quotations about death
There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Resignation"
It is not death to have the body called back to the earth, and dissolved into its kindred elements, and mouldered to dust, and, it may be, turn to daisies, in the grave. But it is death to have the soul paralyzed, its inner life quenched, its faculties dissipated; that is death.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
There is no knowing beyond that membrane, the meniscus of death. What can be seen from here is distorted, refracted. All we can know are those untrustworthy glimpses--that and rumour. The prattle. The dead gossip: it is the reverberation of that gossip against the surface tension of death that the better mediums hear. It is like listening to whispered secrets through a toilet door. It is a crude and muffled susurrus.
CHINA MIéVILLE
Kraken
Death fixes forever the relation existing between the departed spirit and the survivors upon earth.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
journal, Jul. 24, 1831
The reaction to death is sometimes as violent as death itself. Shock throws a cautious coolness over your senses, but your stomach still has knots, your skin stings as if the Reaper is glaring at you as well.
TIM LEBBON
Fears Unnamed
Weep strong men must,
Since all before us now is lifeless dust;
Majestic clay
Is all, good friends, death leaves to us today.
ELIZA ALLEN STARR
"Col. James A. Mulligan"
It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.
HENRY FIELDING
Amelia
Dying is like coming to the end of a long novel--you only regret it if the ride was enjoyable and left you wanting more.
JEROME P. CRABB
Death Quotes and Quibbles
To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.
ELIE WIESEL
Night
Death--some form of termination--is the universal ending of all living things; but only man, by virtue of his verbally reportable introspective life, can conceptualize his own cessation.
EDWIN SHNEIDMAN
A Commonsense Book of Death
I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another.
JOHN LENNON
attributed, Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History
In his bleak mercy, Death forever strips
The soul of light and memory, rendering blind
Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal,
As when on mountain-heights a glance behind
Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips
Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall.
CLARK ASHTON SMITH
"The Unremembered"
With death comes honesty.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The Satanic Verses
Death is one dream out of another flowing.
CONRAD AIKEN
The House of Dust
The Fear of Death often proves Mortal.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Mar. 29, 1711
There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest.
ANNE ENRIGHT
The Gathering
On every blessing lent to man
Are traces of the Grave.
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
"Beauty in the Grave"
She had nut painted arms that were hers to keep
And in her fear she sought cracked pleasures
The passion of lovers is for death, said she
Licked her lips and turned to feather
BAUHAUS
"The Passion of Lovers"
Death is the end of one story and the beginning of another.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
Death was far more certain than God.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Quiet American