quotations about death
My years have limped; but I
Have tried so hard to fly!
And now, suppose Death brings
Gulls' wings
At last, for me to keep?
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"Alternatives", Burning Bush
Death has no need to be cruel, taking people's lives is more than enough.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Death with Interruptions
Always the idea of unbroken quiet broods around the grave. It is a port where the storms of life never beat, and the forms that have been tossed on its chafing waves lie quiet forevermore. There the child nestles peacefully as ever it lay in its mother's arms, and the workman's hands lie still by his side, and the thinker's brain is pillowed in silent mystery, and the poor girl's broken heart is steeped in a balm that extracts its secret woe, and is in the keeping of a charity that covers all blame.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
No one on his deathbed ever said, "I wish I had spent more time on my business."
PAUL E. TSONGAS
New York Times, Jan. 14, 1987
My only fear of death is reincarnation.
TUPAC SHAKUR
"No More Pain"
Death, lonely death,
Beneath the withered leaves.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Blood Wedding
We're all embers from the same fire. Our ember winks out, we're ashes, we go back to the fire.
WILLIAM SHATNER
Esquire Magazine, May 2012
I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
IRVIN D. YALOM
interview, Wise Counsel
In accepting death as inevitable, we don't label it as a good thing or a bad thing. As one of my teachers once said to me, "Death happens. It is just death, and how we meet it is up to us."
JOAN HALIFAX
Being with Dying
Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
I am stigmatized by a living death in which real death holds no terrors for me.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Selected Writings
O, the one happiness, when, out of breath,
Our feet slip, and we stumble upon death!
ARTHUR SYMONS
"The Beggars"
From too much love of living
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
"The Garden of Proserpine"
Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Death is not a self-evident phenomenon. The margins between life and death are socially and culturally constructed, mobile, multiple, and open to dispute and reformulation.
MARGARET LOCK
Twice Dead
Death will come and it will have your eyes.
CESARE PAVESE
Death Will Come and It Will Have Your Eyes
Whatever it is that occurs at death, I believe it deserves to be called a miracle. The miracle, ironically, is that we don't die. The cessation of the body is an illusion, and like a magician sweeping aside a curtain, the soul reveals what lies beyond.
DEEPAK CHOPRA
Life After Death
For a single path leads to the house of Hades.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Telephos
The thorn of death falls from heaven, and its myriad forms leave us no room to move.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
When I think of the joy awaiting,
Beyond the bier and the shroud,
Death seems but a transient shadow,
A passing Summer cloud.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Summer Clouds"