Death Quotes

It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair. But when dogs shame the gray head and gray chin and nakedness of an old man killed, it is the most piteous thing that happens among wretched mortals.

Homer, The Iliad

How exquisite that gaze of yours would be if you were being whipped to death, in the last agony.

Leopold von Sacher - Masoch, Venus in Furs

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

Joseph Stalin

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman.

Woody Allen

Give me an incubator or give me death!

Hawkeye and Trapper, M*A*S*H

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.

Oscar Wilde

We Americans want peace, and it is now evident that we must be prepared to demand it. For other peoples have wanted peace, and the peace they received was the peace of death.

Rev. Francis J. Spellman, Archbishop of New York. 22 September, 1940

There is something about poverty that smells like death.

Zora Neale Hurston

I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things - Disease and death... I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals.

Emma Thompson, Vanity Fai

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Oscar Wilde

Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life.

Adele Brookman

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; have in general been as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths.

James Madison, Federalist Papers (# 10)

I do not fear the inevitable death for it is certain. Instead I fear life for here anything is possible.

Mavette Sadile

It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.

Eric Hoffe

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Death hangs over thee, While thou still live, while thou may, do good.

Marcus Aelius Aurelius

No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.

Alfred Tennyson

Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.

Tyron Edwards

Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather.

Jordan, Robert

My wallpaper and i are fighting a duel to death. One or the other has to go.

Oscar Wilde

And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheefully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait... And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

Walt Whitman

Of course we can keep this going, in principle, forever. In practice we will keel over from exhaustion, boredom, or death.

David Adger, Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach

Cowards die many times before their deaths The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.

William Shakespeare

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

George Bernard Shaw

When you have solved all the mysteries of life you long for death, for it is but another mystery of life.

Kahlil Gibran

I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness...

HP Lovecraft, From Beyond

Death is the only grammatically correct full stop?

Brian Patten, Schoolboy (1990)

If you must choose between two paths, either of which will bring death and defeat, then choose the path wherein you die fighting for honor and justice.

Pan Ku

Don't think you are paying me some kind of tribute if you let my death become the great event of your life. The best tribute you can pay me as a mother is to go on and have a good and fulfilling life. Enjoy what you have.

Andrew Soloman, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, comments from his mother shortly before her suicide

That is not dead which can eternal lie And with strange aeons even death may die.

HP Lovecraft, Quoting the Necronomicon, in The Nameless City

Yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me... Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me throughout the rest of my life and i will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Bible, Psalm 23, New Testament