Whom the gods love die young no matter how long they live.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
His was the face you could never quite see, his the hands which dealt all the spades from a dead deck, his the eyes beyond the flames, his the grin from beyond the grave of the world.
—Stephen King (b.1947) American Novelist, Screenwriter, Columnist, Film Director
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist
He has outsoared the shadow of our night; envy and calumny and hate and pain, and that unrest which men miscall delight, can touch him not and torture not again; from the contagion of the world’s slow stain, he is secure.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
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
Woe, woe, woe… in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
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 liberator of him whom freedom cannot release; the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure; the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first things in youth and yet last the longest in the dust.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
The best place a person can die, is where they die for others.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist
If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finish, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Writer
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
Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927–2014) Colombian Novelist, Short-Story Writer
There’s nothing certain in a man’s life except this: That he must lose it.
—Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) Greek Playwright
To a father, when a child dies, the future dies; to a child when a parent dies, the past dies.
—Red Auerbach (1917–2006) American Basketball Coach
Our birth is nothing but our death begun, as tapers waste the moment they take fire.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Death is like thunder in two particulars: we are alarmed at the sound of it, and it is formidable only from that which preceded it.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Novelist
Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?
—Norman Cousins (1912–1990) American Political Journalist
If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
—Dan Millman (b.1946) American Children’s Books Writer, Sportsperson
As it is with a play, so it is with life—what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
The fear of death is worse than death.
—Robert Burton (1577–1640) English Scholar, Clergyman
Come he slow or come he fast. It is but death who comes at last.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing—a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
He has gone over to the majority.
—Petronius (c.27–66 CE) Roman Courtier, Novelist
Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
and the hunter home from the hill.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
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