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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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There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death.
- Fran Lebowitz
Metropolitan Life
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If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.
- Pythagoras
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Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
- Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.
- C.S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Everybody know death is inevitably coming, but it never fails to catch everybody by surprise everytime one is going
- Hlovate
Contengan Jalanan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else.
- Mitch Albom
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I wish the night would end,
I wish the day'd begin,
I wish it would rain or snow,
or the wind would blow,
or the grass would grow,
I wish I had yesterday,
I wish there were games to play...
- V.C. Andrews
Flowers in the Attic
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But to mourn, that's different. To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for the person.
- Olive Ann Burns
Cold Sassy Tree
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? Harry's mind was in freefall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying—
- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end, and thinking about the beginning.

There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes?

I know you are unable to imagine this.

Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved.
- Meg Rosoff
What I Was
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.
- Carlos Castaneda
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along.
- Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.
- Erich Segal
Love Story
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is. . . . This is our destiny. Not yours.
- Alyson Noel
Blue Moon
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Well I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death.
- Cassandra Clare
City of Bones
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Beyond life, beyond death, my love for thee is eternal.
- Kerri Maniscalco
Capturing the Devil
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Accepting death doesn't mean you won't be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like, "Why do people die?" and "Why is this happening to me?" Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all.
- Caitlin Doughty
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.

This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

However, this is not relevant to what is currently on my mind because it concerns sloths, whereas the Branwell Brontë piece of information concerns writers and feeling like death and doing things to prove they can be done, all of which are pertinent to my current situation to a degree that is, frankly, spooky.
- Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt)
The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you--do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale?
- Chuck Palahniuk
Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak
- Franz Kafka
The Trial
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
THE WEATHER OF LOVE


Love
Has a way of wilting
Or blossoming
At the strangest,
Most unpredictable hour.
This is how love is,
An uncontrollable beast
In the form of a flower.
The sun does not always shine on it.
Nor does the rain always pour on it
Nor should it always get beaten by a storm.
Love does not always emit the sweetest scents,
And sometimes it can sting with its thorns.
Water it.
Give it plenty of sunlight.
Nurture it,
And the flower of love will
Outlive you.
Neglect it or keep dissecting it,
And its petals will quickly curl up and die.
This is how love is,
Perfection is a delusional vision.
So love the person who loves you
Unconditionally,
And abandon the one
Who only loves you
Under favorable
Conditions.
- Suzy Kassem
Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, 'You stupid ass, just wait a minute,' and she’ll open her eyes! 'Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time!' But they always do.
- Elizabeth Wein
Code Name Verity
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death.
- Fran Lebowitz
Metropolitan Life
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.
- Pythagoras
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
- Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.
- C.S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Everybody know death is inevitably coming, but it never fails to catch everybody by surprise everytime one is going
- Hlovate
Contengan Jalanan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else.
- Mitch Albom
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I wish the night would end,
I wish the day'd begin,
I wish it would rain or snow,
or the wind would blow,
or the grass would grow,
I wish I had yesterday,
I wish there were games to play...
- V.C. Andrews
Flowers in the Attic
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But to mourn, that's different. To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for the person.
- Olive Ann Burns
Cold Sassy Tree
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? Harry's mind was in freefall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying—
- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end, and thinking about the beginning.

There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes?

I know you are unable to imagine this.

Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved.
- Meg Rosoff
What I Was
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.
- Carlos Castaneda
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along.
- Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.
- Erich Segal
Love Story
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is. . . . This is our destiny. Not yours.
- Alyson Noel
Blue Moon
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Well I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death.
- Cassandra Clare
City of Bones
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Beyond life, beyond death, my love for thee is eternal.
- Kerri Maniscalco
Capturing the Devil
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Accepting death doesn't mean you won't be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like, "Why do people die?" and "Why is this happening to me?" Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all.
- Caitlin Doughty
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.

This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

However, this is not relevant to what is currently on my mind because it concerns sloths, whereas the Branwell Brontë piece of information concerns writers and feeling like death and doing things to prove they can be done, all of which are pertinent to my current situation to a degree that is, frankly, spooky.
- Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt)
The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you--do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale?
- Chuck Palahniuk
Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak
- Franz Kafka
The Trial
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
THE WEATHER OF LOVE


Love
Has a way of wilting
Or blossoming
At the strangest,
Most unpredictable hour.
This is how love is,
An uncontrollable beast
In the form of a flower.
The sun does not always shine on it.
Nor does the rain always pour on it
Nor should it always get beaten by a storm.
Love does not always emit the sweetest scents,
And sometimes it can sting with its thorns.
Water it.
Give it plenty of sunlight.
Nurture it,
And the flower of love will
Outlive you.
Neglect it or keep dissecting it,
And its petals will quickly curl up and die.
This is how love is,
Perfection is a delusional vision.
So love the person who loves you
Unconditionally,
And abandon the one
Who only loves you
Under favorable
Conditions.
- Suzy Kassem
Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, 'You stupid ass, just wait a minute,' and she’ll open her eyes! 'Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time!' But they always do.
- Elizabeth Wein
Code Name Verity
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death.
- Fran Lebowitz
Metropolitan Life
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.
- Pythagoras
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
- Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.
- C.S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Everybody know death is inevitably coming, but it never fails to catch everybody by surprise everytime one is going
- Hlovate
Contengan Jalanan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else.
- Mitch Albom
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I wish the night would end,
I wish the day'd begin,
I wish it would rain or snow,
or the wind would blow,
or the grass would grow,
I wish I had yesterday,
I wish there were games to play...
- V.C. Andrews
Flowers in the Attic
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But to mourn, that's different. To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for the person.
- Olive Ann Burns
Cold Sassy Tree
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? Harry's mind was in freefall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying—
- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end, and thinking about the beginning.

There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes?

I know you are unable to imagine this.

Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved.
- Meg Rosoff
What I Was
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.
- Carlos Castaneda
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along.
- Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.
- Erich Segal
Love Story
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is. . . . This is our destiny. Not yours.
- Alyson Noel
Blue Moon
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Well I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death.
- Cassandra Clare
City of Bones
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Beyond life, beyond death, my love for thee is eternal.
- Kerri Maniscalco
Capturing the Devil
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Accepting death doesn't mean you won't be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like, "Why do people die?" and "Why is this happening to me?" Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all.
- Caitlin Doughty
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.

This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

However, this is not relevant to what is currently on my mind because it concerns sloths, whereas the Branwell Brontë piece of information concerns writers and feeling like death and doing things to prove they can be done, all of which are pertinent to my current situation to a degree that is, frankly, spooky.
- Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt)
The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you--do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale?
- Chuck Palahniuk
Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak
- Franz Kafka
The Trial
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
THE WEATHER OF LOVE


Love
Has a way of wilting
Or blossoming
At the strangest,
Most unpredictable hour.
This is how love is,
An uncontrollable beast
In the form of a flower.
The sun does not always shine on it.
Nor does the rain always pour on it
Nor should it always get beaten by a storm.
Love does not always emit the sweetest scents,
And sometimes it can sting with its thorns.
Water it.
Give it plenty of sunlight.
Nurture it,
And the flower of love will
Outlive you.
Neglect it or keep dissecting it,
And its petals will quickly curl up and die.
This is how love is,
Perfection is a delusional vision.
So love the person who loves you
Unconditionally,
And abandon the one
Who only loves you
Under favorable
Conditions.
- Suzy Kassem
Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, 'You stupid ass, just wait a minute,' and she’ll open her eyes! 'Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time!' But they always do.
- Elizabeth Wein
Code Name Verity
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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