DEATH QUOTES XVIII

quotations about death

Alone in a room
needless I sit
I close my eyes
and try to forget
Death is calling
get in line

JAY REATARD

"Death Is Forming", Blood Visions


Death is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


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

JOHN THORNTON

Maxims and Directions for Youth


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


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

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Suttree


Unjustly men hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.

AESCHYLUS

fragment


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


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


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


Death augments distance and dulls the memory. Death reconciles.

LEONID ANDREYEV

He Who Gets Slapped


Death is simply the soul's change of residence.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust


Dying makes what is left of living seem precious. The dying, and those about to die, feel that these last moments must be made beautiful. The cannot be permitted to include the bitterness and the enmities of the living that seem so inexhaustible. So often we hear people who, in dying, resign the old enmities and ask and grant forgiveness. Through such forgiveness they help to make dying beautiful. And, incidentally, they offer a lesson to those who go on living the apparently inexhaustibel life.

JOHN DANIEL BARRY

"The Dead", Reactions and Other Essays


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


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

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?

EURIPIDES

Phrixus [fragment]


Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The Carriage held but just Ourselves --
And Immortality.

EMILY DICKINSON

"Because I could not stop for Death"


Death is the Christian's vacation morning. School is out. It is time to go home.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Death is the condition of higher and more fruitful life.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


Death is the side of life which is turned away from us.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

letter to W. von Hulewicz, The Duino Elegies