quotations about death
Even as a child I was fascinated by death, not in a spiritual sense, but in an aesthetic one. A hamster or guinea pig would pass away, and, after burying the body, I'd dig it back up: over and over, until all that remained was a shoddy pelt. It earned me a certain reputation, especially when I moved on to other people's pets. "Igor," they called me. "Wicked, spooky." But I think my interest was actually fairly common, at least among adolescent boys. At that age, death is something that happens only to animals and grandparents, and studying it is like a science project.
DAVID SEDARIS
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
My years have limped; but I
Have tried so hard to fly!
And now, suppose Death brings
Gulls' wings
At last, for me to keep?
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"Alternatives", Burning Bush
When you're Dead ... you stay up all night long.
KELLY LINK
"The Specialist's Hat", Stranger Things Happen
Death has this much to be said for it:
You don't have to get out of bed for it.
KINGSLEY AMIS
"Delivery Guaranteed", Collected Poems
Life is hard, but death is even harder.
PETER KREEFT
Between Heaven and Hell
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
PLATO
Phaedo
My soul defense against the natural horror which death inspires, is to love beyond it.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Thoughts", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Could we draw back the covering of the tomb; could we see, what those are now, who once were mortals, oh! how would it surprise and grieve us! Surprise us, to behold the prodigious transformation that has taken place on every individual; grieve us, to observe the dishonor done to our nature in general, within these subterraneous lodgments!
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Every deceased friend is a magnet drawing us into another world.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
It was mad, but I just couldn't shake it. I was Death, Destroyer of Life, and all I wanted was a cottage by a stream, a pot of hot soup on the stove, and someone to love me.
GEORGE PENDLE
Death: A Life
I don't want to die. Damn death. Long live life!
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
Death is the loss of everything all at once.
JULIE SALAMON
Hospital
Sweet lovely death
I am waiting for your breath
Come sweet death, one last caress
METALLICA
"Last Caress"
Death is no more than a turning of us over from Time to Eternity.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
That's life. Still the best alternative to death.
CODY MCFADYEN
The Face of Death
You cannot avoid mortality. But you can choose your way of meeting it. And that is the most that any man can hope for.
DAVID GERROLD
The Man Who Folded Himself
Death joins us to the great majority.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Revenge
Death, lonely death,
Beneath the withered leaves.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Blood Wedding
Death and the sun can't be looked at steadily.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Here was a man who now for the first time found himself looking into the eyes of death--who was passing through one of those rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace, which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue. When the commonplace 'We must all die' transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness 'I must die--and soon,' then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch