Motivational Quotes

Death

Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.

- Berra, Yogi

Best Quotes about Death

The grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.

Marvell, Andrew

Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.

Gurdjieff, George

'Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o'er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens.

Cervantes, Miguel De

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.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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.

Hammarskjold, Dag

It is simply untrue that all our institutions are evil that all politicians are mere opportunists, that all aspects of university life are corrupt. Having discovered an illness, it's not terribly useful to prescribe death as a cure.

Mcgovern, George

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children;

Beecher, Henry Ward

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.

Johnny Carson

Nothing that is really good and God-like dies.

Arndt, Ernest Moritz

10.

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

Hazlitt, William

11.

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

Khan, Pir Vilayat

12.

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

Gray, Thomas

13.

How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.

Macdonald, George

14.

No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.

Broch, Hermann

15.

The fear of death is worse than death.

Burton, Robert

16.

I hate funerals and would not attend my own if it could be avoided, but it is well for every man to stop once in a while to think of what sort of a collection of mourners he is training for his final event.

Morris, Robert T.

17.

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.

Eliot, T. S.

18.

When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin.

Donleavy, J. P.

19.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

Luther, Martin

20.

If life must not be taken too seriously -- then so neither must death.

Butler, Samuel

21.

Death does determine life. Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalized by reason. For me death is the maximum of epicness and death.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo

22.

A man should not leave this earth with unfinished business. He should live each day as if it was a pre-flight check. He should ask each morning, am I prepared to lift-off?

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

23.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Hauer, Rutger

24.

When we die, no one remembers us for what we weighed. Our weight isn't etched into our headstones.

Stephanie Klein

25.

To die is landing on some distant shore.

Dryden, John

26.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow. Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Donne, John

27.

Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns, for in ceasing to be numbered with mortals he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life.

Plutarch

28.

The death of what's dead is the birth of what's living.

Guthrie, Arlo

29.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death. [New Testament]

Bible

30.

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?

Lewis, C. S.

31.

I never think he is quite ready for another world who is altogether weary of this.

Hamilton, Hugh

32.

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. [Psalm 23:4]

Bible

33.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

Dickinson, Emily

34.

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.

Donne, John

35.

Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.

Aeschylus

36.

If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.

Hammarskjold, Dag

37.

To a father, when a child dies, the future dies; to a child when a parent dies, the past dies.

Auerbach, Red

38.

When a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him, lies on the paths of men.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

39.

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!

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

40.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Steve Jobs

41.

Life is a series of diminishments. Each cessation of an activity either from choice or some other variety of infirmity is a death, a putting to final rest. Each loss, of friend or precious enemy, can be equated with the closing off of a room containing blocks of nerves and soon after the closing off the nerves atrophy and that part of oneself, in essence, drops away. The self is lightened, is held on earth by a gram less of mass and will.

Dowell, Coleman

42.

But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

43.

Pale death with an impartial foot knocks at the hovels of the poor and the palaces of king.

Horace

44.

Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.

Keats, John

45.

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.

Mackay, Charles

46.

I'd rather get my brains blown out in the wild than wait in terror at the slaughterhouse.

Craig Volk

47.

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred --it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the dropsy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust --the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.

Hazlitt, William

48.

Unquiet souls. In the dark fermentation of earth, in the never idle workshop of nature, in the eternal movement, yea shall find yourselves again.

Arnold, Matthew

49.

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.

Beckett, Samuel

50.

When you lose someone you love, you die too, and you wait around for your body to catch up.

John Scalzi