Quotes about death (5968 quotes, page 59)

“A civilization of life is one that embraces life, caring for families, supporting children and the elderly. A civilization of death authorizes the killing of unborn human beings, condones the killing of the elderly and encourages people to live only in their own interest. A culture of life is the one with eternal and timeless values.”

Don Feder (1946) writer; Media consultant

Is Formal Marriage Out of Fashion? Interview with Communications Director of the World Congress of Families Don Feder https://youth-time.eu/don-feder-communications-director-of-the-world-congress-of-families/ (November 15, 2014)

Family , Support , Children , People

“For the truly creative mind in any field is no more than this — a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create — to create — to create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of beauty and meaning his very breath is cut off from him. He must create. He must pour out creation. By some strange unknown pressing inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"The Creative Mind at Work," William Vaughn Moody Foundation Lecture at the University of Chicago (1935), as quoted in Pearl S. Buck: A Biography, Volume 2 - Her Philosophy as Expressed in Her Letters (1971) by Theodore F. Harris, p. 217.

God , Beauty , Music , Joy

“The Torah describes the beginning of the world and the formative history of the Jewish people from Abraham—the first Jew and the creator of the monotheistic Hebrew religion—up to the death of Moses, and contains the Ten Commandments.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible (1963), Volume II

Religion , History , People , World

“Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
The Hollow Men (1925)

“I was impacted in a way that I didn’t expect...We see black death all the time, and I don’t know what it was about this, but I know I went home and then I woke up in the middle of the night crying.”

Alicia Garza (1981) Co-founder of the Black Lives Matter International movement

How the movement that’s changing America was built and where it goes next, By Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/black-lives-matter-jamil-smith-1014442/ (16 June 2020)

Home , Time , Night , Cry

“The last year has really brought home that it is truly a matter of life and death. The tangible, human stakes, the real-life consequences when we are led by fools, and when we are led by people who are more concerned with their own enrichment than they are with the financial well-being of the families that pay their salary. We can get direct financial relief to people fast, and I know that this incoming administration wants to do it. But if we don’t win these Senate races, they’re gonna block help for the people because they’re not going to want to relieve suffering. If the Republicans hold the Senate, they’re gonna block it... Every vote will count, every vote will matter, and we saw in November how every vote mattered. And the second is, there will be a big difference in your daily life depending on the outcome here.”

Jon Ossoff (1987) American politician

Quoted in Jon Ossoff Talks With Rasheeda About What Dems Can Achieve If They Win Georgia Runoffs, By Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone (magazine), (4 January 2020)

Family , Home , Dependency , Help

“I call special attention to the fact that it is only our universal suicide which would prove a panacea for all the ills our ' flesh is heir to j individual suicides can do little or no good, save to the individuals themselves; Thus true philosophers may rationally and generously deny themselves the luxury of self-murder, because their death must leave the human average still worse than it is; and, besides, death’s coming is so certain and (at farthest) so near, that it is scarcely worth while to put one’s self out of breath hastening to meet him.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part VII, p. 91
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Universe , Self-confidence , Suicide

“[Nature] only keeps us alive by a complicated system of the most shameful illusions, falsifying beyond rectification life, death, and after-death. Having made us take part in this poor puzzling game of life, she has taken care that all the rules shall be unfavourable to us: the cards are marked, the dice are loaded, we are always swindled. Thus years of hard work; and self-denial are frequently lost by a slip or chance, but seldom or never saved by a chance. Our health may be ruined by a pin-prick, but never doubled by an accident. We fall seriously ill in a moment, and take weeks or months to recover; lose a limb by some sudden mishap, but never by a good hap regain it. We cannot reach even a low degree of wisdom or knowledge without long hard study, while to be ignorant and foolish is the easiest and most natural thing in the world for us. Our sorrows are real and enduring; our joys deceptive and transient; our prizes of victory are not to be compared with our forfeits of defeat.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 62
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Chance , Study , Game , Victory

“What good, what use, what aim?
What compensation for the throes of birth
And death in all its frame?
What conscious life hath ever paid its cost?
From Nothingness to Nothingness — all lost!”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

From a letter dated 19 October 1879, quoted by Bertram Dobell in The Laureate of Pessimism: A Sketch of the Life, and Character of James Thomson ("BV"); Author of the City of Dreadful Night (1910), p. 38

Life , Birth

“It seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe, and has least support in the church-going United States. I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next? The Christian attitude is reflected in the words Robert Bolt’s play has Thomas More saying to the headsman: 'Friend, be not afraid of your office. You send me to God.'”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

For the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence.
God’s Justice and Ours https://web.archive.org/web/20120311230630/http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gods-justice-and-ours-32, 123 First Things 17. (May 2002). Adapted from remarks given at Pew Forum Conference on Religion, politics and death penalty.
2000s

God , Soul , Country , Penalty

“To settle is to die. To not settle implies that death is avoidable.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

“’Neath cold sand I dreamed of death / but woke at dawn to see / in glory, the bright, the morning star.
This was not judgement day — only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.”

William Styron book Sophie's Choice

Last lines
Sophie's Choice (1979)

Star , Dreams

“As the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. And this death of the soul is the true death.”

Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) Monk and archbishop

Source: To the Most Reverend Nun Xenia (c. 1344), p. 296

Soul , God

“No matter which way I go I know now that I will never have peace.
For peace is certainty, and there is no certainty but death.”

Leigh Brackett book The Long Tomorrow

Source: The Long Tomorrow (1955), Chapter 29

Way , Peace

“I feel like saying over and over and over, what I have said many times before, that we do not know the world of living, longing, suffering, enjoying life in the midst of which we have evolved. The inhabitants of our own fields and dooryards are strangers to us. We are so little, and proud, and selfish, we never think it worth while to stop and look into their faces and get acquainted with them. It never occurs to us what a great favour it would be to them if we would actually get over into their places occasionally and realise what tragedies are constantly being enacted in their lives as a result of our insensate natures. We treat them with no consideration or respect because we have no understanding of them; and we do not understand them because we do not care anything at all about the matter. We are too busy tossing bouquets at ourselves to have much time or thought left for anybody else. We have grown up in the belief that all those who have a different shape from what we have were intended, not for life and happiness and immortality, as we were, but for death and wretchedness and chymification, and we are too dull-minded and selfish to make any change now.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Thesis of the New Ethics, p. 37

Selfishness , Time , Understanding , Making love

“Not even the thought of death can upset the man who is going into space for the first time. The journey into the unknown transcends the framework of anxiety, at least for a while.”

Robert Sheckley book The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton

Source: Crompton Divided (1978), Chapter 6 (p. 28)

Time

“Death is more interesting from a distance.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Death and the Eternal Forever (2014)

“The human heart beats itself to death.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

Heart

“Better death than to be appointed Superior General.”

Saint Nimatullah Kassab (1808–1858) Lebanese Maronite monk and saint

“What use the green river, the gold place, if time and
death pinned human in the pocket of my land not rest
from taking underground the green all-willowed and
white rose and bean flower and morning-mist picnic of
song in pepper-pot breast of thrush?”

Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand author

Owls Do Cry, pt, 1, chap. 4, 1961

Flowers , Time

“Death is nature’s way of staying in charge.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Death and the Eternal Forever (2014)

Way , Nature

“The rumors of my death are only a pending reality.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Death and the Eternal Forever (2014)

Reality

“In the face of warfare and inevitable death, there is no wisdom but in ataraxia, “to look on all things with a mind at peace"."”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

Here, clearly, the old pagan joy of life is gone, and an almost exotic spirit touches a broken lyre. History, which is nothing if not humorous, was never to facetious as when she gave to this abstemious and epic pessimist the name of Epicurean.
The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Peace , Wisdom

“The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff.
The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life ; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Life and Destiny (1913)

Life , Learning

“Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting. And let the memory of our dead help us to do this. For they are not wholly separated from us, if we remain loyal to them. In spirit they are with us. And we may think of them as silent, invisible, but real presences in our households.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Life and Destiny (1913)

Thinking , Memory , Dead , Life

“It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds. Then can we turn to life and fill the whole horizon of our souls with it, turn with added zest toall the serious tasks which it imposes and to the pure delights which here and there it affords.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
Life and Destiny (1913)

Soul , Life , Fear

“Its limbs were loose, graceless, lying in an uncomfortable position. Unmoving. Just like any corpse. In life, every man was unique. In death every man was meat.”

Brent Weeks book The Way of Shadows

Source: The Way of Shadows (2008), Chapter 60 (pp. 570-571)

Life , Lying

“Kylar woke two hours before dawn and briefly wondered if death would be too high a price to pay for a full night’s sleep.”

Brent Weeks book The Way of Shadows

Source: The Way of Shadows (2008), Chapter 33 (p. 282)

Sleep , Night

“Regular people joined by a common link. Death, it affected all people, all occupations. Accountants, cooks, realtors, secretaries. A support group for all to grieve. Doctors, the unemployed, teenagers. Dying could happen to anyone.”

Jason Tanamor (1975) Filipino-American Author and Writer

Page 56
Novels, Drama Dolls (2015)

Support , People , Cooking

“To risk death willingly, to venture forth knowing that in so doing you may cease to exist is an unnatural act. To take the life of a fellow human being or to watch your closet comrades die exacts a profound emotional toll.”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

Source: Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead (2019), p. 31

Life

“My attitude towards death has changed a lot in recent years. I can easily accept my own death - it is not difficult. It's hard to lose someone.”

Chulpan Khamatova (1975) Russian actress

As quoted in "Правила жизни Чулпан Хаматовой" in Esquire https://esquire.ru/rules/6929-chulpan-khamatova/#part0

Change

“Death is not the end of life. It is an aspect of life. It is a natural incident in the course of life. It is necessary for your evolution.”

Aloysius Paul D'Souza (1941) Indian Roman Catholic Bishop

Death of Fr Patrick Rodrigues is ‘Nirvana’ – Bishop Aloysius D’Souza https://www.mangalorean.com/patrick-rodrigues-condolence/ (March 24, 2017)

Nature , Life

“I expect death will still be cheap and always available, doesn’t take high tech.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Cryoburn (2010), Chapter 18 (p. 345)

“The aged are cared for until death; adults are employed in jobs that make full use of their abilities; and children are nourished, educated, and fostered;...orphans... the disabled and the diseased are all well taken care of....”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The Analects, A Great Utopia (The World of Da-Tong)

Children , Age , Education , Disease

“The fortune of war has thrown me into the hands of Government, and I am utterly ignorant of what fate may attend me, but in the worst event I hope I shall bear it like a man, and that my death will not disgrace my life.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Letter to Thomas Addis Emmet, William James MacNaven, Arthur O'Connor and John Sweetman (10 November 1798), quoted in T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell and C. J. Woods (eds.), The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763–98, Volume III: France, the Rhine, Lough Swilly and Death of Tone, January 1797 to November 1798 (2007), p. 402

Fate , War , Hope , Life

“It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1950s, Russell–Einstein Manifesto (1955)

Universe , Fear , Disease

“So many smart people get snared in the death grip of the nonessential.”

Greg McKeown (author) book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Twitter

People

“A man has only one death. That death may be as weighty as Mount Tai, or it may be as light as a goose feather. It all depends upon the way he uses it.”

Sima Qian (-145–-86 BC) Chinese historian and writer

Dependency , Light , Way

“Death is psychosomatic.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Rolling Stone interview (June 1970)

“It is because the spirit knows deep down that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else. And in that small distance, lives are changed.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Change

“To me, issues of pleasure should not be mixed with issues of life and death. All said and done, I stand with the position of the Catholic Church.”

John Baptist Odama (1947) born 1947; Roman-Catholic Archbishop of Gulu, Uganda

African Archbishop Reflects on Challenges to Marriage and Family https://www.ncregister.com/news/african-archbishop-reflects-on-challenges-to-marriage-and-family (October 10, 2014)

Pleasure , Life

“I just think the closer we (as a species) think we get to God, the closer we get to death.”

Patrice O'Neal (1969–2011) American stand-up comedian, radio personality, and actor

September 23, 2011
The Opie and Anthony Radio Show

God , Thinking

“Deaths in the U.S. are way down.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2020, July 2020

Way

“Pain he endures, death he awaits.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XCVIII: On the Fickleness of Fortune

Pain

“There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the fear of death.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXVIII: On the Healing Power of the Mind

World , Fear

“Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter IV: On the terrors of death

Life , Fear , Men

“A soldier is a man who knows he's being lead to his death but keeps going because it's an order.”

Suraj Sani (1996) Nigerian writer, Spoken word artist

Source: Quotes from Roses in The desert, P. 31.

“The people who have done the most ghastly things overseas, the ones who don't fight to the death, we would all like to see them never able to do anyone any harm ever again. Locking them up and throwing away the key would be a great idea.”

Mark Rowley (1964) British police officer

Far-right terror threat 'growing' in UK as four plots foiled https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43200966 BBC News (26 February 2018)

People , Fight , Idea

“It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.”

Clive Staples Lewis book A Grief Observed

There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.
A Grief Observed (1961)

Patience , People

“Death, always Death! And the wretches cast it upon me. What a memory I shall leave behind if this lasts. Life is a burden to me.”

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

SOURCE https://books.google.com.au/books?id=pA4LF2gD61sC&pg=PA419&lpg=PA419&dq=%E2%80%9CWhat+a+memory+I+shall+leave+behind+me+if+this+lasts!%E2%80%9D+robespierre&source=bl&ots=H7X80hMmtp&sig=ACfU3U0gG5lHCy5wZrS4cArBVcEFLBhyjQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVjpKnvvPyAhValEsFHS7xABkQ6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CWhat%20a%20memory%20I%20shall%20leave%20behind%20me%20if%20this%20lasts!%E2%80%9D%20robespierre&f=false
Misc Quotes

Memory , Life

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

Adam Silvera book They Both Die at the End

Marcus Aurelius, p. 225
They Both Die at the End (2017)

Fear

“I like doing scary parts, death-stares. Being in the film industry I know it's fake.”

Cainan Wiebe (1995) Canadian actor

Cainan Wiebe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LujoHrgs4Qw (February 21, 2011)

Parting

“Life is a play acted by dying men,
Where, if its heroes seem to foot it well
And go light-tongued without grimace of pain,
Death will be found anon. And who shall tell
Which part was saddest, or in youth or age,
When the tired actor stops and leaves the stage?”

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922) English poet and writer

'Esther, A Young Man's Tragedy" (1892), Sonnet II http://www.sonnets.org/esther.htm

Pain , Light , Youth , Age

“Let death be what takes us, not lack of imagination.”

BJ Miller (1971) palliative caregiver

On What really matter at the end of life in "On What really matter at the end of life" https://www.ted.com/talks/bj_miller_what_really_matters_at_the_end_of_life on TED.COM (2015 March)

Imagination

“The resilience of democracy lies in its self-cleansing effect. Control and correction are the cleansing agents of democracy. Where they are lacking, democracy dies a silent death.”

Jules Sedney (1922–2020) Prime Minister of Suriname (1922-2020)

The Future of Our Past (1997)

Democracy

“One death is as good as another, if death is what you are courting.”

James Blish (1921–1975) American author

Source: …And All the Stars a Stage (1971; [serialized in 1960]), Chapter 14 (p. 186)

“I was interested in giving folks like black, poor people who’ve been marginalized, brutalized, an opportunity to have more visibility. Before seven years ago, we could barely get the news to talk about police violence, let alone police death.”

Opal Tometi (1984) Nigerian–American writer, strategist and community organizer

How the movement that’s changing America was built and where it goes next, By Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone, (16 June 2020)

People

“There are neither graves nor death in Nature; there are various forms of existence, some of which enable us to be chemists, others only chemical substances.”

Bolesław Prus book The Doll

The Doll

Nature

“Nothing in life produce a more powerful joy than a near miss by the Angel of Death.”

Charles Sheffield book Convergence

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 26 (p. 516)

Joy , Angels , Life

“The infinite is inside / our eyes; / not outside, not in the things / of this world, / but in their shadows. / Night, Death, Blinking, / take us through the universe again, / out of time.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Source: The Poetry of Menotti Lerro, p. 40

Time , Night , Universe , World

“I’ve never been afraid to die. Death in my dreams is a walk, compared to what we call life. If I have to fall, I want to do it my way, without anybody supporting me or pushing me.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Donna Giovanna, Act IV, scene iii.
Theater Quotes

Support , Dreams , Way , Life

“We were born boys or girls, but we don’t know what we will become, to which gender we will belong to at death.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Donna Giovanna, Act I, scene iii.
Theater Quotes

Girl , Boy

“Wherever will the promised light be? Is there a paradise among the clouds maybe, rest in the wind, refreshment on the seabed? Where does the dark, the insomnia, the madness, the crying, the illness, the death finish? Where does God hide himself?”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Dove sarà mai la luce promessa? C’è forse un paradiso tra le nuvole, riposo nel vento, ristoro nei fondali marini? Dove finisce il buio, l’insonnia, la pazzia, il pianto, la malattia, la morte? Dove si nasconde Dio?
FROM: Andrew Mangham, The Poetry of Menotti Lerro, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2011, pp. 71-72. ISBN 978-1443828444

God , Light , Cry , Madness