Motivational Quotes

Death

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

Best Quotes about Death

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.

Lowell, James Russell

The killing was the best part. It was the dying I couldn't take.

Craig Volk

Along with the lazy man... the dying man is the immoral man: the former, a subject that does not work; the latter, an object that no longer even makes itself available to be worked on by others.

Certeau, Michel De

Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.

Hook, Sydney

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

Macdonald, George

The fear of death is worse than death.

Burton, Robert

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. [Matthew 10:28]

Bible

The last suit that you wear, you don't need any pockets.

Dyer, Wayne

10.

It is hard to have patience with people who say There is no death or Death doesn't matter. There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.

Lewis, C. S.

11.

As for death one gets used to it, even if it's only other people's death you get used to.

Bagnold, Enid

12.

Death is the final wake-up call.

Horton, Doug

13.

Death is the cure for all diseases.

Browne, Sir Thomas

14.

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

Berra, Yogi

15.

In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us.

Hammarskjold, Dag

16.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.

Miller, Henry

17.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Bacon, Francis

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.

Montesquieu, Charles De

22.

Death destroys a man, the idea of Death saves him.

Forster, Edward M.

23.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

24.

There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

25.

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.

Publilius Syrus

26.

As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless.

Rodney Yee

27.

We are but tenants and shortly the great landlord will give us notice that our lease has expired.

Jefferson, Joseph

28.

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

29.

For 'Tis not in mere death that men die most.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

30.

I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.

Durrell, Lawrence

31.

A human act once set in motion flows on forever to the great account. Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are.

Meredith, George

32.

So every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.

William Shakespeare

33.

Few cross the river of time and are able to reach non-being. Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river. But those who when they know the law follow the path of the law, they shall reach the other shore and go beyond the realm of death.

Dhammapada

34.

The course of my long life hath reached at last in fragile bark over a tempestuous sea the common harbor, where must rendered be account for all the actions of the past.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

35.

Death is a Dialogue between, the Spirit and the Dust.

Dickinson, Emily

36.

We are all dead men on leave.

Levine, Eugene

37.

Death is the great adventure beside which moon landings and space trips pale into insignificance.

Bayly, Joseph

38.

How gladly would I meet mortality, my sentence, and be earth in sensible! how glad would lay me down, as in my mother's lap! There I should rest, and sleep secure.

Milton, John

39.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

Camus, Albert

40.

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.

Lois McMaster Bujold

41.

To you who have never died, may I say: Welcome to the world!

Barker, Clive

42.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily as lying down.

Allen, Woody

43.

When I have fears that I may cease to be, Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain.

Keats, John

44.

An evil life is a kind of death.

Ovid

45.

It hath often been said that it is not death but dying that is terrible.

Fielding, Henry

46.

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

Hamilton, Hugh

47.

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.

Cervantes, Miguel De

48.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

Cocteau, Jean

49.

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

King Jr. Martin Luther

50.

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

Baldwin, James