Death

Death is the permanent end of the life of a biological organism. Death may refer to the end of life as either an event or condition. In many cultures and in the arts, death is considered a being or otherwise personified, wherein it is usually capitalized as "Death".

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• A free society, to be truly worthy of that name, owes healthy, competent individuals the right to end their lives on their own terms.
  • Jacob M. Appel, American physician and bioethicist, Next: Assisted Suicide for Healthy People, July 16, 2009.

• We will all choose how we die eventually--either actively, through an advance directive, or by default, through the substituted judgment of others
  • Jacob M. Appel, American physician and bioethicist, The Ultimate Prescription: Make Us Decide How We Want To Die, July 30, 2009.

• Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
  • Francis Bacon, Essays, 2, ‘Of Death’

• To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.
  • W. N. P. Barbellion (Bruce Frederick Cummings), The Journal of a Disappointed Man, Chatto & Windus, 1920.

• We all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all disease.
  • Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, II. 9.

• What argufies pride and ambition?
  Soon or late death will take us in tow:
  Each bullet has got its commission,
  And when our time's come we must go.
  • Charles Dibdin, Each Bullet has its Commission

• Verse, Fame and beauty are intense indeed,
  But Death intenser – Death is life's high mead.
  • John Keats, Sonnet: Why did I laugh to-night?

• Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.
  • John Masefield, Pompey the Great, i.

• Death hath a thousand doors to let out life:
  I shall find one.
  • Philip Massinger, A Very Woman, V. iv.

• Death did not come to my mother
  Like an old friend.
  She was a mother, and she must
  Conceive him.
  Up and down the bed she fought crying
  Help me, but death
  Was a slow child
  Heavy.
  • Josephine Miles, "Conception" (1974) st. 1–2; Collected Poems, University of Illinois Press, 1983

• Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death where is thy sting, O Grave where is thy victory?
  • Paul of Tarsus, in I Corinthians 15:54 - 56

• Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another.
  • Socrates, in Plato's Apology, 41

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• One may live as a conqueror, a king, or a magistrate; but he must die as a man.
  • Daniel Webster, p. 173.

• My friend, there will come one day to you a Messenger, whom you cannot treat with contempt. He will say, "Come with me;" and all your pleas of business cares and earthly loves will be of no avail. When his cold hand touches yours, the key of the counting-room will drop forever, and he will lead you away from all your investments, your speculations, your bank-notes and real estate, and with him you will pass into eternity, up to the bar of God. You will not be too busy to die.
  • Abbott Eliot Kittredge, p. 174.

• God's finger touched him, and he slept.
  • Alfred Tennyson, p. 174.

• O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of men, and covered them all over with these two narrow words, "Hie jacet."
  • Walter Raleigh, p. 174.

• What a power has Death to awe and hush the voices of this earth! How mute we stand when that presence confronts us, and we look upon the silence he has wrought in a human life! We can only gaze, and bow our heads, and creep with our broken, stammering utterances under the shelter of some great word which God has spoken, and in which we see through the history of human sorrow the outstretching and overshadowing of the eternal arms.
  • Walton W. Battershall, p. 174.

• Look forward a little further to the period when all the noise and tumult and business of this world shall have closed forever.
  • John Gregory Pike, p. 174.

• We shall be in the midst of some great work, when the tools shall drop from our relaxing fingers, and we shall work no more; we shall be planning some mighty project — house, business, society, book — when in one shattering moment all our thoughts shall perish. Life shall seem strong in us when we shall find that it is done. Oh, how happy they to whom all that remains is immortality; happy you who have that confidence in the Saviour, that, although nature start at the sudden midnight cry, "The Bridegroom cometh!" faith shall answer, the moment that we remember who He is, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"
  • James Hamilton, p. 175.

• However dreary we may have felt life to be here, yet when that hour comes — the winding up of all things, the last grand rush of darkness on our spirits, the hour of that awful sudden wrench from all we have ever known or loved, the long farewell to sun, moon, stars, and light — brother man, I ask you this day, and I ask myself humbly and fearfully, "What will then be finished? When it is finished, what will it be? Will it be the butterfly existence of pleasure, the mere life of science, a life of uninterrupted sin and self-gratification, or will it be, 'Father, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do?'"
  • Frederick William Robertson, p. 175.

• How shocking must thy summons be, O Death!
  To him that is at ease in his possessions!
  Who, counting on long years of pleasure here,
  Is quite unfurnished for the world to come.
  In that dread moment, how the frantic soul
  Raves round the walls of her clay tenement;
  Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help;
  But shrieks in vain. —
  • Hugh Blair, p. 175.

• When we come to die, we shall be alone. From all our worldly possessions we shall be about to part. Worldly friends — the friends drawn to us by our position, our wealth, or our social qualities, — will leave us as we enter the dark valley. From those bound to us by stronger ties — our kindred, our loved ones, children, brothers, sisters, and from those not less dear to us who have been made our friends because they and we are the friends of the same Saviour, — from them also we must part. Yet not all will leave us. There is One who "sticketh closer than a brother" — One who having loved His own which are in the world loves them to the end.
  • Albert Barnes, p. 176.

• When I lived, I provided for every thing but death; now I must die, and am unprepared.
  • Caesar Borgia, p. 176.

• Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints.
  • Blaise Pascal, p. 176.

• To the Christian, these shades are the golden haze which heaven's light makes, when it meets the earth, and mingles with its shadows.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, p. 176.

• So fades a summer cloud away;
  So sinks the gale when storms are o'er;
  So gently shuts the eye of day;
  So dies a wave along the shore.
  • Anna Laetitia Barbauld, p. 176.

• Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death! —
  • Felicia Hemans, p. 176.

• Soon for me the light of day
  Shall forever pass away;
  Then from sin and sorrow free,
  Take me, Lord, to dwell with Thee.
  • William Croswell Doane, p. 177.

• All life is surrounded by a great circumference of death; but to the believer in Jesus, beyond this surrounding death is a boundless sphere of life. He has only to die once to be done with death forever.
  • James Hamilton, p. 177.

• Yes, death, — the hourly possibility of it, — death is the sublimity of life.
  • William Mountford, p. 177.

• Death is a stage in human progress, to be passed as we would pass from childhood to youth, or from youth to manhood, and with the same consciousness of an everlasting nature.
  • Edmund Sears, p. 177.

• Thus star by star declines
  Till all are passed away,
  As morning high and higher shines
  To pure and perfect day:
  Nor sink those stars in empty night;
  They hide themselves in heaven's pure light.
  • James Montgomery, p. 177.

• Life's race well run,
  Life's work well done,
  Life's crown well won,
  Now comes rest.
  • Epitaph of President Garfield, p. 177.

• "God giveth His beloved sleep;" and in that peaceful sleep, realities, not dreams, come round their quiet rest, and fill their conscious spirits and their happy hearts with blessedness and fellowship. In His own time He will make the eternal morning dawn, and the hand that kept them in their slumbers shall touch them into waking, and shall clothe them when they arise according to the body of His own glory; and they, looking into His face, and flashing back its love, its light, its beauty, shall each break forth into singing as the rising light of that unsetting day touches their transfigured and immortal heads, in the triumphant thanksgiving, "I am satisfied, for I awake in Thy likeness."
  • Alexander Maclaren, p. 178.

• When our earthly day is closing,
  And the night grows still and deep,
  Let us, in Thine arms reposing,
  Feel Thy power to save and keep.
  Blessed Jesus,
  Give Thine own beloved sleep.

• What is our death but a night's sleep? For as through sleep all weariness and faintness pass away and cease, and the powers of the spirit come back again, so that in the morning we arise fresh and strong and joyous; so at the Last Day we shall rise again as if we had only slept a night, and shall be fresh and strong.
  • Martin Luther, p. 178.

• Death, to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father's house into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining.
  • Adam Clarke, p. 178.

• Death is the quiet haven of us all.
  • William Wordsworth, p. 178.

• Mysterious Night! When our first parent knew
  Thee from report Divine, and heard thy name,
  Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
  This glorious canopy of light and blue?
  Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
  Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
  Hesperus, with the host of heaven came;
  And lo! creation widened in man's view.
  Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
  Within thy beams, O sun? or who could find,
  While fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
  That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
  Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
  If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?
  • Joseph Blanco White, p. 179.

• And when no longer we can see Thee, may we reach out our hands, and find Thee leading us through death to immortality and glory.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, p. 179.

• "Paid the debt of nature." No; it is not paying a debt; it is rather like bringing a note to the bank to obtain solid gold for it. In this case you bring this cumbrous body which is nothing worth, and which you could not wish to retain long; you lay it down, and receive for it from the eternal treasures — liberty, victory, knowledge, rapture.
  • John Foster, p. 179.

• When darkness gathers over all.
  And the last tottering pillars fall,
  Take the poor dust Thy mercy warms.
  And mould it into heavenly forms.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., p. 179.

• Death is the waiting-room where we robe ourselves for immortality.
  • Charles Spurgeon, p. 180.

• Death is like thunder in two particulars; we are alarmed at the sound of it; and it is formidable only from that which preceded it.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, p. 180.

• If life has not made youby God's grace, through faith, holy — think you, will death, without faith do it? The cold waters of that narrow stream are no purifying bath in which you may wash and be clean. No! no! as you go down into them, you will come up from them.
  • Alexander Maclaren, p. 180.

• This character wherewith we sink into the grave at death is the very character wherewith we shall reappear at the resurrection.
  • Thomas Chalmers, p. 180.

• He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who to lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die.
  • Owen Feltham, p. 180.

• Death cannot come To him untimely who is fit to die; The less of this cold world, the more of heaven; The briefer life, the earlier immortality.
  • Henry Hart Milman, p. 180.

• No man who is fit to live need tear to die. Poor, timorous, faithless souls that we are! How we shall smile at our vain alarms when the worst has happened! To us here, death is the most terrible thing we know. But when we have tasted its reality, it will mean to us birth, deliverance, a new creation of ourselves. It will be what health is to the sick man. It will be what home is to the exile. It will be what the loved one given - back is to the bereaved. As we draw near to it, a solemn gladness should fill our hearts. It is God's great morning lighting up the sky. Our fears are the terror of children in the night. The night with its terrors, its darkness, its feverish dreams, is passing away; and when we awake, it will be into the sunlight of God.
  • George S. Merriam, p. 181.

• Tarry with me, O my Saviour!
  Lay my head upon Thy breast,
  Till the morning; then awake me —
  Morning of eternal rest.
  • Caroline S. Smith, p. 181.

• O that we may all be living in such a state of preparedness, that, when summoned to depart, we may ascend the summit whence faith looks forth on all that Jesus hath suffered and done, and exclaiming, " We have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord," lie down with Moses on Pisgah, to awake with Moses in paradise.
  • Henry Melvill, p. 181.

• Seek such union to the Son of God, as, leaving no present death within, shall make the second death impossible, and shall leave in all your future only that shadow of death which men call dissolution, and which the gospel calls sleeping in Jesus.
  • James Hamilton, p. 181.

• Love masters agony; the soul that seemed
  Forsaken feels her present God again
  And in her Father's arms
  Contented dies away.
  • John Keblle, p. 182.

• Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully — not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their hearts — watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with.
  • Frederick William Robertson, p. 182.

• "Come and see how a Christian can die," said the dying sage to his pupil; how would it do to say, "Come and see how an infidel can die?" How would it have done for Voltaire to say this, who, in his panic at the prospect of eternity, offered his physician half his fortune for six weeks more of life?
  • James Hamilton, p. 182.

• Dying visions of angels and Christ and God and heaven are confined to credibly good men. Why do not bad men have such visions? They die of all sorts of diseases; they have nervous temperaments; they even have creeds and hopes about the future which they cling to with very great tenacity; why do not they rejoice in some such glorious illusions when they go out of the world?
  • Enoch Fitch Burr, p. 182.

• And now, with busy, but noiseless process, the Comforter is giving the last finish to the sanctifying work, and making the heir of glory meet for home, till, at a signal given, the portal opens, and even the numb body feels the burst of blessedness as the rigid features smile and say, "I see Jesus," then leave tne vision pictured on the pale but placid brow.
  • James Hamilton, p. 183.

• How well he fell asleep!
  Like some proud river, widening toward the sea;
  Calmly and grandly, silently and deep,
  Life joined eternity.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 183.

• O Earth, so full of dreary noises!
  O men, with wailing in your voices!
  O delved gold, the waller's heap!
  O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
  God makes a silence through you all,
  And "giveth His beloved, sleep."
  • Mrs. Browning, p. 183.

• Earth has one angel less, and heaven one more since yesterday. Already, kneeling at the throne, she has received her welcome, and is resting on the bosom of her Saviour.
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 183.

• Beloved in the Lord, if you only will lay hold of the Saviour's strength, and cast yourself entirely on His kind arms, with His dying grace He will do wonders for you in the dying hour. A great trembling may come upon you when you think of going down to tread the verge of Jordan: "for ye have not passed this way heretofore." But Jesus has; and you shall see His footprints on the shore. He will be your guide unto death, and through death.
  • Alexander Dickson, p. 183.

• Dead is she? No; rather let us call ourselves dead, who tire so soon in the service of the Master whom she has gone to serve forever.
  • W. S. Smart, p. 184.

• So we fall asleep in Jesus. We have played long enough at the games of life, and at last we feel the approach of death. We are tired out, and we lay our heads back on the bosom of Christ, and quietly fall asleep.
  • H. W. Beecher, p. 184.

• I do not know why a man should be either regretful or afraid, as he watches the hungry sea eating away this "bank and shoal of time" upon which he stands, even though the tide has all but reached his feet — if he knows that God's strong hand will be stretched forth to him at the moment when the sand dissolves from under him, and will draw him out of many waters, and place him high above the floods on the stable land where there is "no more sea."
  • Alexander Maclaren, p. 184.

• When you take the wires of the cage apart, you do not hurt the bird, but help it. You let it out of its prison. How do vou know that death does not help me when it takes the wires of my cage down? — that it does not release me, and put me into some better place, and better condition of life?
  • Bishop Randolph S. Foster, p. 184.

• The most heaven-like spots I have ever visited, have been certain rooms in which Christ's disciples were awaiting the summons of death. So far from being a "house of mourning," I have often found such a house to be a vestibule of glory.
  • Theodore L. Cuyler, p. 183.

• The world recedes; it disappears!
  Heaven opens on my eyes!
  • Alexander Pope, p. 184.

• I am not in the least surprised that your impression of death becomes more lively, in proportion as age and infirmity bring it nearer. God makes use of this rough trial to undeceive us in respect to our courage, to make us feel our weakness, and to keep us in all humility in His hands.
  • François Fénelon, p. 185.

• When at last the angels come to convey your departing spirit to Abraham's bosom, depend upon it, however dazzling in their newness they may be to you, you will find that your history is no novelty, and you yourself no stranger to them.
  • James Hamilton, p. 185.

• And when, in the evening of life, the golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams down through the gathering mists of death, I wish you a peaceful and abundant entrance into that world of blessedness, where the great riddle of life will be unfolded to you in the quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified.
  • Josiah Gilbert Holland, p. 185.

• Dear brethren, our ship is sailing fast. We shall soon hear the rasping of the shallows, and the commotion overhead which bespeaks the port in view. When it comes to that, how will you feel? Are you a stranger, or a convict, or are you going home?
  Brethren, we are all sailing home; and by and by, when we are not thinking of it, some shadowy thing (men call it death), at midnight, will pass by, and will call us by name, and will say, "I have a message for you from home; God wants you; heaven waits for you."
  • Henry Ward Beecher, p. 185.

• Do we not all, in this very hour, recall a death-bed scene in which some loved one has passed away? And, as we bring to mind the solemn reflections of that hour, are we not ready to hear and to heed the voice with which a dying wife once addressed him who stood sobbing by her side: "My dear husband, live for one thing, and only one thing; Just one thing, — the glory of God, the glory of God!"
  • E. P. Tenney, p. 186.

Living with death - quotes and anecdotes

• Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.
  • Robert Bolt

• People aren't afraid of being dead, they're afraid of getting dead.
  • George Carlin

• It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
  • Francis Bacon

• If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.
  • Narration; Stephen King, Christine, Part 1, Chapter 5

• It is nobody's fault. The great circle of life has begun, but you see, not all of us arrive together in the end...She'll [Little Foot's mother] always be with you as long as you remember the things she taught you. In a way, you'll never be apart because you are still a part of each other.
  • Rudder, The Land Before Time

• Every blade in the field,
  Every leaf in the forest,
  Lays down its life in its season,
  As beautifully as it was taken up.
  • Henry David Thoreau

• In this world, one day death is going to take the life from everything that you love. So while you're able, love what you have. Takes the death from your life.
  • Mercy Ealing to Joe Carpenter, from Dean Koontz, Sole Survivor (2000 film)

• For certain is death for the born
  And certain is birth for the dead;
  Therefore over the inevitable
  Thou shouldst not grieve.
  • Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2

• Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and life. There has been endless times of numberless deaths, but neither consciousness nor life has ceased to arise. The felt quality and cycle to death has not modified the fragility of flowers, even the flowers within the human body.
  • Adi Da Samraj, "Prologue", The Knee of Listening

• Death is not the opposite of life; it exists as a part of them.
  • Toru Watanabe, from Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (1987)

• I am a good Christian, properly baptized and I will die... a good Christian.
  • Joan of Arc

• No shit, there's worse ways to be dead than dying.
  • Chuck Palahniuk, from Rant

• Death is a tragic event, but stopping the flow of traffic is always seen as the greater crime.
  • Chuck Palahniuk, from Rant

• Death is so preoccupied with life, that is has no time for anything else.
  • Mikhail Turovsky (b. 1933), Russian-American artist and aphorist. Itch of Wisdom (Cicuta Press, 1986)

• Chicó - John! John! Died! Oh my God, poor died of John Cricket! So yellow, and so shameless to die like that! What do I do in the world without John? John! John! There is no way, John Cricket died. Ended the smartest Cricket in the world. He completed his sentence and met with the only irredeemable evil, what is the mark of our strange destiny on earth, that fact without explanation that matches everything that is alive in one flock of guilty, because all that is alive dies. What can I do now? Only your funeral and pray for his soul.
  • Chicó in the play Auto da Compadecida by Ariano Suassuna

Coming to terms with death

• We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
  • Richard Dawkins, 'Unweaving The Rainbow'
  • Dawkins has stated on many occasions that this passage will be read at his funeral.

• Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.
  • Maximus, Gladiator

• Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all - the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
  • Mark Twain

• Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.
  • Rabindranath Tagore

• Death is for the living and not for the dead.
  • Floyd McClure in Gates of Heaven (1980)

• When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
  • Sogyal Rinpoche

• On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
  • Woody Allen

• Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

• I like the dead – they're so uncritical.
  • Tom Baker

• Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
  • Albert Einstein

• Life is but a passing dream, but the death that follows is eternal.
  • Seymour Guado in Final Fantasy X

• He's not afraid of dying. He's just afraid that his soul won't make it to God.
  • Starbuck, speaking of Leoben, Battlestar Galactica

• The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

• Ultimately, we're all dead men. Sadly we cannot choose how. But, we can decide how we meet that end in order that we are remembered as men.
  • Proximo, Gladiator

• We do not mourn the loss of those who die fufilling their destinies
  • Forestmaster, from the Dragonlance saga

• To die would be an awfully big adventure.
  • Peter Pan

• Death is the one thing that connects us all. It reminds us that what's really important is who we've touched, how much we've given. It makes us realize that we have to be good to one another.
  • Peter Petrelli, from Heroes

• Death, then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.
  • William Penn

• Fear Death? – to feel the fog in my throat,
  The mist in my face.
  • Robert Browning, Prospice.

• Having a child changes every aspect of your life - for the better, of course. The sacrifices are large, but what you get in return is even bigger than the sacrifices you make. I feel, in a sense, ready to die because you are living on in your child. Not literally, not ready to die - but you know, that sort of feeling in a profound way.
  • Heath Ledger

• Everybody dies. You can't stop it, you can't ran away from it..
  • Big Boss, from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

• I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.
  • Francis Bacon, An Essay on Death.

• Sudden death leaves an impression on one.
  • Anonymous

• I have no terror of Death. It is the coming of Death that terrifies me.
  • Oscar Wilde

Death

• The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
  • Mark Twain

• A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin where he would go after he died. Hakuin answered "How am I supposed to know?"
  "How do you know? You're a Zen master!" exclaimed the samurai.
  "Yes, but not a dead one", Hakuin answered
  • Zen mondō

• Death carries off a man who is gathering flowers and whose mind is distracted, as a flood carries off a sleeping village.
  • Dhammapada, Verse 47; F. Max Müller, translator

• [Death is] nature's way of telling you to slow down.
  • American life insurance proverb, unidentified article, Newsweek, unidentified 1960 issue

• Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.
  • Epicurus

• Despite the solace of hypocritical religiosity and its seductive promise of an after-life of heavenly bliss, most of us will do anything to thwart the inevitable victory of biological death.
  • Jack Kevorkian, describing his painting "Nearer My God To Thee"
  • Quoted in
    
    • Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.
      • Horace
    
    
    • The Death of One is a Tragedy.The Death of a Million is just a Statistic
      • Erich Maria Remarque
    
    
    • Hob Gadling: Death's a capricious thing, innit?
      Morpheus: Yes. Yes, she is.
      • Discussing Morpheus' sister, the personification of Death
      • Sandman #13: "Men of Good Fortune"
    
    
    • I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude to my sister's gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her.
      • Dream about Death, in SANDMAN #8: "The Sound of Her Wings"
    
    
    • Anyway: 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 abattoirs. 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.
      • Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"
    
    
    • When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job is finished. I'll put the chairs on tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.
      • Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"
    
    
    • Rainie, mythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all of you.
      • Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"
    
    
    • Who am I? Just a friend. Sometimes. Maybe. Sorry I couldn't help any. Be seeing you...
      • Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"
    
    
    • Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
      • Plato
    
    
    • We look at death from the selfish side, like, "That guy died. Oh, it's so sad." Why is it sad? He's away from all of this bad stuff that's here on Earth. I mean, at the worst, he's just somewhere quiet, no nothing. At best, he's an angel... or he's a spirit somewhere. What is so bad about that?
      • Tupac Shakur
    
    
    • When a tiger dies, it leaves its skin behind. When a person dies, he leaves his name behind.
      • Chinese proverb
    
    
    • When I die, I would like to go peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.
      • Jack Handey
    
    
    • When you were born, you cried, and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a manner that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
      • Kabir
    
    
    • We may have days, we may have hours. But sooner or later, we all push up flowers...
      • Membrillo from Grim Fandango
    
    
    • Death is its own reward
      • Warcraft III
    
    
    • Death be not proud, though some have called thee
      Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
      For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
      Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
      From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
      Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
      And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
      Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
      Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
      And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
      And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
      And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
      One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
      And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
      • "Holy Sonnet X", by John Donne
    
    
    • That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even Death may die.
      • "The Call of Cthulhu", by H.P. Lovecraft
    
    
    • Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
      • Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
    
    
    • Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
      • They Might Be Giants, "Don't Let's Start"
    
    
    • Upon the Grave which swallows fast/'Tis peace at last, oh peace at last
      • Metallica , "Cyanide" (Death Magnetic)
    
    
    • It is an ideal which I hope to live for. But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
      • Nelson Mandela , statement at the Rivonia trial (20 April 1964)
    
    

    Death and relationships

    • You think the dead we love ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble?
      • Albus Dumbledore
    
    
    • Death ends a life, not a relationship.
      • Morrie Schwartz, as quoted from Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)
    
    
    • The first day after a death, the new absence
      Is always the same; we should be careful
       
      Of each other, we should be kind
      While there is still time.
      • Philip Larkin, "The Mower" (1979)
    
    

    Death and the meaning of life

    • Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife. The first question was, 'Did you bring joy?' The second was, 'Did you find joy?'
      • Leo Buscaglia
    
    
    • Death and death alone gives meaning to life and this meaning is entirely negative.
      • Georges Poulet
    
    
    • Every man dies. Not every man really lives.
      • William Wallace, in Braveheart
    
    
    • When one considers just what a man is,
      Happy it be that short his span is.
      • James Cagney
    
    
    • I said to Life, I would hear Death speak. And Life raised her voice a little higher and said, You hear him now.
      • Kahlil Gibran
    
    
    • If man were immortal, do you realise what his meat bills would be?
      • Woody Allen
    
    
    • Never the spirit was born, the spirit shall cease to be never. Never was time it was not, end and beginning are dreams.
      • The Bhagavad Gita
    
    
    • Our souls are prisoners of the terror of death, and the day is beautiful.
      • Paulo Coelho,
        
        • The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
          • Harriet Beecher Stowe
        
        
        • To be, or not to be, —that is the question:—
          Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
          The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
          Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
          And by opposing end them? —To die, —to sleep,—
          No more; and by a sleep to say we end
          The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
          That flesh is heir to, —'tis a consummation
          Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, —to sleep;—
          To sleep! perchance to dream: —ay, there's the rub;
          For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
          When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
          Must give us pause: there's the respect
          That makes calamity of so long life;
          For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
          The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
          The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
          The insolence of office, and the spurns
          That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
          When he himself might his quietus make
          With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
          To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
          But that the dread of something after death,—
          The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
          No traveller returns,—puzzles the will,
          And makes us rather bear those ills we have
          Than fly to others that we know naught of?
          Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
          And thus the native hue of resolution
          Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
          And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
          With this regard, their currents turn awry,
          And lose the name of action.
          • Hamlet's soliloquy
          • William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
        
        

        Others

        • Everyone will come to my funeral to make sure that I stay dead.
          • Marilyn Manson
        
        
        • The dead, if not separated from the living, bring madness upon them.
          • Nyakyusa proverb
        
        
        • Death slue not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.
          • Edmund Spenser, An Epitaph upon Philip Sydney, line 20
        
        
        • There is no justice - there's just me.
          • Death
          • Terry Pratchett, Mort (1987)
        
        
        • It nice it happen to you. Like you come to the island and had a holiday. Sun didn't burn you red-red, just brown. You sleep and no mosquito eat you. But the truth is, it bound to happen if you stay long enough. So take that nice picture you got in your head home with you, but don't be fooled. We lonely here mostly too. If we lucky, maybe, we got some nice pictures to take with us.
          • Jamaican Woman, in Meet Joe Black, (1998)
        
        
        • My uncle is a southern planter. He's an undertaker in Alabama.
          • Fred Allen
        
        
        • We all have it comin', kid.
          • Will Munny (Clint Eastwood) in Unforgiven (1992)
        
        
        • Men only think of their past right before their death, as if they were searching frantically for proof that they were alive.
          • Jet Black, Cowboy Bebop
        
        
        • In a sense, Deng Xiaoping's death was inevitable, wasn't it?
          • Jon Snow, Channel 4 News
        
        
        • Death is everything.
          • words inscribed on a statue of a knight from Resident Evil 1
        
        
        • No heralds come with death...
          • Zhang Liao from Dynasty Warriors
        
        
        • Faith in eternal life ceases — but death goes on.
          • Vladimir Jankélévitch
        
        
        • Nothing will be left of me. I die utterly as unknown as if I had never been born. Nothingness receive your prey.
          • Jan Potocki
        
        

        Humor

        • I am death, not taxes. I turn up only once.
          • Death
          • Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay (1996)
        
        
        • Since you are having a near-death experience, I am logically, by extension, having a near-Vimes experience. Don't worry about me, I've brought a book.
          • Death to Sam Vimes
          • Terry Pratchett, Thud! (2005)
        
        
        • If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.
          • Jack Handey
        
        
        • If your parents never had children, chances are ... neither will you.
          • Dick Cavett
        
        
        • Always look on the Bright side of Death.Just before You draw Your Terminal Breath
          • Eric Idle
        
        
        • Sometimes when I feel like killing someone, I do a little trick to calm myself down. I'll go over to the person's house and ring the doorbell. When the person comes to the door, I'm gone, but you know what I've left on the porch? A jack-o-lantern with a knife stuck in the side of its head with a note that says 'You.' After that I usually feel a lot better, and no harm done.
          • Jack Handey
        
        
        • You may be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper!
          • Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)
        
        
        • Dying can't be that bad of a thing; I mean, everybody's doing it.
          • Unknown
        
        
        • I can't believe that I'm going to meet my end at the hands of converging red dots.
          • Seamus Harper, Andromeda
        
        
        • I intend to live forever. So far, so good!
          • Woody Allen
        
        
        • To live is to die.
          • Cliff Burton
        
        
        • Death comes for us all, Oroku Saki, but something much worse comes for you. For when you die, it will be without honour.
          • Splinter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
        
        
        • At the end of your life, you're lucky if you die.
          • Bret McKenzie, "Think About It Think Think About It" - Flight of the Conchords
        
        
        • Yes, even pricks turn into top blokes after death
          • Andrew Hansen, "The Eulogy Song" from The Chaser's War on Everything
        
        
        • I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
          • Woody Allen
        
        
        • It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
          • Woody Allen
        
        
        • Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
          • Wilson Mizner
        
        
        • To me, funerals are like bad movies. They last too long, they're overacted, and the ending is predictable.
          • George Burns
        
        
        • Why does Death cross the road? To get to you!
          • Anonymous
        
        
        • If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
          • Samuel Goldwyn
        
        
        • Dead people make the best patients. You can do whatever tests you want on them and they never complain. Oh, and you can yell at them without getting in trouble.
          • Anonymous
        
        

        See also

        • Death of children
        • Epitaphs
        • Famous last words
        • Life
        • Saying goodbye
        • Suicide