Death Quotes

Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.
– Bret Harte
There is no role in a war unless the parties are exhausted. These parties are not exhausted. They are still on a triumphal path. They are not on a coalition path. It's an either/or death struggle. They don't understand that the death is ongoing right now and could take several cycles for the corpse to be autopsied. I hope you use this - this should put your paper on the map. Everybody should read it.
– Tom Hayden
There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.
– Ernest Hemingway
Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.
– Katharine Hepburn
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
Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines. And in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them.
– Abbie Hoffman
Death tugs at my ear and says: Live, I am coming.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
To awake from death is to die in peace.
– Doug Horton
To secede from the Union and set up another government would cause war. If you go to war with the United States, you will never conquer her, as she has the money and the men. If she does not whip you by guns, powder, and steel, she will starve you to death. It will take the flower of the country - the young men.
– Sam Houston
For Christians, the reason why it is ordinarily assumed that a marriage will go on till death do us part has been that this advanced lesson in Charity which marriage opens into is a long, a difficult one, and the life span that my spouse and I are allowed will certainly not be nearly long enough to finish the lesson... I will have as much as I can do to learn this advanced lesson well with one other person; a harem will only confuse my efforts.
– Thomas Howard
A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion.
– Robert Hughes
A detective sees death in all the various forms at least five times a week.
– Evan Hunter
He sees death in convicted thieves, the burglars, the muggers, the con men, the pimps, a death imposed by law, the gradual death of confinement behind bars.
– Evan Hunter
A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.
– Aldous Huxley
Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?
– Aldous Huxley
I acknowledge that it gives me a pang of sorrow to see the language of the bards and brehons, of the Saints and Sages, the language of Rory O'More, of Patrick Sarsfield, and Owen Roe O'Neill, the best men that Ireland ever produced, kicked contemptuously aside, crawling away, as it were, with a broken leg to die, like a hunted dog in a ditch, a vile and lingering death.
– Douglas Hyde
I have a simple philosophy about life and death. How easily it comes and how easily it can end! What man can afford to waste time? At any moment death can claim anyone, and when it does, death itself is unimportant. The only thing that matters is the work that one has accomplished.
– King Hussein
I never was one of those ambitious people craving for expansion. I believe in God and life after death. Each one of us lives his days according to the will of God. I believe also in nations and that individuals' efforts should be dedicated for the good of nations and not for idolizing persons.
– King Hussein
Madam, Life's a piece in bloom death goes dogging everywhere: She's the tenant of the room he's the ruffian on the stair.
– William Ernest Henley
Individually, museums are fine institutions, dedicated to the high values of preservation, education and truth; collectively, their growth in numbers points to the imaginative death of this country.
– Robert Hewison
Many people have played themselves to death. Many people have eaten and drunk themselves to death. Nobody ever thought himself to death.
– Gilbert Highet
It is only in the light of the inescapable fact of death that a person can adequately engage and enter upon the mysterious fact of life.
– John E. Hines
Having in my life been bitten by the jaws of both victory and defeat, I must rush to add that success is to failure as butter pecan ice cream is to death.
– Rupert Holmes
Captain Hale, alone, without sympathy or support, save that from above, on the near approach of death asked for a clergyman to attend him. It was refused. He then requested a Bible; that too was refused by his inhuman jailer.
– William Hull
In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
– Eugene Ionesco
A dislike of death is no proof of the want of religion. The instincts of nature shrink from it, for no creature can like its own dissolution. But though death is not desired, the result of it may be, for dying to the Christian is the way to life eternal.
– William Jay
I have only some initials to say: NAFTA; GATT; WTO; IMF. Strike, the CEO's and polititcians say, and instead of bringing foreign workers to the factory, we'll simply move the factory to the foreign workers. And if the foreign workers strike, so will the death squads.
– Derrick Jensen
No matter what we call it, poison is still poison, death is still death, and industrial civilization is still causing the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet.
– Derrick Jensen
I think a lot of people think about the wrongs they did in life at some point. I can't make amends for the reason I'm on death row because my life was in jeopardy, but I wish things were different. But yes, I've done wrongs in life although there were petty things and I have made my peace with God, as should most people.
– Lonnie Earl Johnson
Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.
– Timothy Jones
If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers.
– Alphonse Karr
Life without Liberty is far worse than death.
– Hamid Karzai
Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.
– John Keats
Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily course of duty run. Cast off dull sloth, and joyful rise to pay thy morning sacrifice. All praise to thee, who safe hast kept and hast refreshed me while I slept! Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake, I may of endless life partake.
– Thomas Ken
Even though people may be well known, they hold in their hearts the emotions of a simple person for the moments that are the most important of those we know on earth: birth, marriage and death.
– Jackie Kennedy
I do not care so much for the death of my gunner, as for other passages of my voyage, for I have good friends in England that will bring me off for that.
– William Kidd
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.
– Ben Kingsley
Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
– Arthur Koestler
Privacy was in sufficient danger before TV appeared, and TV has given it its death blow.
– Louis Kronenberger
I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
The tax on inheritances, or the 'death tax' is unfair, inefficient, economically unsound and, frankly, immoral.
– Jon Kyl
We should end this tax [death] on virtue, work, savings, job creation and the American dream, and end it for good.
– Jon Kyl
The most painful death in all the world is the death of a child. When a child dies, when one child dies-not the 11 per 1,000 we talk about statistically, but the one that a mother held briefly in her arms-he leaves an empty place in a parent's heart that will never heal.
– Thomas H. Kean
On CBS Radio the news of Ed Murrow's death, reportedly from lung cancer, was followed by a cigarette commercial.
– Alexander Kendrick
At the time of his death the name of Albert Sanger was barely known to the musical public of Great Britain. Among the very few who had heard of him there were even some who called him Sanje, in the French manner, being disinclined to suppose that great men are occasionally born in Hammersmith.
– Margaret Kennedy
Merchandisers, by embedding subliminal trigger devices in media, are able to evoke a strong emotional relationship between, say, a product perceived in an advertisement weeks before and the strongest of all emotional stimuli - love (sex) and death.
– Wilson Bryan Key
The essential part of our being can only survive if the transient part dissolves. Death is a condition of survival. That which has been gained must be eternalized, and can only be eternalized by being transmuted, by passing through death they must return.
– Pir Vilayat Khan
Hollywood, to hear some writers tell it, is the place where they take an author's steak tartare and make cheeseburger out of it. Upon seeing the film, they say, the author promptly cuts his throat, bleeding to death in a pool of money.
– Fletcher Knebel
Like all of us in this storm between birth and death, I can wreak no great changes on the world, only small changes for the better, I hope, in the lives of those I love.
– Dean Koontz
Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth;Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust;Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace;Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
– Satish Kumar
I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending that haunts our sleep so much as the fear... that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.
– Rabbi Harold Kushner
The man stands between life and death. The man thinks... The fish is mute. expressionless. The fish doesn't think, because the fish knows everything. The fish knows everything.
– Emir Kusturica
We need not fear life, because God is the Ruler of all and we need not fear death, because He shares immortality with us.
– Ann Landers
O what a thing is age! Death without death's quiet.
– Walter Savage Landor
More than illness or death, the American journalist fears standing alone against the whim of his owners or the prejudices of his audience. Deprive William Safire of the insignia of the New York Times, and he would have a hard time selling his truths to a weekly broadsheet in suburban Duluth.
– Lewis H. Lapham
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior.
– Fran Lebowitz
The first requisite for immortality is death.
– Stanislaw J. Lec
The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death.
– Vladimir Lenin
I mean, I'm 48 years old and I've been through a lot in my life - you know, loss, whether it be death, illness, separation. I mean, the failed expectations... We all have dreams.
– Annie Lennox
If Arnold is elected, you know who I'd feel sorry for? The people on death row. Imagine, you're about to be executed, the governor calls, you think it's your reprieve, and you hear 'Hasta la vista, baby.'
– Jay Leno
It is hard to have patience with people who say There is no death or Death doesn't matter. 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.
– C. S. Lewis
Sleep... Oh! how I loathe those little slices of death.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
While Americans let something as minor as rain impede us from voting, Iraqis snubbed the possibility of death or injury, bravely voting, and sending America a big 'thank you' by their actions.
– Trent Lott
Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.
– James Russell Lowell
We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.
– James Russell Lowell
Make sure to send a lazy man the angel of death.
– Martin Luther
Death in my mind isn't a finality. There's a continuum: It's like at night, you go to sleep and in the daytime you wake up, or whenever you wake up, and it's a new day.
– David Lynch
A truly appreciative child will break, lose, spoil, or fondle to death any really successful gift within a matter of minutes.
– J. Russel Lynes
The aims of life are the best defense against death.
– Primo Levi
For it is a land of illusion, a place in the mind, a shimmering mirage of riches and mystery and death. These illusions have distorted its landscape and contorted its history.
– Richard E. Lingenfelter
The valley we call Death, isn't really that different from much of the rest of the desert West. It's just a little deeper, a little hotter and a little drier. What sets it apart more than anything else is the mind's eye.
– Richard E. Lingenfelter
All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer. art is an action against death. It is a denial of death.
– Jacques Lipchitz
In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death.
– Sam Llewelyn
A deceased man has the right to breathe life into the womb of his wife and prove that love is stronger than death.
– Paul Lombard
The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.
– Lucan
Well the themes for me were and remain sex and love and grief and death - the things that make us and undo us, create and destroy, how we breed and disappear and the emotional context that surrounds these events.
– Thomas Lynch
How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.
– George MacDonald
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life.
– Joseph de Maistre
Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.
– David Mamet
Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.
– Paul de Man
There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
– Nelson Mandela
Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear.
– Horace Mann
You stars that reigned at my nativity, whose influence hath allotted death and hell.
– Christopher Marlowe
If fame is to come only after death, I am in no hurry for it.
– Marcus Valerius Martial
You give me nothing during your life, but you promise to provide for me at your death. If you are not a fool, you know what I wish for!
– Marcus Valerius Martial
A life quenched in an untimely manner is always sad, the life of a young person quenched, whatever the circumstances, troubles us deeply. If that death arose through suicide that sense of loss is compounded inexorably. TS Eliot's evocative words serve to underline that awful sense of loss for the potential that was never allowed to fully blossom, for all that might have been but wasn't to be:
– Mary McAleese
People mourn when a person dies, but no-one mourns the billions of intestinal bacteria that his death dooms. Speciesism, I calls it.
– John McCarthy
Death is the great hope of all life; the desire to expend itself; to be used and consumed by its own longing for itself.
– Bryant H. McGill
Through death all life is converted into food for the inconceivably vast maw of eternity.
– Bryant H. McGill
It is simply untrue that all our institutions are evil,... that all politicians are mere opportunists, that all aspects of university life are corrupt. Having discovered an illness, it's not terribly useful to prescribe death as a cure.
– George McGovern
Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.
– Herman Melville
The word civilization to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing. For me it was always so. I don't believe in the golden ages, you see... civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture.
– Henry Miller
Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them!
– Margaret Mitchell
I'd be interested in finding out if there is a light you walk into, and if you do meet people from your life and walk hand in hand with Jesus. I would hate for my death to be tragic: I'd like to be old when it happens. But hopefully a young death is unlikely.
– Brian Molko
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
– Charles de Montesquieu