Like pilgrims to the appointed place we tend; The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
—Eugene Ionesco (1909–94) Romanian-born French Dramatist
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
—Montesquieu (1689–1755) French Political Philosopher, Jurist
He has gone over to the majority.
—Petronius (c.27–66 CE) Roman Courtier, Novelist
If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.
—Dean Smith (1931–2015) American Basketball Coach
The Father is the Giver of Life; but the Mother is the Giver of Death, because her womb is the gate of ingress to matter, and through her life is ensouled to form, and no form can be either infinite or eternal. Death is implicit in birth.
—Kabbalah Teaching Jewish Mystical, Theosophical Tradition
An evil life is a kind of death.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.
—John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric
Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
—Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German Existential Philosopher
The best place a person can die, is where they die for others.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist
Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is dead. Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable.
—The Bhagavad Gita Hindu Scripture
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
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
Let no man fear to die, we love to sleep all, and death is but the sounder sleep.
—Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) English Dramatist
The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
—Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer
Distance of time and place generally cure what they seem to aggravate; and taking leave of our friends resembles taking leave of the world, of which it has been said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.
—Henry Fielding (1707–54) English Novelist, Dramatist
Death the last voyage, the longest, and the best.
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–38) American Novelist
I’d rather die while I’m living than live while I’m dead.
—Jimmy Buffett (b.1946) American Musician, Author
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
The grave’s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.
—Andrew Marvell (1621–78) English Metaphysical Poet
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
One approaches the journey’s end. But the end is a goal, not a catastrophe.
—George Sand (1804–76) French Novelist, Dramatist
God’s finger touched him and he slept.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
Only the young die good.
—Oliver Herford (1863–1935) American Writer, Artist, Illustrator
Death is a punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a “wandering to find home,” why should we not look forward to the arrival?
—C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) Irish-born British Academic, Author, Literary Scholar
I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was two things I had a right to, liberty and death. If I could not have one, I would have the other, for no man should take me alive.
—Harriet Tubman (c.1820–1913) American Abolitionist, Social Reformer
The fear of death is worse than death.
—Robert Burton (1577–1640) English Scholar, Clergyman
For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
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
Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.
—Sidney Hook (1902–89) American Social Philosopher, Educationalist
Every moment of our lives we are either growing or dying—and it’s largely a choice, not fate. Throughout its life cycle, every one of the body’s trillions of cells is driven to grow and improve its ability to use more of its innate yet untapped capacity. Research biologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who was twice awarded the Nobel Prize, called this syntropy, which he defined as the “innate drive in living matter to perfect itself”. It turns conventional thinking upside down…As living cells—or as people—there is no staying the same. If we aim for some middle ground or status quo, it’s an illusion—beneath the surface what’s actually happening is we’re dying, not growing. And the goal of a lifetime is continued growth, not adulthood. As Rene Dubos put it, “Genius is childhood recaptured”. For this to happen, studies show that we must recapture—or prevent the loss of—such child-like traits as the ability to learn, to love, to laugh about small things, to leap, to wonder, and to explore. It’s time to rescue ourselves from our grown-up ways before it’s too late.
—Robert Cooper (b.1947) British Diplomat
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
The pride of dying rich raises the loudest laugh in hell.
—John W. Foster
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
—Thomas Gray (1716–71) English Poet, Book Collector
Let us go in; the fog is rising.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
For days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.
—Johnny Carson (1925–2005) American Comedian
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
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
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne (1605–82) English Author, Physician
And now, I am dying beyond my means. Sipping champagne on his deathbed.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
For the dead there are no more toils.
—Sophocles (495–405 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Composer
We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning.
—Marcus Manilius (c.48 BCE–20 CE) Roman Poet, Astrologer
I think of death as some delightful journey that I shall take when all my tasks are done.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American Poet, Journalist
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
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
—Norman Cousins (1915–90) American Journalist, Author, Academic, Activist
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
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 Political leader, Revolutionary, Novelist, Poet, Critic