quotations about death
Whatever it is that occurs at death, I believe it deserves to be called a miracle. The miracle, ironically, is that we don't die. The cessation of the body is an illusion, and like a magician sweeping aside a curtain, the soul reveals what lies beyond.
DEEPAK CHOPRA
Life After Death
Dying was just an extended version of Ash Wednesday.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret to life is to "die before you die"--and find that there is no death.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
IRVIN D. YALOM
interview, Wise Counsel
In accepting death as inevitable, we don't label it as a good thing or a bad thing. As one of my teachers once said to me, "Death happens. It is just death, and how we meet it is up to us."
JOAN HALIFAX
Being with Dying
For a single path leads to the house of Hades.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Telephos
The thorn of death falls from heaven, and its myriad forms leave us no room to move.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Ah! hear the dirge that all mankind must learn:
Place not on earth thy trust,
For dust thou art, to dust shalt thou return,
Dust unto dust.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Fame"
How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Queen Mab
Death joins us to the great majority.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Revenge
Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
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
While life could be evaded, death could not.
DEAN KOONTZ
Velocity
Death is not a self-evident phenomenon. The margins between life and death are socially and culturally constructed, mobile, multiple, and open to dispute and reformulation.
MARGARET LOCK
Twice Dead
When I think of the joy awaiting,
Beyond the bier and the shroud,
Death seems but a transient shadow,
A passing Summer cloud.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Summer Clouds"
Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
The dead are too much with us.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Isle of the Dead
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"What I Believe"
To death we owe our life; the passing of one generation opens a way for another.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
To die for others is the highest purpose a person may achieve.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN & NANCY HOLDER
Ghost Roads