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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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If you love someone, you're not supposed to want them to come back. Better a peaceful sleep in the earth than the life of a zombie--not really dead but not really alive, either.
- Cassandra Clare
Zombies Vs. Unicorns
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Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries.
- Christopher Hitchens
Hitch 22: A Memoir
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One hand was behind his back, and he held it out, presenting a bouquet of white and smoky purple lilies.

“They’re straight from the underworld, by the way. They are everlasting. They won’t die.
- Jess C Scott
The Devilin Fey
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He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that - his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths - but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.
- Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume
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A complete life may be one ending in so full identification with the non-self that there is no self to die.
- Bernard Berenson
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Sorry to hear about your Dad."
He shrugged. "He was seventy, and we always told him fast food would kill him."
"Heart attack?"
"He was hit by a Pizza Express truck.
- J.A. Konrath
Whiskey Sour
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No man should go to Valhalla with brothel rash.
- Mark Lawrence
Prince of Fools
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Meine mutige Kämpferin. Fight death with all you have.
- Mya Robarts
The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story
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How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not being able to turn round in the grave and to say It is over.
- Edward Thomas
Letters from Edward Thomas to Gordon Bottomley;
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Mr Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.
- Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
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When you have dogs, you witness their uncomplaining acceptance of suffering, their bright desire to make the most of life in spite of the limitations of age and disease, their calm awareness of the approaching end when their final hours come. They accept death with a grace that I hope I will one day be brave enough to muster.
- Dean Koontz
A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Please don't die.
- Randy Pausch
The Last Lecture
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Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?
- Alfred de Vigny
Stello
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Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them.
- Poppy Z. Brite
Lost Souls
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surviving alone is much the same as dying alone
- Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Before Your Memory Fades
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think it's cool to wear roadkill. If I died and somebody wanted to wear my teeth around their neck to VMAs, I'd feel honored.
- Ke$ha
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Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
("Byzantium")
- W.B. Yeats
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.
- Gail Caldwell
Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
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But thoughts the slave of life, and life, Time’s fool,
And Time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.
- William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
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Because the plan God has for each of our lives isn't always the same plan we have for ourselves, Grace. Sometimes, our deaths have more of an impact than our births. It can inspire people to do great things, even greater than they would have had the deaths not happened at all.
- S.L. Naeole
Falling From Grace
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Funerals are for the living. If we have not done for the dead while they were yet in flesh, it is too late; let the matter pass at the grave. Day by day we should live for those who are to die; and live so that we may die for those who are to live. Funerals are for the living.
- Roelif Coe Brinkerhoff
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What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination. When the sky outside is merely pink, and the rooftops merely black: that photographic mind which paradoxically tells the truth, but the worthless truth, about the world. It is that synthesizing spirit, that "shaping" force, which prolifically sprouts and makes up its own worlds with more inventiveness than God which I desire. If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine.
- Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things.
- Lawrence Clark Powell
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.
- Carl Jung
Symbols of Transformation
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you love someone, you're not supposed to want them to come back. Better a peaceful sleep in the earth than the life of a zombie--not really dead but not really alive, either.
- Cassandra Clare
Zombies Vs. Unicorns
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries.
- Christopher Hitchens
Hitch 22: A Memoir
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One hand was behind his back, and he held it out, presenting a bouquet of white and smoky purple lilies.

“They’re straight from the underworld, by the way. They are everlasting. They won’t die.
- Jess C Scott
The Devilin Fey
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that - his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths - but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.
- Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A complete life may be one ending in so full identification with the non-self that there is no self to die.
- Bernard Berenson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Sorry to hear about your Dad."
He shrugged. "He was seventy, and we always told him fast food would kill him."
"Heart attack?"
"He was hit by a Pizza Express truck.
- J.A. Konrath
Whiskey Sour
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No man should go to Valhalla with brothel rash.
- Mark Lawrence
Prince of Fools
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Meine mutige Kämpferin. Fight death with all you have.
- Mya Robarts
The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not being able to turn round in the grave and to say It is over.
- Edward Thomas
Letters from Edward Thomas to Gordon Bottomley;
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Mr Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.
- Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When you have dogs, you witness their uncomplaining acceptance of suffering, their bright desire to make the most of life in spite of the limitations of age and disease, their calm awareness of the approaching end when their final hours come. They accept death with a grace that I hope I will one day be brave enough to muster.
- Dean Koontz
A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Please don't die.
- Randy Pausch
The Last Lecture
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?
- Alfred de Vigny
Stello
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them.
- Poppy Z. Brite
Lost Souls
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
surviving alone is much the same as dying alone
- Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Before Your Memory Fades
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think it's cool to wear roadkill. If I died and somebody wanted to wear my teeth around their neck to VMAs, I'd feel honored.
- Ke$ha
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
("Byzantium")
- W.B. Yeats
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.
- Gail Caldwell
Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But thoughts the slave of life, and life, Time’s fool,
And Time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.
- William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Because the plan God has for each of our lives isn't always the same plan we have for ourselves, Grace. Sometimes, our deaths have more of an impact than our births. It can inspire people to do great things, even greater than they would have had the deaths not happened at all.
- S.L. Naeole
Falling From Grace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Funerals are for the living. If we have not done for the dead while they were yet in flesh, it is too late; let the matter pass at the grave. Day by day we should live for those who are to die; and live so that we may die for those who are to live. Funerals are for the living.
- Roelif Coe Brinkerhoff
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination. When the sky outside is merely pink, and the rooftops merely black: that photographic mind which paradoxically tells the truth, but the worthless truth, about the world. It is that synthesizing spirit, that "shaping" force, which prolifically sprouts and makes up its own worlds with more inventiveness than God which I desire. If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine.
- Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things.
- Lawrence Clark Powell
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.
- Carl Jung
Symbols of Transformation
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you love someone, you're not supposed to want them to come back. Better a peaceful sleep in the earth than the life of a zombie--not really dead but not really alive, either.
- Cassandra Clare
Zombies Vs. Unicorns
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries.
- Christopher Hitchens
Hitch 22: A Memoir
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One hand was behind his back, and he held it out, presenting a bouquet of white and smoky purple lilies.

“They’re straight from the underworld, by the way. They are everlasting. They won’t die.
- Jess C Scott
The Devilin Fey
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that - his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths - but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.
- Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A complete life may be one ending in so full identification with the non-self that there is no self to die.
- Bernard Berenson
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Sorry to hear about your Dad."
He shrugged. "He was seventy, and we always told him fast food would kill him."
"Heart attack?"
"He was hit by a Pizza Express truck.
- J.A. Konrath
Whiskey Sour
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No man should go to Valhalla with brothel rash.
- Mark Lawrence
Prince of Fools
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Meine mutige Kämpferin. Fight death with all you have.
- Mya Robarts
The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not being able to turn round in the grave and to say It is over.
- Edward Thomas
Letters from Edward Thomas to Gordon Bottomley;
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Mr Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.
- Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When you have dogs, you witness their uncomplaining acceptance of suffering, their bright desire to make the most of life in spite of the limitations of age and disease, their calm awareness of the approaching end when their final hours come. They accept death with a grace that I hope I will one day be brave enough to muster.
- Dean Koontz
A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Please don't die.
- Randy Pausch
The Last Lecture
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?
- Alfred de Vigny
Stello
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them.
- Poppy Z. Brite
Lost Souls
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
surviving alone is much the same as dying alone
- Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Before Your Memory Fades
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think it's cool to wear roadkill. If I died and somebody wanted to wear my teeth around their neck to VMAs, I'd feel honored.
- Ke$ha
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
("Byzantium")
- W.B. Yeats
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.
- Gail Caldwell
Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But thoughts the slave of life, and life, Time’s fool,
And Time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.
- William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Because the plan God has for each of our lives isn't always the same plan we have for ourselves, Grace. Sometimes, our deaths have more of an impact than our births. It can inspire people to do great things, even greater than they would have had the deaths not happened at all.
- S.L. Naeole
Falling From Grace
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Funerals are for the living. If we have not done for the dead while they were yet in flesh, it is too late; let the matter pass at the grave. Day by day we should live for those who are to die; and live so that we may die for those who are to live. Funerals are for the living.
- Roelif Coe Brinkerhoff
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination. When the sky outside is merely pink, and the rooftops merely black: that photographic mind which paradoxically tells the truth, but the worthless truth, about the world. It is that synthesizing spirit, that "shaping" force, which prolifically sprouts and makes up its own worlds with more inventiveness than God which I desire. If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine.
- Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things.
- Lawrence Clark Powell
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.
- Carl Jung
Symbols of Transformation
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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88
89
90
91
92
 		...