Quotes about death
page 15

“Love is as strong as death, as hard as Hell. Death separates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Love, Soul, Hell, Strong

“Death is another bar which lies several steps below the normal world. I'm at its threshold, but not yet in it. Its doorway is doorless.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

Source: Pussy, King of the Pirates

World

“Death is sometimes kinder than Love.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Love

“We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

Variant: We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.
Source: The Green Mile (1996)

God

“We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

Life, Forgetting

“It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Life

“He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.

In place of death there was light.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

Fear, Light

“So what’s on the agenda for tonight? (Danger)
Migraine, futility, possible death. Same as every night, I guess. (Alexion)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Sins of the Night

Night

“I know I can do it," Todd Downey said, helping himself to another ear of corn from the steaming bowl. "I'm sure that in time her death will be a mystery, even to me.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: Two Past Midnight: Secret Window, Secret Garden

Time, Help

“Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

"Psychological Observations"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism

Parting

“You ever think about this? Every year you live, you pass the anniversary of your death. Now you don't know what day it is, of course.”

Billie Letts book Where the Heart Is

Source: Where the Heart Is

Thinking

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Modern version: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Meditation 17. This was the source for the title of Ernest Hemingway's novel.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)
Source: Meditation XVII - Meditation 17
Context: No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

“There is only one thing I fear now-love. For I have seen it and I have felt it and I know that it is love, not death, that undoes us.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

Love, Fear

“…the amount of maintenance involving hair is genuinely overwhelming. Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Secret, Thinking

“There are no borders in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, because a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory, just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)

World, Victory, Country, Indifference

“Death: Do you never stop questioning?
Antonius Block: No. I never stop.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Source: The Seventh Seal

Question

“Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966

Money, Soul, Forgiveness, Question

“Death is my lover and he wants to move in.”

Sarah Kane book Crave

Source: Crave

Lovers

“She who showed weakness to teenagers would be picked on to death. True fact of life.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Life

“And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Magnificent Defeat (1966)

Life, God, Truth, Star

“Take me away from all this Death.”

Bram Stoker (1847–1912) Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula

“There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.”

Stephen King book Lisey's Story

Source: Lisey's Story

Love, Heart

“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.”

George Bernard Shaw Overruled

1910s
Source: Overruled (1912)

“Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

“For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

Life

“All right, the pendulum isn’t working. Sometimes you need an accelerant to help it.” – Death
“Like gasoline?” – Nick
“Yes, Nick. We’re going to set the book and your pendulum on fire and then use them ’cause we’re just that intelligent.” – Death”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Books, Intelligence, Help

“Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

Thinking

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
That hope always triumphs over experience —
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

"Credo" at his official website http://robertfulghum.com/index.php/fulghumweb/credo/; this may be partly influenced by remarks of Albert Einstein in "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929): I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. <br class="br">Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Love, Dreams, Hope, Imagination

“I have to tell you it was the first time even after all these years of expecting my own death that i truly knew what it meant to die because with you gone there was nothing left for me to live for.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Time

“Death in anonymity is the ultimate insult to human dignity.”

Kathy Reichs book Break No Bones

Source: Break No Bones

“This isn’t really death,’ Tyler says. ‘We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old.’ I tongue the barrel into my cheek and say, Tyler, you’re thinking of vampires.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Thinking

“Death always before dishonor. (Julian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

“The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Source: Letters to Felice‎

Happiness

“If anyone stops us, as long as we mumble something pretentious about the glory of death, we should be fine.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

“Many have died; you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Source: The Bijak of Kabir

Love, World, Dreams

“One sometimes weeps over one's illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.”

Guy De Maupassant book Une vie

Source: Une vie

“Then Thalia Grace became their leader and started recruiting even more young women to their cause, which grated on Nico – as if Bianca’s death could be forgotten. As if she could be replaced.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Women

“How is it that I'd nearly been smothered to death, and yet I could sit there and notice things like my stepbrother's abdominal muscles a few minutes later?”

Meg Cabot book Shadowland

Source: Shadowland

“Because there is no greater evil than ignorance and the destruction of genius. Ignorance has been responsible for more death, more bigotry, and more sin than any other force. It is the destroyer of mankind.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Shadows

Evil

“I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)”

Franz Wright (1953–2015) American poet

Source: Walking to Martha's Vineyard

Love, People, Dead

“There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Life, Way

“Warmblood now a bloodborne death,
Will rob your body of it's breath
Mark your skin and seal your fate
The Underland becomes a plate”

Suzanne Collins Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

Source: Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

Fate

“You would have made a fine warrior, you know that?"

I am one. Death is my enemy."

Yeah, it is, isn't it." God, it made such sense that he'd bonded with her. She was a fighter… like him. "Your scalpel's your dagger."

Yup.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

God, Sense

“Name none of the fallen, for they stand in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.”

Steven Erikson book Deadhouse Gates

Source: Deadhouse Gates

Dead

“life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Four VII
is 5 (1926)

Life, Thinking

“I am dying a thousand cruel and unusual deaths as fifty pairs of eyes take me in, size me up like something that should be hanging over a fireplace in a gentleman's den.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Dentist
Source: Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

Books, Reading

“You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Source: I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Wisdom, Birth

“How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

Country

“There are two words that you should use frequently in your youth: ´sorry´ and ´thank-you´. Use the first one as often as possible, so that on your death bed all that you have to say to your friends is ´thank-you!´.”

Robin Jones Gunn (1955) American writer

Youth

“He always considered death an unavoidable professional hazard.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Source: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11

“There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.”

Jean Rhys book Wide Sargasso Sea

Source: Wide Sargasso Sea

People

“…the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Death is forever. Death is nothing. But to save a life, that’s everything.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Life

“Life is doubt,
And faith without doubt is nothing but death.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

Life, Faith

“Death is a great tragedy…a profound loss…I don’t accept it…I think people are kidding themselves when they say they are comfortable with death.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

People, Thinking, Loss

“Death comes to us all sooner or later. We cannot escape it.”

Brian Jacques (1939–2011) British fiction writer known for Redwall animal fantasy novels

“When death captures me,' the boy vowed, 'he will feel my fist on his face.'

Personally, I quite like that. Such stupid gallantry.

Yes.

I like that a lot.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Stupidity, Feeling, Boy, Personality

“Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun (1975), Ch. 56

Life, Understanding, Joy

“Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws”

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

An American Prayer (1978)
Variant: Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth a raven´s claws…

Angels

“Odd, isn’t it? You know when your birthday is, but not your death day, even though you pass the date year after year, never suspecting that some day…”

Mary Downing Hahn (1937) American children's writer

Source: The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall

Birthday

“I'm Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles. The canker in the heart of the rose.”

Anne Rice book The Vampire Lestat

Source: The Vampire Lestat

Heart

“From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year… death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

Life, Happiness, World, Childhood

“If death is your lover, you don't got to be afraid ever that he will ever leave you”

Francesca Lia Block book Echo

Source: Echo

Lovers

“He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

“Every night death came, slowly, painfully, and every morning Maddox awoke in bed, knowing he'd have to die again later. That was his greatest curse and his eternal punishment.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

Night

“We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Disease

“Seven half-bloods shall answer the call
To storm or fire the world must fall
An oath to keep with a final breath
and foes bear arms to the doors of death”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

World

“We are not meant to know the time or the nature of our deaths (for all of us secretly hope that we may be immortal).”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Hope, Nature, Time

“I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

“Death has this much to be said for it:
You don't have to get out of bed for it.
Wherever you happen to be
They bring it to you—free.”

Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) English novelist, poet, critic, teacher

“It was like wondering how evil had come into the world or what happens to a person after he dies: an interesting philosophical exercise, but also curiously pointless, since evil and death happened, regardless of the why and the how and what-it-meant.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Horns

World, Exercises, Evil, Personality

“How much longer will I live? (Urian)
You’re immortal, barring death. (Acheron)
That doesn’t make sense. (Urian)
Most of life doesn’t. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Life, Sense

“Wage war on death. Live for love.”

Ted Dekker book Forbidden

Source: Forbidden

Love, War

“Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love. That is the truest thing they ever see, for without it life is death.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Jayber Crow

Love, Life, World, Lovers

“I’m done. I’m old, I’m sad - that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Sadness, Art

“A Gallagher Girl's real grades don’t come in pass or fail—they're measured in life or death.”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Life, Girl

“I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much… so, so much.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

Source: Maizon at Blue Hill

Hope, Way, Star, Hurt

“They offered you a choice between the death of your principles and the death of your body. You said you'd rather die. You faced the fear of your own death, and you were calm and still.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Fear

“Thank you, sir, but I am perfectly content being the bride of death.”

Seth Grahame-Smith book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

“Peter swept aside Yogi Tea and Harmony Herbal Blend, though he hesitated a second over the chamomile….. But no. Violent death demanded Earl Grey.”

Louise Penny book Still Life

Source: Still Life

Tea

“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

Marriage, Birth

“Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.”

Guy Sajer book The Forgotten Soldier

Source: The Forgotten Soldier

Happiness, People, Reality, Sleep

“Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life”

Bertolt Brecht The Mother

Pelagea Vlasova in Scene 10
The Mother (1930)
Variant: Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.
Source: Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays: Includes: In Search of Justice; Informer; Elephant Calf; Measures Taken; Exception and the Rule; Salzburg Dance of Death

Life, Fear

“Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Life, People

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin , Volume One 1931-1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Children, Pleasure, Books, World

“Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain”

Alexander Pope Eloisa to Abelard

Source: Eloisa to Abelard

“Without knowledge, life is no more than the shadow of death”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

Life, Knowledge

“Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power," Tuek said. "You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Life

“Encounters with death and danger are onlyto the survivors.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Masks of the Illuminati

Source: Masks of the Illuminati

“Human beings can't see anything without wanting to destroy it. That's original sin. And I'm going to destroy it. Death is going to die.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Variant: Human beings can’t see anything without wanting to destroy it, Lyra. That’s original sin.
Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 21 : Lord Asriel's Welcome

“May be she’ll learn something about what death really is, which is where the pain stops and the good memories begin. Not the end of life but the end of pain.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

Life, Pain, Learning, Memory

“We are born with two incurable diseases, life, from which we die, and hope, which says maybe death isn't the end.”

Andrew M. Greeley (1928–2013) Irish-American Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and novelist

Life, Disease, Hope