Death - Quotes

Don’t die before you’re dead. - Rachel Wolchin

A death is the most terrible of facts. - Iris Murdoch

Dying is as natural as living. - Unknown

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. - Unknown

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. - Leonardo Davinci

As sure as death. - Giovanni Boccaccio

Avoiding talking, or thinking about death is not going to make it go away. We all come face to face with death at some point in our life, and the sooner we understand death, the better. - Unknown

Better to die once and for all, than live in continual terror. - Aesop

Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once. - William Shakespeare

Death also teaches us the impermanence of all things. All things change. All things die. This is true in nature as well as in human life. Even granite mountains crumble into dust just as the most beautiful of past kingdoms have left only silent stones to surround their mystery. To be attached to things or people, both of which will surely vanish, can only bring despair, for eventually one is left with only a handful of dust or a frail memory. - Leo Buscaglia

Death appears unlovely only to those attached to earthly things. - Unknown

Death does not surprise a wise man, he is always ready to leave. - Jean de la Fontaine

Death either destroys or unhusks us. If it means liberation, better things await us when our burden’s gone: if destruction, nothing at all awaits us; blessings and curses are abolished. - Seneca

Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow. - Eric Holfer

Death has got something to be said for it: There’s no need to get out of bed for it; Wherever you may be, They bring it to you, free. - Sir Kingsley William Amis

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh. - Marcus Aurelius

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives. - A. Sachs

Death is neither a threat nor a horror. Rather, it serves as life’s greatest ally. - Unknown

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the Dawn has come. - Rabindranath Tagor

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. - Norman Cousins 

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily. - Napoleon Bonaparte

Death is shrouded in its own mystery. One can never know beforehand precisely how or when it will come. No matter how prepared we are, it always seems to take us by surprise. Even forewarned we seem unable to contend with the shock or accept it without experiencing deep feelings of fear, superstition, anxiety and isolation. - Unknown

Death is the greatest of life’s teachers. It is only the ignorant and those who are afraid to live who fear it. The wise accept Death as their intimate friend and most gracious teacher. To be fully active and fully functioning as a person we must make death a life long friend. - Leo Buscaglia

Death is the last chapter in time, but the first chapter in eternity. - Unknown

Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console. - Charles Colton 

Death is the moment when dying ends. - Montaigne

Death is the only inescapable, unavoidable, sure thing. We are sentenced to die the day we're born. - Gary Mark Gilmore

Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well. - Alexander Smith

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. - Seneca

Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject. - Hannah Arendt

Death surprises us in the midst of our hopes. - Thomas Fuller

Death teaches us that in the long run nothing belongs to us. Even if we desire to form permanent attachments or possessions, we in truth, cannot. Things will break in spite of us. People will depart when it is their time no matter how loudly we protest. A knowledge of death can give one a deep feeling of freedom – both from attachment to self, as well as attachment to others and things. The less we are attached to, the less we have to worry about. - Leo Buscaglia

Death, if we are willing to look, constantly makes us aware of itself. It is everywhere, even at the first sign of life. - Unknown

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature. - Marcus Aurelius

Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist, death is not present, and when death is present, we no longer exist. - Epictetus

Death: A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor. - Seneca

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else. - Marcus Aurelius

Do not grudge your brother his rest. He has at last become free, safe and immortal, and ranges joyous through the boundless heavens; he has left this low-lying region and has soared upwards to that place which receives in its happy bosom the souls set free from the chains of matter. Your brother has not lost the light of day, but has obtained a more enduring light. He has not left us, but has gone on before. - Seneca

Every moment of life is a step toward the grave. - Crebillon

For a man who has done his natural duty, death is as natural as sleep. - George Santayana  

For life is near every day to death. - Phaedrus

Hardest of deaths to a mortal Is the death he sees ahead. - Bacchylides

He who doesn’t fear death dies only once. - Giovanni Falcone

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present, than the living man. - Saint-Exupery

How fascinating is death, the extinction of life. One moment here and the next gone. The light put out and only the empty bag of the body left. - Henry van Dyke 

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing. - Anais Nin 

If you understand and accept death, you will not fear it. If you do not fear death, what else do you need to fear? - Unknown

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

In every parting there is an image of death. - George Eliot

It hath often been said, that it is not death, but dying which is terrible. - Henry Fielding

It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing. - Andrew Young

It is a matter of giving more to this world than you take from it, so when you die, you do not owe it anything. - Gordon Parks

It is a myth to think death is just for the old. Death is there from the very beginning. - Herman Feifel

It is infamy to die, and not be missed. - Carlos Wilcox

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. - Marcus Aurelius

It is not death that we should fear. Rather it is the possibility of a life unlived that is the real tragedy. Perhaps the closer we come to understanding this, the more easily we will come to accept death, and the more fully we will learn to live here and now. - Leo Buscaglia

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls. - Epicurus

Just where death is expecting you is something we cannot know; so, for your part, expect him everywhere. - Seneca

Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life. - Sogyal Rinpoche

Man imagines that it is death he fears, but what he fears is the unknown ….  - Saint-Exupery

Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is to work diligently while the day lasts. The best preparation for death is life. - George Macdonald

Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five. - Benjamin Franklin

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. - Francis Bacon

Nobody know, in fact, what death is, nor whether to man it is not perchance the greatest of all blessings; yet people fear it as if they knew it to be the worst of all evils. - Socrates

One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. - Joseph Campbell 

Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darknesses. - E. M. Forster

Pale death knocks with impartial foot at poor men’s hovels and king’s palaces. - Horatius

People fear death and they live in some measure of denial, pretending that death is something that happens to other people. We don’t think about death enough, for if we do, we will know that there is nothing to fear about death, and perhaps we will be more appreciative of life then. - Unknown

Perhaps the fact of life most conducive to living fully as a person is an honest awareness and acceptance of death. Death tells us that we must  live life now, in the moment – that tomorrow is an illusion and never comes. It tells us that it is not the quantity of our days, or hours, or years that matter, but rather the quality of the time spent. - Unknown

Recollection of death, accompanied with right attitude of mind, gives a man courage and calm even in time of death. -  K. Sri Dhammananda

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. - Steve Job

Refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear. - Seneca

Since every man who lives is born to die, And none can boast sincere felicity, With equal mind, what happens, let us bear, Nor joy nor grieve too much for things beyond our care. Like pilgrims to the appointed place we tend; The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end. - John Dryden

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows. - Michael Landon 

The confronting of death gives the most positive reality to life itself. It makes the individual existence real, absolute, and concrete. Death is the one fact of my life which is not relative but absolute and m awareness of this gives my existence and what I do each hour an absolute quality. - Rollo May

The constant recollection of death is the test of human conduct. - Marcus Aurelius

The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear - Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year. - Emily Dickson

The end of all is death and man’s life passeth away suddenly as a shadow. - Thomas A Kempis

The fear of death keeps us from living, not from dying. Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall ever have a beginning. Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live. - Unknown

The fear of death is the basic fear that influences all others; a fear from which no one is immune no matter how disguised it may be. - Ernest Becker

The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing. - Marcus Aurelius

The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life. - Thomas Mann

The single most important thing I’ve ever learned was that I’m going to die. For once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you are free to live. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically – to promote a cause you believe in. - Unknown

There is no cause to fear death; it is but an incident in life. It is as natural as birth. - David McKay

There's something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now. - Angelina Jolie

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills. - Marcus Aurelius

To a father, when a child dies, the future dies; to a child when a parent dies, the past dies. - Red Auerbach

To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. - Walt Whitman 

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable. - Erich Fromm

To live in hearts we leave Is not to die. - Thomas Campell

We’re all going to die. All of us. What  a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. we are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing. - Charles Bukowski

We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning. - Minilius Astonomica

We can think of death as something that stalks us all our lives or we can see it as a reminder that our time is precious. - Leo Buscaglia

Weep not for him who departs from life, for there is no suffering beyond death. - Palladas

What are the fears of death? Are they the loss of loves, family, friends, possessions and fame; or of an unknown crammed with the varieties of uncertainty extolled by religion and philosophy? Only the living can grieve, for in death there is naught to sorrow about. - Unknown

What new thing is it for a man to die, whose whole life is nothing but a journey to death? - Seneca

When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a  different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home. - Chief Aupumut, Mohican

When we can embrace death as simply another aspect of the life cycle, we will give appreciation and value to each life encounter knowing that it will never occur again. And each of these moments will be the source of what we shall know as our lifetime. - Leo Buscaglia

You will die not because you are ill, but because you are alive. - Seneca