For the dead there are no more toils.
—Sophocles (495–405 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being.
—Deepak Chopra (b.1946) Indian-born American Physician, Public Speaker, Writer
Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
Death doesn’t frighten me.
—Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–97) English Royal, Humanitarian, Peace Activist
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
He was exhaled; his great Creator drew His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life.
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German Novelist, Short Story Writer, Social Critic, Philanthropist, Essayist
Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.
—George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish Novelist, Lecturer, Poet
All that live must die, passing through nature to eternity.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
For days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.
—Johnny Carson (1925–2005) American Comedian
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Every man goes down to his death bearing in his hands only that which he has given away.
—Persian Proverb
But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
—James Thurber
Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
An orphan’s curse would drag to hell, a spirit from on high; but oh! more horrible than that, is a curse in a dead man’s eye!
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Each day is a little life; every waking and rising a little birth; every fresh morning a little youth; every going to rest and sleep a little death.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Let death be daily before your eyes, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.
—Epictetus (55–135) Ancient Greek Philosopher
And what the dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead: the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet; And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey’s end.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Nothing that is really good and God-like dies.
—Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860) German Poet, Patriot
Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
—Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German Existential Philosopher
He has gone over to the majority.
—Petronius (c.27–66 CE) Roman Courtier, Novelist
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne (1605–82) English Author, Physician
So that he seemed not to relinquish life, but to leave one home for another.
—Cornelius Nepos (c.99–c.24 BCE) Roman Historian
I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957) English Novelist, Artist
Death is the gate of life.
—Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French Catholic Religious Leader
Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.
—Georges Gurdjieff (1877–1949) Armenian Spiritual Leader, Occultist
Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
Well, there’s a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
—Thomas Gray (1716–71) English Poet, Book Collector
How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
Your body must become familiar with its death—in all its possible forms and degrees—as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.
—Dag Hammarskjold (1905–61) Swedish Statesman, UN Diplomat
If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.
—Muriel Spark (1918–2006) Scottish Novelist, Short-story Writer, Poet
You want to live—but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying—and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.
—Jimi Hendrix (1942–70) American Musician, Songwriter, Singer
God’s finger touched him and he slept.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hath cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!
—Walter Raleigh (1552–1618) English Courtier, Navigator, Poet
All say, “How hard it is that we have to die” — a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
—Samuel Butler
Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
There is no such thing as death. In nature nothing dies. From each sad remnant of decay, some forms of life arise so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it.
—Charles Mackay (1814–89) Scottish Poet, Journalist, Songwriter
Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater