Quotes about death
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“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

February 28, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life, Fate, World, Confidence

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Reading, Heart

“A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.”

Jean Racine (1639–1699) French dramatist

Sad, Pleasure, Sadness

“District 12: Where you can starve to death in safety.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Variant: O my love, my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
Source: Romeo and Juliet

Beauty

“Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.”

William Shakespeare Richard II

Source: Richard II

“Some people believe that when you die, you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don’t seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there’s a bridge now.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

People

“If you’re looking for the full deal, the till-death deal, then look at me. No one’s ever going to love you, stick by you, understand how you work the way I do.
(Malcolm Kavanaugh)”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Happy Ever After

Love, Way, Understanding

“This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Reprinted in The Wild Muir ISBN 0-939666-75-8 page 38, and Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 234
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

Mountain, Time

“And because I love this life
I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when
From the right breast the mother
Takes it away, in the very next moment
To Find in the left one
Its consolation.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Love, Life

“Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Courageous, Fear

“She laughed and danced with the thought of death in her heart.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Mermaid

Source: The Little Mermaid

Heart, Dance

“Life will undertake to separate us, and we must each set off in search of our own path, our own destiny or our own way of facing death.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Life, Way, Search

“A witticism is an epigram on the death of a feeling.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

II.202
Human, All Too Human (1878)

Feeling

“Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Thinking, Time, Cheating

“Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Life

“Of all the wonders that I have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
(Act II, Scene 2)”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Men, Fear

“Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel--merely terribly, terribly good at his job.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

“You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in…”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

People, Happiness

“Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement… Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Acquiring Genomes: A Theory Of The Origin Of Species

Literature, Appearance, Change, Loss

“For life be, after all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin'; and death be all that we can rightly depend on.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Life, Dependency

“The sure path can only lead to death.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“… Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; harken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night.”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Birth, Housing, Night

“If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have waken'd death!”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“I? KILL? said Death, obviously offended. CERTAINLY NOT. PEOPLE GET KILLED, BUT THAT'S THEIR BUSINESS. I JUST TAKE OVER FROM THEN ON. AFTER ALL, IT'D BE A BLOODY STUPID WORLD IF PEOPLE GOT KILLED WITHOUT DYING, WOULDN'T IT?”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

People, Stupidity, World, Business

“maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

Light

“Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Time

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

--from WHEN DEATH COMES”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Variant: When it’s over, I want to say: All my life I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Life

“DO I DETECT A NOTE OF UNSEASONAL GRUMPINESS? said Death. NO SUGAR PIGGYWIGGY FOR YOU, ALBERT.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

“Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

Depressing, Love, World, Beauty

“There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Source: Human, All Too Human

Life

“Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: The Gay Science

Life, Dead

“Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,
And all their ministers attend on him.”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

Hell

“We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Love, Women, Girl

“Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Life, Sleep

“All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Our Eternity, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Pain, Error, Knowledge

“I don't regret it, you know. I would do it all again. Children are our hope for the future."
THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death.
"What does it contain, then?"
ME.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

Children, Hope, Future

“DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Thinking

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“It's not death if you refuse it…
It is if you accept it.”

James O'Barr The Crow

Source: The Crow

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

Relationship, Goodbye, For Father, Life

“Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Nature

“Brave soldier, never fear.
Even though your death is near.”

Hans Christian Andersen The Steadfast Tin Soldier

Source: The Steadfast Tin Soldier

Fear

“We would not let ourselves be burned to death for our opinions: we are not sure enough of them for that.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Fear, Suffering, Dead

“I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.”

Terry Pratchett book Pyramids

Source: Pyramids

Life

“OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A. M. FOR?”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

“Comparison is the death of joy.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Joy

“if we don’t rebel, if we’re not physically in an active rebellion, then it’s spiritual death.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

“Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
Context: What she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here there, she survived. Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.

“Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

People, Feeling, Communication

“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End (1910), Ch. 41

Idea

“Cake or death?”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

“Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
Life and these lips have long been separated:
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Life, Flowers

“Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end;
Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

Life, Art

“What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Life, Fear, Birth

“It is silliness to live when to live is torment, and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

“I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony.”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Love

“It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

People, Age, Disease, Way

“What happens if you get scared half to death twice?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“if i could be assured of your destruction, i would in the interest of the public, cheerfully accept my death.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living?”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Business

“There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death…”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Life, Freedom

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

People, Fools

“He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.”

Oscar Wilde book The Canterville Ghost

Source: The Canterville Ghost

Love, Life

“Death is a problem of the living. Dead people have no problems.”

Norbert Elias (1897–1990) German sociologist

People, Problem, Dead

“FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT….”

Terry Pratchett book The Shepherd's Crown

Source: The Shepherd's Crown

World

“Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death.”

Edna Ferber (1885–1968) Novelist, playwright

Love, Life

“All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6

Life, Disease

“I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour
to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my
world.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

World, Silence

“Yes, they are carnal, both of them, love and death, and therein lies their terror and their great magic!”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Love

“Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT."
Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Alcohol, World

“Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it. By living our lives, we nurture death.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Variant: Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.
Source: Norwegian Wood

Life, Parting

“Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.”

André Breton book Manifestoes of Surrealism

Source: Manifestoes of Surrealism

Life, Imagination, Past, Future

“Death ends a life, not a relationship”

Morrie Schwartz (1916–1995) American sociologist

Relationship, Goodbye, For Father, Life

“Warrior, when you pledge yourself to the service of a High Priestess, the goal is not to frighten her to death but to protect your lady from death.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

“Monkey bar," Annabeth said. "I'm great at these." She leaped onto to the first rung and start swinging her way across. She was scared of tiny spiders, but not of plummeting to her death from a set of monkey bars. Go figure.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Way

“I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Life, Food, Thinking, Animals

“The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity; it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Love, Life, Beauty, Envy

“Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Sadness, Silence

“All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

Men, Fear, Victory

“As I love the name of honour more than I fear death.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Love, Fear

“Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Men, Loss, Forgetting

“If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review by ? Vol. IV, No. 8 (1847) by Dallas Theological Seminary, p. 107

Life, Light

“You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face.”

Ian Fleming book You Only Live Twice

Source: You Only Live Twice (1964), Ch. 11 : Anatomy Class

Wise

“Death solves all problems — no man, no problem.”

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

This actually comes from the novel Children of the Arbat (1987) by Anatoly Rybakov. In his later book The Novel of Memories ( In Russian http://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/auth_pages.xtmpl?Key=18637&page=307) Rybakov admitted that he had no sources for such a statement. <br class="br">Misattributed

Problem

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Fight