What a superlatively grand and consoling idea is that of death! Without this radiant idea—this delightful morning star, indicating that the luminary of eternity is going to rise, life would, to my view, darken into midnight melancholy. The expectation of living here, and living thus always, would be indeed a prospect of overwhelming despair. But thanks to that fatal decree that dooms us to die; thanks to that gospel which opens the visions of an endless life; and thanks above all to that Saviour friend who has promised to conduct the faithful through the sacred trance of death, into scenes of Paradise and everlasting delight.
—John Foster Dulles (1888–1959) American Republican Public Official, Lawyer
When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness…. No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever…. I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
Life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is whole.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave – thank God for the quiet grave
—John Keats (1795–1821) English Poet
I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting?. It is here in my heart and mind and memories
—Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American Poet
If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
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 (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
—Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Polymath, Painter, Sculptor, Architect
Death is the most convenient time to tax rich people.
—David Lloyd George (1863–1945) British Liberal Statesman
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
Death doesn’t affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn’t concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
He was exhaled; his great Creator drew His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
We have long had death and taxes as the two standards of inevitability. But there are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two.
—Erwin Griswold (1904–94) American Attorney
The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you’ll grow out of it.
—Doris Day (1924–2019) American Actor, Singer, Animal Rights Activist
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
Loss and possession, Death and life are one. There falls no shadow where There shines no sun.
—Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) British Historian, Poet, Critic
It’s astonishing how important a man becomes when he dies.
—Yiddish Proverb
Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a clown; all’s fish that comes to his net; he throws at all, and sweeps stakes; he’s no mower that takes a nap at noon-day, but drives on, fair weather or foul, and cuts down the green grass as well as the ripe corn: he’s neither squeamish nor queesy-stomach d, for he swallows without chewing, and crams down all things into his ungracious maw; and you can see no belly he has, he has a confounded dropsy, and thirsts after men’s lives, which he gurgles down like mother’s milk.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
I really wanted to die at certain periods in my life. Death was like love, a romantic escape. I took pills because I didn’t want to throw myself off my balcony and know people would photograph me lying dead below.
—Brigitte Bardot (b.1934) French Film Star
Every man goes down to his death bearing in his hands only that which he has given away.
—Persian Proverb
One approaches the journey’s end. But the end is a goal, not a catastrophe.
—George Sand (1804–76) French Novelist, Dramatist
Death doesn’t frighten me.
—Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–97) English Royal, Humanitarian, Peace Activist
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
—Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian Poet, Playwright, Essayist
A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
You gotta love livin’, baby, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.
—Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American Singer
Just as a flood sweeps away with its current the trees on either bank, so are the lives of sentient beings swept away by decay and death.
—Buddhist Teaching
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 Inayat Khan (1916–2004) British Sufi Mystic, Psychologist, Religious Leader
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