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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 question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
- Annie Dillard
The Maytrees
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The picture of helpless indolence she calls herself
sublimely helpless and impotent
I had done living I thought
Was ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones,
that there seemed no room for tears.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese
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You need to be greedy or ignorant to truly want to live forever.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You and I have a connection that nothing, not on heaven or earth, or even hell, could ever break. If you want to talk to me, talk to me. I’ll hear you…
- Cynthia Hand
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It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.
- Neil Gaiman
Coraline
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.
- Christopher Hitchens
A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's still a thousand places I haven't gone to die.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The field of the soul must be watered by the rain with tears of love; otherwise it will become a desert.
- Sorin Cerin
Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.
- J.G. Ballard
The Complete Short Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My dreams are nothing I want to remember, full of people I must never forget. I visit death after death. It's a relief to be woken up.
- Suzanne Collins
Sunrise on the Reaping
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The reason they invented coffins, to lock the dead in, preserve them, they put makeup on them; they didn't want them spreading or changing into anything else. The stone with the name and date was on them to weight them down.
- Margaret Atwood
Surfacing
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm going to die. And as if that weren't bad enough, I'm going to die inside a cake.
- Peter H. Fogtdal
The Tsar's Dwarf: A Novel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She would have called it death, but she didn’t.
- Misba
The High Auction
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He looked upon this verdant, blossoming spring, a spring Joanna would never see, he looked upon a field of brilliant blue flowers- the bluebells Joanna had so loved- and at that moment he'd willingly have bartered all his tomorrows for but one yesterday.
- Sharon Kay Penman
Falls the Shadow
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He is dead and I, the self serving coward that I am, still live. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Something everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think that when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor.
Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit.
- Joe Abercrombie
The Heroes
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The lucky ones are just born dead.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Was it not worth the loss of a little immortality to have that strange mix of innocence and strength close to him?
- Nalini Singh
Angels' Blood
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death cuts off possibilities. Even if they were possibilities you never meant to act on, it feels different
when they’re gone.
- Eileen Wilks
Mortal Ties
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day."

(Epitaph for Joy Davidman)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.
- Meghan O'Rourke
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner.
- Cyrus the Great
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I wonder how it takes you, that moment when everything turns to shadows. - Somerled.
- Juliet Marillier
Wolfskin
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.
- Libba Bray
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
- Edward Arlington Robinson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
- Annie Dillard
The Maytrees
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The picture of helpless indolence she calls herself
sublimely helpless and impotent
I had done living I thought
Was ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones,
that there seemed no room for tears.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You need to be greedy or ignorant to truly want to live forever.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You and I have a connection that nothing, not on heaven or earth, or even hell, could ever break. If you want to talk to me, talk to me. I’ll hear you…
- Cynthia Hand
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.
- Neil Gaiman
Coraline
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.
- Christopher Hitchens
A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's still a thousand places I haven't gone to die.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The field of the soul must be watered by the rain with tears of love; otherwise it will become a desert.
- Sorin Cerin
Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.
- J.G. Ballard
The Complete Short Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My dreams are nothing I want to remember, full of people I must never forget. I visit death after death. It's a relief to be woken up.
- Suzanne Collins
Sunrise on the Reaping
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The reason they invented coffins, to lock the dead in, preserve them, they put makeup on them; they didn't want them spreading or changing into anything else. The stone with the name and date was on them to weight them down.
- Margaret Atwood
Surfacing
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm going to die. And as if that weren't bad enough, I'm going to die inside a cake.
- Peter H. Fogtdal
The Tsar's Dwarf: A Novel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She would have called it death, but she didn’t.
- Misba
The High Auction
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He looked upon this verdant, blossoming spring, a spring Joanna would never see, he looked upon a field of brilliant blue flowers- the bluebells Joanna had so loved- and at that moment he'd willingly have bartered all his tomorrows for but one yesterday.
- Sharon Kay Penman
Falls the Shadow
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He is dead and I, the self serving coward that I am, still live. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Something everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think that when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor.
Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit.
- Joe Abercrombie
The Heroes
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The lucky ones are just born dead.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Was it not worth the loss of a little immortality to have that strange mix of innocence and strength close to him?
- Nalini Singh
Angels' Blood
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death cuts off possibilities. Even if they were possibilities you never meant to act on, it feels different
when they’re gone.
- Eileen Wilks
Mortal Ties
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day."

(Epitaph for Joy Davidman)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.
- Meghan O'Rourke
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner.
- Cyrus the Great
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I wonder how it takes you, that moment when everything turns to shadows. - Somerled.
- Juliet Marillier
Wolfskin
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.
- Libba Bray
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
- Edward Arlington Robinson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
- Annie Dillard
The Maytrees
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The picture of helpless indolence she calls herself
sublimely helpless and impotent
I had done living I thought
Was ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones,
that there seemed no room for tears.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You need to be greedy or ignorant to truly want to live forever.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You and I have a connection that nothing, not on heaven or earth, or even hell, could ever break. If you want to talk to me, talk to me. I’ll hear you…
- Cynthia Hand
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.
- Neil Gaiman
Coraline
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.
- Christopher Hitchens
A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's still a thousand places I haven't gone to die.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The field of the soul must be watered by the rain with tears of love; otherwise it will become a desert.
- Sorin Cerin
Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.
- J.G. Ballard
The Complete Short Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My dreams are nothing I want to remember, full of people I must never forget. I visit death after death. It's a relief to be woken up.
- Suzanne Collins
Sunrise on the Reaping
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The reason they invented coffins, to lock the dead in, preserve them, they put makeup on them; they didn't want them spreading or changing into anything else. The stone with the name and date was on them to weight them down.
- Margaret Atwood
Surfacing
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm going to die. And as if that weren't bad enough, I'm going to die inside a cake.
- Peter H. Fogtdal
The Tsar's Dwarf: A Novel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She would have called it death, but she didn’t.
- Misba
The High Auction
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He looked upon this verdant, blossoming spring, a spring Joanna would never see, he looked upon a field of brilliant blue flowers- the bluebells Joanna had so loved- and at that moment he'd willingly have bartered all his tomorrows for but one yesterday.
- Sharon Kay Penman
Falls the Shadow
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He is dead and I, the self serving coward that I am, still live. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Something everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think that when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor.
Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit.
- Joe Abercrombie
The Heroes
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The lucky ones are just born dead.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Was it not worth the loss of a little immortality to have that strange mix of innocence and strength close to him?
- Nalini Singh
Angels' Blood
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death cuts off possibilities. Even if they were possibilities you never meant to act on, it feels different
when they’re gone.
- Eileen Wilks
Mortal Ties
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day."

(Epitaph for Joy Davidman)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.
- Meghan O'Rourke
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner.
- Cyrus the Great
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I wonder how it takes you, that moment when everything turns to shadows. - Somerled.
- Juliet Marillier
Wolfskin
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.
- Libba Bray
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
- Edward Arlington Robinson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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55
56
57
58
59
 		...