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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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Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt
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The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Beware:
At war
Or at peace,
More people die
Of unenlightened self-interest
Than of any other disease.
- Octavia Butler
Parable of the Talents
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Make death proud to take us.
- William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
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For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountaintop,then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shal claim your limbs,then shall you truly dance.
- Khalil Gibran
The Prophet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes
are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
- John Green
The Fault in Our Stars
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I love the name of honor more than I fear death.
- Julius Cesar
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Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.
- Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was the meanest moment of eternity.
- Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The only certainty is death.
- Guy de Maupassant
Bel-Ami
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
From the onset of polio in 1921 until his death, Franklin, his family, his inner circle of advisers, and teams of physicians assiduously disguised the state of his health, promoting the fantasy of a robust leader who was always in excel- lent physical condition for a man his age. Severe heart disease was not admit- ted until twenty-five years after his death, and then only as part of a new and larger cover-up to conceal other severe medical problems. These deceptions still dominate the present-day narrative of Franklin’s health, especially so in his later years.
- Steven Lomazow
FDR Unmasked: 73 Years of Medical Cover-ups That Rewrote History
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
This world
that was our home
for a brief spell
never brought us anything
but pain and grief;
its a shame that not one of our problems
was ever solved.
We depart
with a thousand regrets
in our hearts.
- Omar Khayyám
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they'd whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of the clockwork Angel. Of holy water and blood.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.
- Mary Karr
Lit
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What happens if a car comes?
We die.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
LXXIX

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes.
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more.
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else.
to continue to flourish, full-flowered.

So that you can reach everything my love directs you to.
So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.
- Pablo Neruda
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The Skeleton

Chattering finch and water-fly
Are not merrier than I;
Here among the flowers I lie
Laughing everlastingly.
No: I may not tell the best;
Surely, friends, I might have guessed
Death was but the good King's jest,
It was hid so carefully.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When he said to give him the sword, I don’t think he meant for you to stick it in his guts.
- Kevin Hearne
Hounded
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.
- Garth Nix
Sabriel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You know, lieutenant, you wear your weapon the way other women wear pearls."
"It's not a fashion accessory.
- J.D. Robb
Naked in Death
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And I could have died right then. And considering how things went, I really should have.
- Ned Vizzini
It's Kind of a Funny Story
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of worlds.

[Quoted from the Bhagavad Gita after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.]
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Beware:
At war
Or at peace,
More people die
Of unenlightened self-interest
Than of any other disease.
- Octavia Butler
Parable of the Talents
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Make death proud to take us.
- William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountaintop,then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shal claim your limbs,then shall you truly dance.
- Khalil Gibran
The Prophet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes
are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
- John Green
The Fault in Our Stars
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I love the name of honor more than I fear death.
- Julius Cesar
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.
- Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was the meanest moment of eternity.
- Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The only certainty is death.
- Guy de Maupassant
Bel-Ami
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
From the onset of polio in 1921 until his death, Franklin, his family, his inner circle of advisers, and teams of physicians assiduously disguised the state of his health, promoting the fantasy of a robust leader who was always in excel- lent physical condition for a man his age. Severe heart disease was not admit- ted until twenty-five years after his death, and then only as part of a new and larger cover-up to conceal other severe medical problems. These deceptions still dominate the present-day narrative of Franklin’s health, especially so in his later years.
- Steven Lomazow
FDR Unmasked: 73 Years of Medical Cover-ups That Rewrote History
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
This world
that was our home
for a brief spell
never brought us anything
but pain and grief;
its a shame that not one of our problems
was ever solved.
We depart
with a thousand regrets
in our hearts.
- Omar Khayyám
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they'd whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of the clockwork Angel. Of holy water and blood.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.
- Mary Karr
Lit
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What happens if a car comes?
We die.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
LXXIX

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes.
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more.
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else.
to continue to flourish, full-flowered.

So that you can reach everything my love directs you to.
So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.
- Pablo Neruda
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The Skeleton

Chattering finch and water-fly
Are not merrier than I;
Here among the flowers I lie
Laughing everlastingly.
No: I may not tell the best;
Surely, friends, I might have guessed
Death was but the good King's jest,
It was hid so carefully.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When he said to give him the sword, I don’t think he meant for you to stick it in his guts.
- Kevin Hearne
Hounded
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.
- Garth Nix
Sabriel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You know, lieutenant, you wear your weapon the way other women wear pearls."
"It's not a fashion accessory.
- J.D. Robb
Naked in Death
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And I could have died right then. And considering how things went, I really should have.
- Ned Vizzini
It's Kind of a Funny Story
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of worlds.

[Quoted from the Bhagavad Gita after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.]
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Beware:
At war
Or at peace,
More people die
Of unenlightened self-interest
Than of any other disease.
- Octavia Butler
Parable of the Talents
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Make death proud to take us.
- William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountaintop,then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shal claim your limbs,then shall you truly dance.
- Khalil Gibran
The Prophet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes
are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
- John Green
The Fault in Our Stars
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I love the name of honor more than I fear death.
- Julius Cesar
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.
- Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was the meanest moment of eternity.
- Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The only certainty is death.
- Guy de Maupassant
Bel-Ami
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
From the onset of polio in 1921 until his death, Franklin, his family, his inner circle of advisers, and teams of physicians assiduously disguised the state of his health, promoting the fantasy of a robust leader who was always in excel- lent physical condition for a man his age. Severe heart disease was not admit- ted until twenty-five years after his death, and then only as part of a new and larger cover-up to conceal other severe medical problems. These deceptions still dominate the present-day narrative of Franklin’s health, especially so in his later years.
- Steven Lomazow
FDR Unmasked: 73 Years of Medical Cover-ups That Rewrote History
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
This world
that was our home
for a brief spell
never brought us anything
but pain and grief;
its a shame that not one of our problems
was ever solved.
We depart
with a thousand regrets
in our hearts.
- Omar Khayyám
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they'd whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of the clockwork Angel. Of holy water and blood.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.
- Mary Karr
Lit
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What happens if a car comes?
We die.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
LXXIX

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes.
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more.
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else.
to continue to flourish, full-flowered.

So that you can reach everything my love directs you to.
So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.
- Pablo Neruda
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The Skeleton

Chattering finch and water-fly
Are not merrier than I;
Here among the flowers I lie
Laughing everlastingly.
No: I may not tell the best;
Surely, friends, I might have guessed
Death was but the good King's jest,
It was hid so carefully.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When he said to give him the sword, I don’t think he meant for you to stick it in his guts.
- Kevin Hearne
Hounded
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.
- Garth Nix
Sabriel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You know, lieutenant, you wear your weapon the way other women wear pearls."
"It's not a fashion accessory.
- J.D. Robb
Naked in Death
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And I could have died right then. And considering how things went, I really should have.
- Ned Vizzini
It's Kind of a Funny Story
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of worlds.

[Quoted from the Bhagavad Gita after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.]
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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96
97
98
99
100
 		...