DEATH QUOTES XXIII

quotations about death

The dying need but little, dear,
A glass of water's all,
A flower's unobtrusive face
To punctuate the wall,
A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret
And certainty that one
No color in the rainbow
Perceive, when you are gone.

EMILY DICKINSON

"The Dying need but little, Dear"


Man dies. Come from darkness, into darkness he returns, and is reabsorbed, without a trace left, into the illimitable void of time.

LEONID ANDREYEV

The Life of Man


If a man should wanton walk with crime ... he shall find in death no great deliverance.

AESCHYLUS

The Eumenides


Look on the grave where thou must sleep
Thy last, and strongest foe;
It is endurance not to weep,
If that repose seem woe.

EMILY BRONTE

Self-Interrogation


We have the promises of God as thick as daisies in summer meadows, that death, which men most fear, shall be to us the most blessed of experiences, if we trust in him. Death is unclasping; joy, breaking out in the desert; the heart, come to its blossoming time! Do we call it dying when the bud bursts into flower?

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides


Death is only a small interruption.

ANITA BROOKNER

Latecomers


It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.

DANIEL HANDLER (as Lemony Snicket)

The Reptile Room


When do the dead die? When they are forgotten.

LAURA ESQUIVEL

The Law of Love


A man's life breath cannot come back again--
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.

HOMER

The Iliad


We give our dead
To the orchards
And the groves.
We give our dead
To life.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Parable of the Talents


There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what's dead. It won’t complain.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit


Remember the coffin where men
All must to dust be returning.

HENRI CAZALIS

"Always"


Of all the Gods, Death only craves not gifts:
Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured
Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed
By hymns of praise. From him alone of all
The powers of Heaven Persuasion holds aloof.

AESCHYLUS

fragment


There must be some unwritten law that says about fifty people have to move into your house when somebody dies. If it weren’t for the smell of death clinging to the walls, you might think it was your family’s turn to host the month neighborhood potluck supper.

ADAM RAPP

Under the Wolf


Now death is death! and yet is not one death
Another death? Stabbing is not the same
As shooting! Would you say a strangled man
Was drown'd? The end is one, the means are many,
And there the difference lies!

SHERIDAN KNOWLES

True Unto Death


People walk along the streets the day after our deaths just as they did before, and the crowd is not diminished. While we were living, the world seemed in a manner to exist only for us, for our delight and amusement, because it contributed to them. But our hearts cease to beat, and it goes on as usual, and thinks no more about us than it did in our lifetime.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners


Death is just--to the just.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


We are the fools of Time and Terror: Days
Steal on us, and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.

LORD BYRON

Manfred


Death is a Pepsi truck with no place to go. Dying is wham, feeling like the world's biggest fuck-up and being jerked up and out of it all. Like a puppy being lifted out of its box by the nape of its neck. Like a chess piece being removed from the board by an angry player. Wham, jerk, gone.

DAN SIMMONS

Lovedeath