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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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The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, unpredictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?"

That we shall die."

Yes, There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer. ... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We're reaching for death
on the end of a candle
We're trying for something
that's already found us
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.
- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But eyes couldn’t stay closed forever, unless one was dead. And the dead never dreamed.
- Hafsah Faizal
We Hunt the Flame
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You only get one life. Live it to the fullest. All your miseries will be forgiven when you will be dead.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One of the inescapable encumbrances of leading an interesting life is that there have to be moments when you almost lose it.
- Jimmy Buffett
A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
i have survived far too much to go quietly
let a meteor take me
call the thunder for backup
my death will be grand
the land will crack
the sun will eat itself

- the day I leave
- Rupi Kaur
The Sun and Her Flowers
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
By daily dying, I have come to be.
- Theodore Roethke
The Collected Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Even death, faced with the option of death or life, she would choose life.
- José Saramago
Death with Interruptions
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's difference between being dead and dying. We're all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.
- Robyn Schneider
Extraordinary Means
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.
- Ernest Becker
The Denial of Death
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
darkness falls upon Humanity
and faces become terrible
things
that wanted more than there
was.

all our days are marked with
unexpected
affronts - some
disastrous, others
less so
but the process is
wearing and
continuous.
attrition rules.
most give
way
leaving
empty spaces
where people should
be.

and now
as we ready to self-destruct
there is very little left to
kill

which makes the tragedy
less and more
much much
more.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.
- Jean Racine
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All live to die, and rise to fall.
- Christopher Marlowe
Edward II
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.
- Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am only alive because I have not yet died.
- Anthony Doerr
All the Light We Cannot See
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
- Joseph Heller
Catch-22
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again...
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
the gods seldom
give
but so quickly
take.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.
- George Orwell
Coming up for Air
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am Death. I come quickly, I come slowly, but I am not cheated.
- Erika Johansen
The Queen of the Tearling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life isn't fair. A fair's a place where you eat corn dogs and ride the ferris wheel.
- Jennifer Brown
Hate List
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Adonais
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, unpredictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?"

That we shall die."

Yes, There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer. ... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We're reaching for death
on the end of a candle
We're trying for something
that's already found us
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.
- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But eyes couldn’t stay closed forever, unless one was dead. And the dead never dreamed.
- Hafsah Faizal
We Hunt the Flame
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You only get one life. Live it to the fullest. All your miseries will be forgiven when you will be dead.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One of the inescapable encumbrances of leading an interesting life is that there have to be moments when you almost lose it.
- Jimmy Buffett
A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
i have survived far too much to go quietly
let a meteor take me
call the thunder for backup
my death will be grand
the land will crack
the sun will eat itself

- the day I leave
- Rupi Kaur
The Sun and Her Flowers
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
By daily dying, I have come to be.
- Theodore Roethke
The Collected Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Even death, faced with the option of death or life, she would choose life.
- José Saramago
Death with Interruptions
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's difference between being dead and dying. We're all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.
- Robyn Schneider
Extraordinary Means
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.
- Ernest Becker
The Denial of Death
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
darkness falls upon Humanity
and faces become terrible
things
that wanted more than there
was.

all our days are marked with
unexpected
affronts - some
disastrous, others
less so
but the process is
wearing and
continuous.
attrition rules.
most give
way
leaving
empty spaces
where people should
be.

and now
as we ready to self-destruct
there is very little left to
kill

which makes the tragedy
less and more
much much
more.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.
- Jean Racine
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All live to die, and rise to fall.
- Christopher Marlowe
Edward II
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.
- Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am only alive because I have not yet died.
- Anthony Doerr
All the Light We Cannot See
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
- Joseph Heller
Catch-22
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again...
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
the gods seldom
give
but so quickly
take.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.
- George Orwell
Coming up for Air
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am Death. I come quickly, I come slowly, but I am not cheated.
- Erika Johansen
The Queen of the Tearling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life isn't fair. A fair's a place where you eat corn dogs and ride the ferris wheel.
- Jennifer Brown
Hate List
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Adonais
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, unpredictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?"

That we shall die."

Yes, There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer. ... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We're reaching for death
on the end of a candle
We're trying for something
that's already found us
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.
- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But eyes couldn’t stay closed forever, unless one was dead. And the dead never dreamed.
- Hafsah Faizal
We Hunt the Flame
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You only get one life. Live it to the fullest. All your miseries will be forgiven when you will be dead.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One of the inescapable encumbrances of leading an interesting life is that there have to be moments when you almost lose it.
- Jimmy Buffett
A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
i have survived far too much to go quietly
let a meteor take me
call the thunder for backup
my death will be grand
the land will crack
the sun will eat itself

- the day I leave
- Rupi Kaur
The Sun and Her Flowers
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
By daily dying, I have come to be.
- Theodore Roethke
The Collected Poems
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Even death, faced with the option of death or life, she would choose life.
- José Saramago
Death with Interruptions
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's difference between being dead and dying. We're all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.
- Robyn Schneider
Extraordinary Means
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.
- Ernest Becker
The Denial of Death
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
darkness falls upon Humanity
and faces become terrible
things
that wanted more than there
was.

all our days are marked with
unexpected
affronts - some
disastrous, others
less so
but the process is
wearing and
continuous.
attrition rules.
most give
way
leaving
empty spaces
where people should
be.

and now
as we ready to self-destruct
there is very little left to
kill

which makes the tragedy
less and more
much much
more.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.
- Jean Racine
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All live to die, and rise to fall.
- Christopher Marlowe
Edward II
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.
- Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am only alive because I have not yet died.
- Anthony Doerr
All the Light We Cannot See
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
- Joseph Heller
Catch-22
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again...
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
the gods seldom
give
but so quickly
take.
- Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.
- George Orwell
Coming up for Air
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am Death. I come quickly, I come slowly, but I am not cheated.
- Erika Johansen
The Queen of the Tearling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life isn't fair. A fair's a place where you eat corn dogs and ride the ferris wheel.
- Jennifer Brown
Hate List
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Adonais
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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