Quotes about death

A collection of quotes on the topic of sadness, life, pain, disease.

Best quotes about death

“Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the brave only die once.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

“Our knowledge of life is limited to death”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

“Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

“Sleep. Those little slices of death. How I loathe them.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Various forms of this quote are attributed to Poe, primarily by a title card in the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, though there is no record of his having ever said it.
Misattributed

“Once you label me you negate me.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

As attributed in Journal of Marriage and Family Counseling, Vol. 2 (1976) by American Association of Marriage and Family Counselors, p. 33; no earlier incidents have been located.
Variants:
When you label me, you negate me.
As attributed in Inner Joy (1985) by Kory Bloomfield, p 169
Disputed
Variant: What labels me, negates me.

“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”

Oscar Wilde Salome

le mystère de l'amour est plus grand que le mystère de la mort.
Source: Salomé (1893)

“Laugh at death and die of laughter.”

Jacques Prevért (1900–1977) French poet, screenwriter

Attributed

“Love has no age, no limit; and no death.”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

“So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

James O'Barr quote: “Life is just a dream on the way to death.”

Quotes about death

“Soon the crashes, the blackouts, the hypothermias, the demands for public lighting and a lot of misdeeds will hide the disappearances, the plots, the deaths, the domestic violence, the corruptions and a long etcetera…”

José Baroja book Sueño en Guadalajara y otros cuentos

Light

“He remained frozen for a few minutes, while urine fell from a limb dwarfed by the fear caused by the sensation of near death.”

José Baroja book El curioso caso de la sombra que murió como un recuerdo y otros cuentos

Fear

“For a writer, life must be the focus that death illuminates daily.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Para un escritor la vida debe ser el foco que la muerte ilumina a diario.
Source: Zárate, Y. (2019). "José Baroja". En revista Momentos Ahora o nunca. Número 139. Tlaxcala, México; p. 24.

Life

“Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.”

Richard Ramirez (1960–2013) American serial killer

Statement to reporters after his death sentences, taken from The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/07/richard-ramirez-night-stalker-dies

“There is no death without life. Therefore, death depends entirely on life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Dependency

“Naruto, it's nice that you removed the poison so spiritedly, but you'll bleed to death if you lose any more blood… Seriously….”

Hatake Kakashi book Naruto

“I don't think anybody's necessarily ready for death. You can only hope that when it approaches, you feel like you've said what you wanted to say. Nobody wants to go out in mid-sentence.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Hope, Feeling, Thinking

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Variants: One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic. A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic. In Портрет тирана (1981) (Portrait of a Tyrant), Soviet historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko attributes the following version to Stalin: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." This is the alleged response of Stalin during the 1943 Tehran conference when Churchill objected to an early opening of a second front in France. In her review "Mustering Most Memorable Quips" of Konstantin Dushenko's 1997 Dictionary of Modern Quotations (Словарь современных цитат: 4300 ходячих цитат и выражений ХХ века, их источники, авторы, датировка), Julia Solovyova states: "Russian historians have no record of the lines, 'Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic,' commonly attributed by English-language dictionaries to Josef Stalin." This quotation may originate from "Französischer Witz" (1925) by Kurt Tucholsky: "Darauf sagt ein Diplomat vom Quai d'Orsay: «Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!»" ("To which a Quai d'Orsay diplomat replies: «The war? I can't find it so terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!»") Another possible source or intermediary may be the concluding words of chapter 8 of the 1956 novel The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque: "Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik." ("But probably the reason is that one dead man is death—and two million are only a statistic." 1958 Crest Book reprint) Mary Soames (daughter of Churchill) claims to have overheard Stalin deliver a variant of the quote in immediate postwar Berlin (Remembrance Sunday Andrew Marr interview BBC 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hP2tpw9XEw See also Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939: "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god." In an interview given for the 1983 three-part documentary Der Prozeß by Norddeutscher Rundfunk on the Third Majdanek trial, Simon Wiesenthal attributes the quote to the unpublished auto-biography of Adolf Eichmann. According to Wiesenthal, Eichmann had been asked by another member of the Reich Main Security Office during WWII what they should answer would they be questioned after the war about the millions of dead Jews they were responsible for, to which Eichmann according to his own testimony had replied with the quote. Misattributed Variant: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

“Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment, for even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Life

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Variant: Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.

Life, Loss

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)
Interviews

Love, God, War, Education

“If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Love, Life

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Nameless City

Variant: That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
Source: The Nameless City

Lie, Dead

“Someday death will take us to another star.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Star

“The immortality of the soul is that there is no death without life and there is no life after death. Life goes on.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Soul, Life

“Death is the greatest form of love.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Love

“I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

N.Y. State of Mind
On Albums, Illmatic (1994)

Sleep

“The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

“An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

As quoted in Familiar Medical Quotations (1968) by Maurice B. Strauss

“Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs— and the journey to get there— before finally leaving their miserable world, only too often after a painful death.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

The Ten Trusts (2003), p. xv

Love, Pain, People, World

“The overly cautious man will claim that his safety is more important than his accomplishments. While the adventurer will claim the opposite, because death does not scare him at all.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“To the angel of death, we are all like chess pieces on the chessboard.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Angels

“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 (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Cars

“Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" --- and find that there is no death.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Life, Secret

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Life, Lie, Peace, Beauty

“A judgment is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophecy which the Führer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Dated 27 March 1942
Diary excerpts

Life, War, World, Fight

“Such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives… What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted by Else Gebel, in letter to Robert Scholl (November, 1946). Original German text. http://www.mythoselser.de/texts/scholl-gebel.htm

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Variant: Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
Source: Julius Caesar

Men, Fear, Time

“Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?”

Emil M. Cioran book History and Utopia

History and Utopia (1960)

Hate

“With blinded eyes I stared at the sky, this grey, endless sky of a crazy god, who had made life and death for his amusement.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

Life, God

“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Life

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

love, Love, Error, Nature

“To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Betrayal

“If you die you’re completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I’m not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I’ve got.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Peace, Hope, Soul, Happiness

“We must live, you used to say, as if we were never going to die. - Didn't you know that's how everyone lives, including those obsessed with Death?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life, Money, People, World

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

Fate, Imagination, Sense, Change

“When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author

The Last Messiah [Den sidste Messias] (1933)

Life, Nature, Suicide

“Trapped in life, only escape I know is death.”

E.M.S (1995) Nigerian rapper, singer and record producer

"Hidden"

Life

“To cause at will the birth and death of matter would be man's grandest deed, which would give him the mastery of physical creation, make him fulfill his ultimate destiny.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Man's Greatest Achievement (1908; 1930)
Context: According to an adopted theory, every ponderable atom is differentiated from a tenuous fluid, filling all space merely by spinning motion, as a whirl of water in a calm lake. By being set in movement this fluid, the ether, becomes gross matter. Its movement arrested, the primary substance reverts to its normal state. It appears, then, possible for man through harnessed energy of the medium and suitable agencies for starting and stopping ether whirls to cause matter to form and disappear. At his command, almost without effort on his part, old worlds would vanish and new ones would spring into being. He could alter the size of this planet, control its seasons, adjust its distance from the sun, guide it on its eternal journey along any path he might choose, through the depths of the universe. He could make planets collide and produce his suns and stars, his heat and light; he could originate life in all its infinite forms. To cause at will the birth and death of matter would be man's grandest deed, which would give him the mastery of physical creation, make him fulfill his ultimate destiny.

Birth

“I think putting thieves to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that it is absurd and of ill consequence to the commonwealth that a thief and a murderer should be equally punished”

Thomas More book Utopia

Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 1 : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth
Context: I think putting thieves to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that it is absurd and of ill consequence to the commonwealth that a thief and a murderer should be equally punished; for if a robber sees that his danger is the same if he is convicted of theft as if he were guilty of murder, this will naturally incite him to kill the person whom otherwise he would only have robbed; since, if the punishment is the same, there is more security, and less danger of discovery, when he that can best make it is put out of the way; so that terrifying thieves too much provokes them to cruelty.

Law, Thinking

“Death is our best motivator in life. The idea of dying or not seeing the sun tomorrow will keep you up on your toes.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Sun, Motivation, Idea, Life

“Finally, the benefits of knowing thyself are —You won’t be clouded by the love of life, flatterers can’t arouse your mind, good/bad will appear to be the same before your eyes, pleasure and pain will lose their meanings, the sense of sins and death will vanish away and you will end up having the sense of immortality.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Pain, Pleasure, Appearance, Sense

“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Courageous, Business, Courage

“I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights
Context: I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.

People, Feeling, Heart

“The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Life, Question, Problem

“Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Knowledge

“Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.”

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) Hungarian-British author and journalist

Sad, Sadness

“I've seen my own death in dreams like this and it's helped me appreciate life more. I've also seen my own life in dreams and it's helped me appreciate death more.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Life, Dreams, Help

“Security is a kind of death.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Fear

“You should never, ever be understood completely. That's like the kiss of death, isn't it? It's a full stop. I don't ever think you should put full stops on thoughts. They change.”

John Lydon (1956) English singer, songwriter, and musician

Kiss, Thinking, Change

“We're reaching for death
on the end of a candle
We're trying for something
that's already found us”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

“The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Being from Manson's Fight Song of Holy Wood, this is actually a quote from German writer Erich Maria Remarque, also often misattributed to Josef Stalin.
Misattributed

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“I'm sorry," Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Laila, p. 395
Variant: Every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

People, Way, Loss

“We’re beings toward death, we’re … two-legged, linguistically-conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

6.4311
Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht. Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt. Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Variant: Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.

Life, Way

“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Stupidity, Universe

“I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death!”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

5 April 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Variant: I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met.

People

“HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

Life, Universe

“If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Life, Health, Madness

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Quoted in History of Sikh Struggles (1989) by Gurmit Singh, p. 189.

Life, Loss

“If Paulus's army had capitulated before the end, the Russians would have had the advantage of withdrawing forces against Paulus and against the southern front, where I had only two Romanian armies. Therefore, the resistance of the Sixth German Army, even to the death of the last man, was necessary.”

Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) German general

To Leon Goldensohn (14 June 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

“The kabalists say that a man is not dead when his body is entombed. Death is never sudden; for, according to Hermes, nothing goes in nature by violent transitions. Everything is gradual, and as it required a long and gradual development to produce the living human being, so time is required to completely withdraw vitality from the carcass. "Death can no more be an absolute end, than birth a real beginning. Birth proves the preexistence of the being, as death proves immortality," says the same French kabalist”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Eliphas Levi
Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XIII

Birth, Nature, Time, Dead

“Death makes no sense except to people who have passionately loved life. How can one die without having something to part from? Detachment is a negation of both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over life. For life is nothing but another word for this fear.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

Love, Life, People, Fear

“There is no one whose death I have not longed for, at one moment or another.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“If, I say now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods… then I would be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. …this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men — that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

29a–b
Alternate translation: "To fear death, is nothing else but to believe ourselves to be wise, when we are not; and to fancy that we know what we do not know. In effect, no body knows death; no body can tell, but it may be the greatest benefit of mankind; and yet men are afraid of it, as if they knew certainly that it were the greatest of evils."
Plato, Apology

Wisdom, Men, God, World

“Perched up high on a rooftop,
like a bird I'm having evil thoughts,
A black hood covers my face
as death flows through my mind at its own pace.”

Eazy-E (1963–1995) American rapper and producer

"Neighborhood Sniper", 5150: Home 4 tha Sick (1992).
1990s

Bird, Evil

“I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear.”

Witold Pilecki (1901–1948) World War II concentration camp leader and resistor

After the announcement of the death sentence.
Source: Bartłomiej Kuraś, Witold Pilecki – w Auschwitzu z własnej woli, „Ale Historia”, w: „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 22 kwietnia 2013.

Life, Fear, Feeling, Joy

“What is man’s life but love, love of self;
Man is dust, dust as his passion, dust as the beloved.Death, it is your great act of piety for man –
You take him to your house or he’d be left to himself.Death is a covenant between the lover and the beloved;
Death is a secret wedlock between being and non-being.Death harbors the hidden port of life’s ocean;
Death is helpless and a vision of beauty to itself.Death is the only witness of my life and your grace,
And O strange lord, of night and the crescent.”

Ghani Khan (1914–1996) Pakistani poet

Death, st. 8-12

Love, Life, Secret, Beauty

“[Fascism] was an explosion against intolerable conditions, against remediable wrongs which the old world failed to remedy. It was a movement to secure national renaissance by people who felt themselves threatened with decline into decadence and death and were determined to live, and live greatly.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Excerpt from My Life by Oswald Mosley (1968), Ch.16.

People, World

“In theory, it matters little to me whether I live as whether I die; in practice, I am lacerated by every anxiety which opens an abyss between life and death.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

Life

“Any person who pursues human rights in Iran must live with fear from birth to death, but I have learned to overcome my fear.”

Shirin Ebadi (1947) Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

From 1999 interview. Noted in the October 2003 BBC News profile of Ebadi. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3181992.stm (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

Fear, Birth, Learning, Personality

“Death lurks in the farewell of a true friend.”

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786–1859) French poet

La mort est dans l'adieu d'un ami veritable.
Elégies (1830), Au Sommeil; translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 110.

“The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Stobaeus, iv. 29a. 19
Quoted by Stobaeus

Life, People, Pleasure, Learning

“I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside
And the lives ye led were mine.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Prelude, Stanza 1.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)

Water, Wine

“I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1st. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no noblers in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigory has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people…I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.”

Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916) Russian mystic

Grigory Rasputin in a letter to the Tsarina Alexandra, 7 Dec 1916

Life, Hate, Children, People

“With a bronze mirror, one can see whether he is properly attired; with history as a mirror, one can understand the rise and fall of a nation; with men as a mirror, one can see whether he is right or wrong. Now I've lost my faithful mirror by the death of Weizheng.”

Emperor Taizong of Tang (598–649) emperor of the Tang Dynasty

Quoted in: Yanqing Vanessa Ong et al. Memories unfolded: a guide to memories at Old Ford Factory, 2008, p. 50
Quoted regarding his advisor.Few men in history would be so frank and honest with their monarch and when Weizheng died, Taizong was overwhelmed with grief. The Emperor said to his ministers,

Men, Faith, History, Understanding

“Any comparison between the military dictatorship and democracy can only come from those who do not value the Brazilian democracy. (…) I am proud to have lied. Lying under torture is not easy. In the face of torture, a person with dignity lies. Enduring torture is very difficult (…) The pain is unbearable; you can not imagine how. I am proud to have lied, because I saved my comrades from the same torture and from death.”

Dilma Rousseff (1947) 36th President of Brazil

Responding http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiyezo1fLRs to Senator José Agripino Maia - former member of ARENA, ruling party of the military dictatorship - in a Senate hearing, May 7. He suggested that, for having lied when she was interrogated by the political police, she could also have been lying about the leak of data of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's personal expenditures. 2008

Pain, Democracy, Imagination, Lying

“One who rushes madly after inordinate desire, runs the risk of encountering destruction and death.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

“The only thing that can kill me is death, that's the only thing that can ever stop me, is death, and even then my music will live forever.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Music

“The first time that I appeared on stage, it scared me to death. I really didn't know what all the yelling was about.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Interview (March/April 1972), as quoted in The Leading Men of MGM (2006) by Jane Ellen Wayne, p. 406
Context: The first time that I appeared on stage, it scared me to death. I really didn't know what all the yelling was about. I didn't realize that my body was moving. It's a natural thing to me. So to the manager backstage I said, "What'd I do? What'd I do?" And he said, "Whatever it is, go back and do it again."

Appearance, Time

“The only one who's always punctual is Death”

Peter Ustinov Romanoff and Juliet

Act I
Romanoff and Juliet (1956)
Context: The only one who's always punctual is Death … whatever the time he always strikes his knell at the first streak of dawn … and believe me, he knows what he's doing. How I hate the dawn! It's the hour of the firing squad. The last glass of brandy. The ultimate cigarette. The final wish. All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses … fix your bayonets boys …gentlemen, synchronize your watches … in ten seconds time the barrage starts … a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years... And finally dawn is the herald of the day, our twelve hours of unimportance, when we have to cede to the pressures of the powers, smile at people we have every reason but expediency to detest … A diplomat these days is nothing but a head-waiter who's allowed to sit down occasionally.

“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”

Julius Caesar (-100–-44 BC) Roman politician and general

Disputed
Original: (la) Qui se ultro morti offerant facilius reperiuntur quam qui dolorem patienter ferant.

Quoted in many works without citation

Pain, Men, Patience

“I'm tired of gang murders and gang shootings. It's a tough life to lead. You fear death at every moment, and worse than death, you fear the rats of the game who'd run around and tell the police if you don't constantly satisfy them with money and favors.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

Money, Fear, Game, Life

“Time is the architect of fate,
fleeting omen, pure phantom
in enchanting light of absence,
and our life the play of love and death,
only love will never die,
because In love no longer ‘thou’ and ‘I’ exist,
only the blossom of sacred unity.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://hellopoetry.com/alexis-karpouzos/

Time, Fate, Light, Love

“We all have same beginning (BIRTH), and we will have same ending (DEATH). So how different can we be?”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Birth

“What I wanted to express very clearly and intensely was that the reason these people had to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Life, God, People, Fear

“Death is like my car. It takes me where I want to go.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Cars

“The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change.”

Thomas Wolfe book Look Homeward, Angel

Source: Look Homeward, Angel

Life, Mountain, Reality, Change

“If, after I die, they should want to write my biography,
There's nothing simpler.
I've just two dates—of my birth, and of my death.
In between the one thing and the other all the days are mine.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Se, depois de eu morrer, quiserem escrever a minha biografia,
Não há nada mais simples.
Tem só duas datas—a da minha nascença e a da minha morte.
Entre uma e outra coisa todos os dias são meus.
Alberto Caeiro (heteronym), "Se, depois de eu morrer" (8 November 1915), trans. Jonathan Griffin.
Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

Birth