Death Quotes
Labour not after riches first, and think thou afterwards wilt enjoy them. He who neglecteth the present moment, throweth away all that he hath. As the arrow passeth through the heart, while the warrior knew not that it was coming; so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it.
Bach, Richard
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in in justice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
Buddha
There are five things which no one is able to accomplish in this world: first, to cease growing old when he is growing old; second, to cease being sick; third, to cease dying; fourth, to deny dissolution when there is dissolution; fifth, to deny non-being.
Byron, Lord
Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.
Camus, Albert
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
Cicero
The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.
Cicero
That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.
de Montaigne, Michel
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
de Montaigne, Michel
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
de Montaigne, Michel
If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.
Dhammapada, The
Few cross the river of time and are able to reach non-being. Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river. But those who when they know the law follow the path of the law, they shall reach the other shore and go beyond the realm of death.
Divine Pymander, The
The path of immortality is hard, and only a few find it. The rest await the Great Day when the wheels of the universe shall be stopped and the immortal sparks shall escape from the sheaths of substance. Woe unto those who wait, for they must return again, unconscious and unknowing, to the seed-ground of stars, and await a new beginning.
France, Anatole
We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we yearn for another that will be eternal.
France, Anatole
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
Freud, Sigmund
The goal of all life is death.
Gurdjieff
Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.
Harte, Bret
And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay The song of the sailors in glee: So I think of the luminous footprints that bore The comfort o'er dark Galilee, And wait for the signal to go to the shore, To the ship that is waiting for me.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so at the moment after death.
Herrick, Robert
This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands, And leaving nothing, yet hath all.
Horace
Pale death, with impartial step, knocks at the hut of the poor and the towers of kings.
Khayyam, Omar
Strange - is it not? - that of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.
Klein
Dying is like getting out of a car. You leave a shell behind, but you're the same person as ever.
Lowell, James Russell
We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.
Lucan
The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.
Manilius
We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning.
Mencken, H.L.
Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.
Miller, Joaquin
Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.
Nagarjuna
Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.
Plato
We are bound to our bodies like an oyster is to its shell.
Plautus, Titus Maccius
He whom the gods love dies young, while he is in health, has his senses and his judgments sound.
More Quotes Below...
...To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germand secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line.
Shakespeare, William
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, Which hurts and is desired.
Stalin, Joseph
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
von Schiller, Johann Friedrich
That which is so universal as death must be a benefit.