Quotes about death
page 2

“Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Life, Time

“I wish to go on living even after my death.”

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

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Dead

“People in general are scared to death of the war and all the exhibition have been a failure, because the rich - don't want to buy anything”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

War, People, Failure

“The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment..

[]”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays

People, Color, Hell

“The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Life

“I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

World, Cats

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

World, Way

“I've been accused of every death except the casualty list of the World War.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

The Bootleggers

War, World

“I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace. They are medicine, and I would eventually die a lingering death. I had rather die on the field of battle.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Recorded by Charles Larpenteur at Fort Union in 1867. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 73.

Men, Peace

“(letter adressed to Mihai Antonescu, 6 september 1941) „We must all understand that this is not a fight against Slavs, but against the Jews. It's a battle for life and death. Either we win and the world will purify, or they'll win and we'll become their slaves. Both the war in general and the battles at Odessa, especially, have made the proof that the Jew is Satan.”

Ion Antonescu (1882–1946) prime minister and conducător of Romania during World War II

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJodTuDeoYg

Life, War, World, Understanding

“Tell us you lost 6 million. Historians, scholars, scientists, they went to some of the death camps. It wasn't 6 million, it wasn't 5 million, it wasn't 4 million, it wasn't even 3 million. Some of them say we'd be hard-pressed to get 1 1/2 million. Reports on the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were bloated, exaggerated, probably fabricated.”

Khalid Abdul Muhammad (1948–2001) American activist

Speech in Brooklyn, New York (29 March 1994) quoted in Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present (2002) by Marvin Perry and Frederick Schweitzer

“We must allow every day of our lives to represent healthy closure now! When we live for love, this is most natural because all of our associations will be quality associations in which we share our compassion, determination, and realizations, and receive the same from others. This is the technology of how to celebrate life now and live with proper preparation and detachment, so that we will master the science of dying before dying so as to connect with the should and its home-the spiritual world. After all, death is to remove all that is false and secondary. I am that lowly beggar who is desperately trying to die before dying.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

?
Books, The Beggar, Volume IV: Die Before Dying (Hari-Nama Press, 2005)

Love, Life, World, Home

“After this success, Ghazi (Victor in a Holy-war) was written amongst the royal titles. Below the titles (tughra) entered on the Fath-nama, I wrote the following quatrain:
For Islam's sake, I wandered in the wilds,
Prepared for war with pagans and Hindus,
Resolved myself to meet the martyr's death,
Thanks be to Allah! a ghazi I became.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, New Delhi reprint, 1979, pp. 574-75

War, Success

“I tried at that time to relieve the Sixth Army, of which I was supreme commander, above Paulus, by counterattacks - but it was not possible. I gave the order finally for the Sixth Army to break out, but then Paulus said it was too late and not possible. Hitler did not want the Sixth Army to break out at any time, but to fight to the last man. I believe that Hitler said if the Sixth Army tried to break out, it would be their death.”

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

Time, Fight

“Natasha and I said more than once that one may arrive at such a physical condition that it would be better to cut short one's own life or, more correctly, the too slow process of dying … But whatever may be the circumstances of my death I shall die with unshaken faith in the communist future. This faith in man and in his future gives me even now such power of resistance as cannot be given by any religion.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Trotsky's Testament (1940)

Life, Faith, Religion, Future

“When we understand this we see clearly that the subject round which the alternative senses play must be twofold. And we must therefore consider the subject of this work [the Divine Comedy] as literally understood, and then its subject as allegorically intended. The subject of the whole work, then, taken in the literal sense only is "the state of souls after death" without qualification, for the whole progress of the work hinges on it and about it. Whereas if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is "man as by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, he becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice."”
Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex oportet esse subiectum circa quod currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum est de subiecto huius operis, prout ad litteram accipitur; deinde de subiecto, prout allegorice sententiatur. Est ergo subiectum totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post mortem simpliciter sumptus. Nam de illo et circa illum totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, subiectum est homo, prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est.

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian poet

Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 23–25), as translated by Charles Singleton in his essay "Two Kinds of Allegory" published in Dante Studies 1 (Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 87.
Epistolae (Letters)

Justice, Exercises, Soul, Understanding

“Let us ease the Roman people of their continual care, who think it long to await the death of an old man.”
Liberemus diuturna cura populum Romanum, quando mortem senis exspectare longum censent. (Latin, not original language)

Hannibal (-247–-183 BC) military commander of Carthage during the Second Punic War

Last words according to Livy "ab urbe condita", Book XXXIX, 51.

People, Thinking

“Endurance is composed of four attributes: eagerness, fear, piety and anticipation (of death). so whoever is eager for Paradise will ignore temptations; whoever fears the fire of Hell will abstain from sins; whoever practices piety will easily bear the difficulties of life and whoever anticipates death will hasten towards good deeds.
Conviction has also four aspects to guard oneself against infatuations of sin; to search for explanation of truth through knowledge; to gain lessons from instructive things and to follow the precedent of the past people, because whoever wants to guard himself against vices and sins will have to search for the true causes of infatuation and the true ways of combating them out and to find those true ways one has to search them with the help of knowledge, whoever gets fully acquainted with various branches of knowledge will take lessons from life and whoever tries to take lessons from life is actually engaged in the study of the causes of rise and fall of previous civilizations.
Justice also has four aspects depth of understanding, profoundness of knowledge, fairness of judgment and dearness of mind; because whoever tries his best to understand a problem will have to study it, whoever has the practice of studying the subject he is to deal with, will develop a clear mind and will always come to correct decisions, whoever tries to achieve all this will have to develop ample patience and forbearance and whoever does this has done justice to the cause of religion and has led a life of good repute and fame.
Jihad is divided into four branches: to persuade people to be obedient to Allah; to prohibit them from sin and vice; to struggle (in the cause of Allah) sincerely and firmly on all occasions and to detest the vicious. Whoever persuades people to obey the orders of Allah provides strength to the believers; whoever dissuades them from vices and sins humiliates the unbelievers; whoever struggles on all occasions discharges all his obligations and whoever detests the vicious only for the sake of Allah, then Allah will take revenge on his enemies and will be pleased with Him on the Day of Judgment.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Life, People, Truth, Fear

“One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S. S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says: 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,' then I have to say: 'You are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood….”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians....
The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)
1940s

Women, Men, Children, People

“The death of one man is a just death, the death of two millions is a statistic.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.
Der schwarze Obelisk (1956)
A variant of this quote "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." has also been attributed to Joseph Stalin, but no source for this has been found. This version appeared in the English press not later than 1958. (Ремарк, Эрих Мария // Словарь современных цитат / составитель К. В. Душенко — Москва: изд-во «Эксмо», 2006)

“Why they had gone so suddenly off the walls seems to have been that they had taken the resolve of those who give up a place as lost; they put all ladies and beauties to death, then, looking themselves to die, came naked out to fight. Our men attacking, each one from his post, drove them from the walls whereupon 2 or 300 of them entered Medini Rao's house and there almost killed one another in this way: -- one having taken stand with a sword, the rest eagerly stretched out the neckblow. Thus went the greater number to hell. By God's grace this renowned fort was captured in 2 or 3 garis (cir. an hour), without drum and standard, with no hard fighting done. A pillar of pagan-heads was ordered set up on a hill north-west of Chanderi. A chronogram of this victory having been found in the words of Fath-i-daru'l-harb (Conquest of a hostile seat), I thus composed them:
Was for a while the station Chandiri Pagan-full, the seat of hostile force;
By fighting, I vanquished its fort,
The date was Fath-i-daru'l-harb.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Quote from Bevridge translation of the Baburnama https://archive.org/stream/baburnama017152mbp#page/n663/mode/2up

Men, God, Hostility, Beauty

“… And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., number 168
The Book of Disquiet

Life, Hate, Fear, Soul

“One should hasten to put such witches to death.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Statement of 20 August 1538; as quoted in Conversations With Martin Luther (1915), translated and edited by Preserved Smith and Herbert Percival Gallinger, p. 163

“[…] your own are burning and your memories and you don't want to leave them. Everything will burn to the end, you suffer, but nobody is punishing you, they are just setting your soul free. Don't be afraid because while you fear death they will rend your soul like demons. Only calm down and you will see the angels who are setting you free and then you will be free.”

Dimitris Lyacos (1966) Greek writer

Source: Poena Damni Z213: Exit, p. 88, Shoestring Press, 2010.

Fear, Angels, Soul, Suffering

“Enquire: 'Who am I?' and you will find the answer. Look at a tree: from one seed arises a huge tree; from it comes numerous seeds, each one of which in its turn grows into a tree. No two fruits are alike. Yet it is one life that throbs in every particle of the tree. So, it is the same Atman everywhere. All creation is That: There is beauty in the birds and in the animals. They too eat and drink like us, mate and multiply; but there is this difference: we can realize our true nature, the Atman. Having been born as human beings, we must not waste this opportunity. At least for a few seconds every day, we must enquire as to who we are. It is no use taking a return ticket over and over again. From birth to death, and death to birth is samsara. But really we have no birth and death. We must realize that.”

Sri Anandamoyi Ma (1896–1982) Hindu saint

Anandamayi Ma, Ananda Varta Quarterly
By herself

Life, Beauty, Birth, Drink

“If you really come down to any large story that interests people – holds the attention for a considerable time … human stories are practically always about one thing, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death.”

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

Tolkien in Oxford (1968) http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12237.shtml, a BBC 2 television documentary (at 21:49)

People, Time

“When Adam and Eve realize they're naked is that same moment they realize the difference between good and evil. What's the relationship between consciousness, knowledge of nakedness, and knowledge of good and evil? When you know that you're vulnerable, and they also developed a knowledge of death so there's deep knowledge of vulnerability, and they get embarrassed about that and they cover themselves up. So that's culture. So it's a very profound shock when they come to recognize that they're naked. It even causes Adam to run and hide from God. Then they develop the knowledge of good and evil. This is about how human beings have this peculiar capacity that no other creatures have. I know how I can be hurt, because I am aware of my own limitations – painfully aware. And now, because I know how I can be hurt, I know how you can be hurt. And I can take advantage of that. And that's how evil enters the world. It gives people another attribute of divinity, knowing the difference between good and evil. The cosmos switches when that self-consciousness manifests itself, and that's when the possibility of evil enters the world.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

God, People, World, Knowledge

“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”

Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus

Evil

“Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Opium (1929)

Love, Life, Training

“Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in O2 : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, Ch. 4 : Artisans of Hope: Stepping into God's Kingdom Story, p. 63; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. It is also used in The White Rose (1991) by Lillian Garrett-Groag, a monologue during Sophie's interrogation.
Disputed
Context: The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

Life, Way

“Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans from<cite>Dr. Martin Luthers Vermischte Deutsche Schriften</cite>. Johann K. Irmischer, ed. Vol. 63(Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), pp.124-125. (EA 63:124-125) http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt Context: Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace.

God, Faith, Time

“Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Letter 99, Paragraph 13. Erika Bullmann Flores, Tr. from: <cite>Dr. Martin Luther's Saemmtliche Schriften</cite>Dr. Johann Georg Walch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_Walch Ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, N.D.), Vol. 15, cols. 2585-2590. http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/letsinsbe.txt Context: If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.

World, Strong, Christ

“The more you think about death and mortality, the more you enjoy life. Because then you do not waste time. You just focus. ”

Marina Abramović (1946) Yugoslav-American artist

Life, Thinking, Time

“Here is a story of latifundia and death squads, masters and slaves, patriarchs and subordinated women, self-enriching capitalists and plundered provinces, proﬁteering slumlords and urban rioters. Here is a struggle between the plutocratic few and the indigent many, the privileged versus the proletariat, featuring corrupt politicians, money-driven elections, and the political assassination of popular leaders. I leave it to the reader to decide whether any of this might resonate with the temper of our own times.”

Michael Parenti book The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome

Introduction
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003)

Money, Time, Self-confidence, Women

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”

Sun Tzu book The Art of War

(zh-TW) 孫子曰：國之上下，死生之地，存亡之道，不可不察也。
The Art of War, Chapter 1 · Detail Assessment and Planning

War, Life, Art

“Death is not "an eternal sleep!"”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!" Source: Last speech to the National Convention http://www.bartleby.com/268/7/24.html (26 July 1794)

Sleep

“My child, let your life come into the world of darkness
like a spark of light, without flicker and pure,
and thank them in silence. You know,
my child, they are cruel in their greed and envy,
their words are disguised knives thirsting for blood.
But do not be afraid, my child, go and stand in their hearts,
and let your gentle eyes fall on them like the forgiving serenity of the night.
My child, let them see your face and so they know it
meaning of all things, let them love and love one another.
Go, at sunrise, open and lift up your heart like a blooming flower,
and at sunset, bend your head and silently complete the worship of the day.
Remember, my child, gods and demons, ghosts and elves are fragments of one,
built by the hand of the abyss.
So, move on, go to the shore of the vast darkness,
there, is the Great Meeting of Children,
there, the sea gives a smile to the beach,
there, sing the waves facing death.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://dailywisdomwords.com/community-poetry/my-child/

God, Light, Silence, Children

“Let no man be called happy before his death. Till then, he is not happy, only lucky.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Happiness

“I fear lies more than death. Simply, because even the ideas of heaven and hell might fall within its domain.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Hell, Idea, Fear

“Death is part of nature, but even nature does not seem to be free from the laws of decay.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Law, Nature, Parting

“Even those who raised the dead could not save themselves from death either. Death is guaranteed to all, including those who perform miracles.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Dead

“If the soul does not exist, then stop believing in life and death as well.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Soul, Life

“It can be said, without a doubt, that love is the cause of birth and death.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Birth, Love

“My main task is to enlighten the spirits and put all the dogmas to death.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“If I wanted to kill somebody, I'd take this book and beat you to death with it, and I wouldn't feel a thing.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

NBC interview (1987)

Books, Feeling

“People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend”

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

Hurtful, Life, Pain, People

“Only death can finish the fight, everything else only interrupts the fighting.”

Andrzej Sapkowski (1948) Novelist

Fight

“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.”

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

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

People, Hope, Heart

“Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.”

Paulo Coelho book The Pilgrimage

Source: The Pilgrimage

Life, Personality

“My teacher said once that every man faces seven enemies in his lifetime. Sickness, hunger, betrayal, envy, greed, old age, and then death…”

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

Hunger, Age, Teachers, Betrayal

“I have a violence in me that is hot as death-blood.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Love, Life, God, Marriage

“What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Fear, Imagination, Thinking

“I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars…. I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness….”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

World, Star, Madness

“You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

War, Heart

“The day of resurrection is determined in this manner. The first Sunday after the full moon in Aries is celebrated as Easter. Aries begins on the 21st day of March and ends approximately on the 19th day of April. The sun’s entry into Aries marks the beginning of Spring The moon in its monthly transit around the earth will form sometime between March 21st and April 25th an opposition to the sun, which opposition is called a full moon, The first Sunday after this phenomenon of the heavens occurs Is celebrated as Easter; the Friday preceding this day is observed as Good Friday. This movable date should tell the observant one to look for some interpretation other than the one commonly accepted. These days do not mark the anniversaries of the death and resurrection of an individual who lived on earth.”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer

Source: Your Faith is Your Fortune

Spring, Sun

“We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.”

Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) Japanese author

Age

“I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Baby

“Stay with me to-night; you must see me die. I have long had the taste of death on my tongue, I smell death, and who will stand by my Constanze, if you do not stay?”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Spoken on his deathbed to his sister-in-law, Sophie Weber (5 December 1791), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)
Variant: The taste of death is on my tongue, I feel something that is not from this world (Der Geschmack des Todes ist auf meiner Zunge, ich fühle etwas, das nicht von dieser Welt ist).

Night

“In his life Christ is an example showing
us how to live in his death he is a sacrifice satisfying our sins in his resurrection a conqueror in his ascension a king in his intercession a high priest.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Life, Christ

“So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Life

“Another lover hits the universe. The circle is broken. But with death comes rebirth. And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

People, Sadness, Lovers, Universe

“Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying - a little shove toward the end.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

Life, Disease, Birth

“Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives! Fight on; death is better than defeat! Fight on brave knights! for bright eyes behold your deeds!”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Fight

“Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another”

Morrie Schwartz (1916–1995) American sociologist

Tear

“To die, to sleep -
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come…”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Dreams, Sleep

“Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Beauty, Flowers

“… I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.”

Knut Hamsun book Hunger

Source: Hunger

Life, Thinking

“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes relentlessly persecute them, and treat their teachings with malicious hostility, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaign of lies and slanders. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping them, while at the same time emasculating the revolutionary doctrine of its content, vulgarizing it and blunting its revolutionary edge.'”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.1, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)
Source: The State and Revolution

Hostility, Time

“Life is just a dream on the way to death.”

James O'Barr The Crow

Source: The Crow

Life, Dreams, Way

“I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness.”

H.P. Lovecraft book From Beyond

Source: From Beyond

World, Madness

“Is war perhaps nothing else but a need to face death, to conquer and master it, to come out of it alive -- a peculiar form of denial of our mortality?”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

War

“courage is being scared to death - and saddling up anyway"

"A goal, A love and A dream give you total control over your body and your life”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Love, Life, Dreams, Courage

“I know that each one of us travels to love alone,
alone to faith and to death.
I know it. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t help.
Let me come with you.”

Yiannis Ritsos (1909–1990) Greek poet

Source: The Moonlight Sonata

Love, Faith, Travel, Help

“Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die Live. House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, old man and young maid, Day's toil and it's guerdon, They are all vanishing, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Spring, Sleep, Time, Housing

“If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event,—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Past

“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was on of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

Modernized rendition: I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.
The phrase "" is a slogan made famous during the independence struggle of several countries.
1880s, Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886)
Variant: There was one of two things I had a right to: liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would take the other, for no man should take me alive. I should fight for liberty as long as my strength lasted.
Context: I had reasoned dis out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have de oder; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when de time came for me to go, de Lord would let dem take me.

“Nevertheless, life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Carmilla

Source: Carmilla

Life

“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.”

Emily Dickinson Because I could not stop for Death

712: Because I could not stop for Death —
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Context: p>Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.We slowly drove — He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility —
</p

“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Caesar, Act II, scene ii.
Source: Julius Caesar (1599)

Time

“Sadness isn't sadness. It's happiness in a black jacket. Tears are not tears. They're balls of laughter dipped in salt. Death is not death. It's life that's jumped off a tall cliff.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Source: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999

Life, Sadness, Tear, Laughter

“Birth in the physical is death in the spiritual. Death in the physical is birth in the spiritual.”

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) Purported clairvoyant healer and psychic

Source: Reincarnation & Karma

Birth

“The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

Home, Evil

“In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.”

Carlos Castaneda book Journey to Ixtlan

Source: Journey to Ixtlan

World, Decision, Time

“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Life

“Drink today, and drown all sorrow;
You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow;
Best, while you have it, use your breath;
There is no drinking after death.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Drink

“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Source: The Collected Poems

Life, Music, Dead

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, born 1588

Life, Men, War, Fear

“I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Source: The Dance of the Soul

Love, Life, Men, God

“Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die.

True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.”

Robin Hobb book The Mad Ship

Source: The Mad Ship

Life, Courage, Thinking, Time

“This life we live nowadays! It's not life, it's stagnation, death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses, and the meaningless people inside them! Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 5

Life, People, Thinking, Housing

“They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

“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.”

Oscar Wilde book The Canterville Ghost

Source: The Canterville Ghost http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/savile/canterville.c1.html (1887)

Life, Lie, Peace, Beauty

“My biggest fear of death is to come back reincarnated”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Fear

“I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

As quoted in "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'" by Ian Sample, in The Guardian (15 May 2011) http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven Context: I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first... I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

“Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace!
And, lips, oh you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Kiss