing at me ceaselessly.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Dreamtigers
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How do you tell if something's alive? You check for breathing.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ros was dead.

He had loved heroin more than it loved him. I was shocked beyond imagining; he was the first of my friends to fall.
- Craig Ferguson
American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He cannot become old, for he has never been young; he cannot become young, for he has already become old; in a way he cannot die, for he has never lived; in a way he cannot live, for he is already dead.
- Søren Kierkegaard
Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.
- Mary Roach
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.
- Samuel Johnson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
…She kissed me on my thin lips and all my words were pushed back into my mouth.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered, “but I need to lose the shackles of this multitude of hearts.
- Andrew Davidson
The Gargoyle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We never actively remember death,' Odenigbo said. The reason we live as we do is because we do not remember that we will die. We will all die.
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.
- Simone de Beauvoir
The Ethics of Ambiguity
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I used to love you
I still do
So Selfish
I love the old you
The you that didnt shoot drugs
...The you that didnt get beat on by men
You laugh in my face and call me a fool
But its true
I still love you
Sometimes,I can see the old you
When your eyes flash
When you almost look alive
- Henry Rollins
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Fireheart tensed, waiting for whatever had hunted down these apprentices to emerge from the trees and attack, but nothing stirred. Feeling as if his legs hardly belonged to him, he sprang down and stumbled across to Swiftpaw.
The apprentice lay on his side, his legs splayed out. His black-and-white fur was torn, and his body was covered with dreadful wounds, ripped by teeth far bigger than any cat's. His jaws still snarled and his eyes glared. He was dead, and Fireheart could see that he had died fighting.
- Erin Hunter
A Dangerous Path
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I took his poor, broken head into my lap and cradled it.

'Your good looks are gone,' I told him. 'But you mustn't worry about it. This unsightly condition is only temporary. Don't be sad. Don't fear. I will place you somewhere where the fish and the birds can strip away all this broken flesh. It will soon be gone. Then you will be a handsome skull and handsome bones. I will put you in good order and you can rest in the Sunlight and the Starlight. The Statues will look down on you with Blessing. I am sorry that I was angry with you. Forgive me.
- Susanna Clarke
Piranesi
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.
- Criss Jami
Venus in Arms
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories.
- Arthur Golden
Memoirs of a Geisha
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
His life had been spent pursuing excellence and amassing a great fortune, but now that it was ending, there was no one he was inclined to share it with.
- Steven Decker
One More Life to Live
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
After sixty-one years together, she simply clutched my hand and exhaled.
- Sara Gruen
Water for Elephants
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You think the final act of love is setting them free to Rainbow Bridge? That is not the final act of love. The final act of love is releasing them from your leash of grief so they can be free in the heaven on the other side of the Bridge. Until you resolve your grief, you bind them to you in the land between Heaven and Earth while they wait, suspended between the worlds, for you to heal. When you are free of your grief, they are free of your grief.
- Kate McGahan
JACK McAFGHAN: Reflections on Life with my Master
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people seek it.
- David Gemmell
Fall of Kings
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I can just close my eyes and let myself fall into oblivion. Maybe I'll hit the exact same rocks and my blood will mingle with his and maybe there's some kind of life after death and he's waiting for me there with his hand outstretched just like mine.
But...
I don't want to die.
I try to twist my body backwards and pain shoots up my neck.
It's too late.
I chose life too late.
- Cat Clarke
Undone
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)
- Franz Wright
Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there's no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.
- Anthony Swofford
Jarhead: a Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A man without trust might as well be dead.
- Robert Jordan
Lord of Chaos
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is a line in Verlaine I shall not recall again,
There is a street close by forbidden to my feet,
There's a mirror that's seen me for the very last time,
There is a door that I have locked till the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I have them before me)
There are some that I shall never open now.
This summer I complete my fiftieth year;
Death is gnawing at me ceaselessly.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Dreamtigers
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How do you tell if something's alive? You check for breathing.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ros was dead.

He had loved heroin more than it loved him. I was shocked beyond imagining; he was the first of my friends to fall.
- Craig Ferguson
American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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28
29
30
31
32
 		...