DEATH QUOTES XVIII

quotations about death

The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the emotions, as the the inviolable condition of life.

THOMAS MANN

The Magic Mountain


When bones and flesh have finished their business together,
we lay them carefully, in positions they're willing to keep,
and cover them over.
Their eyes and ours won't meet anymore. We hope.

SARAH LINDSAY

"Shanidar, Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower


Far happier he, who, young and full of pride
And radiant with the glory of the sun,
Leaves earth before his singing time is done.
All wounds of Time the graveyard flowers hide,
His beauty lives, as fresh as when he died.

JOYCE KILMER

"The Clouded Sun"


How terrible is Death to one man, yet to another it appears the greatest providence in nature; even to all ages and conditions it is the wish of some, relief of many, and the end of all. It puts us all upon a level; the prince and peasant are doomed to the same fate.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


Death to the wicked is all loss, to the righteous all gain.

JOHN THORNTON

Maxims and Directions for Youth


When a house has just lost its soul, a stricken silence falls over the sudden emptiness that no one will fill again. And all the noises that may be made later in that house will be like a scandalous din, ugly echoes from one room to another, from one corridor to another, sharp and discordant as if the walls are no longer able to absorb any music once the source of harmony has been taken away. But this strange detail about the power of death can only be picked up by ears that are very attentive to the smallest murmurs of life. Rational people go through these empty spaces with the serenity of a lawyer, and their indulgent smiles categorise you if you decide to point out in their presence that there is something lacking in the atmosphere.

PIERRE MAGNAN

The Messengers of Death


Sweet lovely death
I am waiting for your breath
Come sweet death, one last caress

METALLICA

"Last Caress"


I cannot tell you if the dead,
Who loved us fondly when on earth,
Walk by our side, sit at our hearth,
By ties of old affection led....
But this I know--in many dreams
They come to us from realms afar,
And leave the golden gates ajar
Through which immortal glory streams.

ALBERT LAIGHTON

"The Dead"


For though Death be a dark passage, it leads to immortality, and that is recompence enough for suffering of it.

WILLIAM PENN

Some Fruits of Solitude


Death is an antidote for this life, and it makes another more stable form of life which is insoluble in everything.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Nowadays, we have technology that's improved so that we can bring people back to life. In fact, there are drugs being developed right now -- who knows if they'll ever make it to the market -- that may actually slow down the process of brain-cell injury and death. Imagine, you fast-forward to ten years down the line and you've given a patient whose heart has just stopped this amazing drug, and actually what it does is it slows everything down so that the things that would've happened over an hour, now happen over two days. As medicine progresses, we will end up with lots and lots of ethical questions.

SAM PARNIA

interview, Time, Sep. 18, 2008


We are mere notes in a piece of music played by the angel Death--heard and lost.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


There are too many poems about death. Death, churchyards, wormy cadavers. Death is really a small part of life, and it's not the part that you want to concentrate on, because life is life and it's full of untold particulars.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist


There is no god but death.

MAXWELL ANDERSON

Elizabeth the Queen


Old man death sits all alone
In quiet contemplation
Picking at his blackened nails
Waiting for his next victim
Watching as your life force drains

VENOM

"Death & Dying", Metal Black


We give our dead
To the orchards
And the groves.
We give our dead
To life.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Parable of the Talents


Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.

MARY SHELLEY

Frankenstein


Death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

Other Voices


Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible war motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the dilated spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbèd ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling -- 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathèd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Measure for Measure


They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Suttree