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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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Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.
- Veronica Roth
Four: A Divergent Story Collection
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Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.
- Madeleine L'Engle
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When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.
- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
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I am still in the land of the dying; I shall be in the land of the living soon. (his last words)
- John Newton
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Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map. He looked at Mort as if he wasn’t entirely there.
Yᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇɴ'ᴛ ʜᴇᴀʀᴅ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ Bᴀʏ Oғ Mᴀɴᴛᴇ, ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ? he said.
“No, sir,” said Mort.
Fᴀᴍᴏᴜs sʜɪᴘᴡʀᴇᴄᴋ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ.
“Was there?”
Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ, said Death, ɪғ I ᴄᴀɴ ғɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀᴍɴ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ.
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You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew.
- John Green
Looking for Alaska
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I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.
- Aldous Huxley
The Genius and the Goddess: a Novel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.
- Guy de Maupassant
The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.
- J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey
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I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.
- Clarice Lispector
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If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
- Joan Baez
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Death is only meaningless if it does not change us, Vis.
- James Islington
The Will of the Many
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.
- Jennifer Donnelly
Revolution
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So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the most astonishing deeds, and which, more then once, showed me that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only obstacle to the sucess of those projects which require rapid decision, and vigorous and determined execution.
In reality, when you have once devoted your life to your enterprises, you are no longer the equal of other men, or, rather, other men are no longer your equals, and whosoever has taken this resolution, feels his strength and resources doubled.
- Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo
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For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Was there ever a war where only one side bled?
- George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.
- Paulo Coelho
The Pilgrimage
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I find myself thinking back to something I saw on the local news about a year ago. A teen football player had died in a car accident. The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral—these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, “I loved him. We all loved him so much.” I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them.
- David Levithan
Boy Meets Boy
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Now I gazed out of my office window. Slowly the world was changing from old-gold to the deep purple which, in the words of that dreamy song Mum was fond of humming, bathes garden walls under the twinkle of starlight.
- Michael Wyndham Thomas
The Erkeley Shadows
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
- William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Circe, he says, it will be all right.

It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. ... He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what is means to be alive.
- Madeline Miller
Circe
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.
- Aravind Adiga
The White Tiger
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.
- Veronica Roth
Four: A Divergent Story Collection
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.
- Madeleine L'Engle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.
- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am still in the land of the dying; I shall be in the land of the living soon. (his last words)
- John Newton
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map. He looked at Mort as if he wasn’t entirely there.
Yᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇɴ'ᴛ ʜᴇᴀʀᴅ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ Bᴀʏ Oғ Mᴀɴᴛᴇ, ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ? he said.
“No, sir,” said Mort.
Fᴀᴍᴏᴜs sʜɪᴘᴡʀᴇᴄᴋ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ.
“Was there?”
Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ, said Death, ɪғ I ᴄᴀɴ ғɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀᴍɴ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew.
- John Green
Looking for Alaska
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.
- Aldous Huxley
The Genius and the Goddess: a Novel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.
- Guy de Maupassant
The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.
- J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.
- Clarice Lispector
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
- Joan Baez
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is only meaningless if it does not change us, Vis.
- James Islington
The Will of the Many
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.
- Jennifer Donnelly
Revolution
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the most astonishing deeds, and which, more then once, showed me that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only obstacle to the sucess of those projects which require rapid decision, and vigorous and determined execution.
In reality, when you have once devoted your life to your enterprises, you are no longer the equal of other men, or, rather, other men are no longer your equals, and whosoever has taken this resolution, feels his strength and resources doubled.
- Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Was there ever a war where only one side bled?
- George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.
- Paulo Coelho
The Pilgrimage
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I find myself thinking back to something I saw on the local news about a year ago. A teen football player had died in a car accident. The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral—these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, “I loved him. We all loved him so much.” I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them.
- David Levithan
Boy Meets Boy
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now I gazed out of my office window. Slowly the world was changing from old-gold to the deep purple which, in the words of that dreamy song Mum was fond of humming, bathes garden walls under the twinkle of starlight.
- Michael Wyndham Thomas
The Erkeley Shadows
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
- William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Circe, he says, it will be all right.

It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. ... He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what is means to be alive.
- Madeline Miller
Circe
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.
- Aravind Adiga
The White Tiger
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.
- Veronica Roth
Four: A Divergent Story Collection
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.
- Madeleine L'Engle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.
- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am still in the land of the dying; I shall be in the land of the living soon. (his last words)
- John Newton
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map. He looked at Mort as if he wasn’t entirely there.
Yᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇɴ'ᴛ ʜᴇᴀʀᴅ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ Bᴀʏ Oғ Mᴀɴᴛᴇ, ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ? he said.
“No, sir,” said Mort.
Fᴀᴍᴏᴜs sʜɪᴘᴡʀᴇᴄᴋ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ.
“Was there?”
Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ, said Death, ɪғ I ᴄᴀɴ ғɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀᴍɴ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew.
- John Green
Looking for Alaska
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.
- Aldous Huxley
The Genius and the Goddess: a Novel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.
- Guy de Maupassant
The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.
- J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.
- Clarice Lispector
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
- Joan Baez
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is only meaningless if it does not change us, Vis.
- James Islington
The Will of the Many
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.
- Jennifer Donnelly
Revolution
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the most astonishing deeds, and which, more then once, showed me that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only obstacle to the sucess of those projects which require rapid decision, and vigorous and determined execution.
In reality, when you have once devoted your life to your enterprises, you are no longer the equal of other men, or, rather, other men are no longer your equals, and whosoever has taken this resolution, feels his strength and resources doubled.
- Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Was there ever a war where only one side bled?
- George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.
- Paulo Coelho
The Pilgrimage
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I find myself thinking back to something I saw on the local news about a year ago. A teen football player had died in a car accident. The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral—these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, “I loved him. We all loved him so much.” I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them.
- David Levithan
Boy Meets Boy
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now I gazed out of my office window. Slowly the world was changing from old-gold to the deep purple which, in the words of that dreamy song Mum was fond of humming, bathes garden walls under the twinkle of starlight.
- Michael Wyndham Thomas
The Erkeley Shadows
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
- William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Circe, he says, it will be all right.

It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. ... He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what is means to be alive.
- Madeline Miller
Circe
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.
- Aravind Adiga
The White Tiger
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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72
73
74
75
76
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