Motivational Quotes

Death

Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.

- La Fontaine, Jean De

Best Quotes about Death

I want death to find me planting my cabbage

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

Butler, Samuel

Most of us die with much of our beautiful music still in us, un-sung, un-played.

Bright, Grant M.

Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.

Horace

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

Diderot, Denis

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.

Melville, Herman

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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

Keats, John

For the sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast. And the heart must pause to breathe, and love itself have rest.

Byron, Lord

10.

The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.

W. Somerset Maugham

11.

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.

Samuel Goldwyn

12.

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

Eliot, George

13.

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

14.

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

15.

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

Eliot, George

16.

I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Landor, Walter Savage

17.

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

18.

Between my head and my hand, there is always the face of death.

Picabia, Francis

19.

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.

20.

Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.

La Fontaine, Jean De

21.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Aurelius, Marcus

22.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Hesse, Hermann

23.

Death can sneak up on you like a silent kitten, surprising you with it's touch and you have a right to act surprised. Other times death stomps in the front door, unwanted and unannounced, and makes it's noisy way to your seat on the sofa.

Hugh Elliott

24.

These have not the hope to die.

Dante Alighieri

25.

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

Johnny Carson

26.

Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.

Hoffer, Eric

27.

He had been, he said, an unconscionable time dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it.

Charles II

28.

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

Publilius Syrus

29.

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

30.

Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.

Man, Paul De

31.

So that he seemed not to relinquish life, but to leave one home for another.

Nepos, Cornelius

32.

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

Luther, Martin

33.

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.

34.

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.

Chandler, Raymond

35.

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

36.

Life is one of the most important causes of death.

Kocher, Gerhard

37.

Nothing that is really good and God-like dies.

Arndt, Ernest Moritz

38.

He was exhaled; his great Creator drew His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.

Dryden, John

39.

Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good.

Mitford, William

40.

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

41.

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

Carson, Johnny

42.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Einstein, Albert

43.

When I pass, speak freely of my shortcomings and my flaws. Learn from them, for I'll have no ego to injure.

Aaron McGruder

44.

See in what peace a Christian can die.

Addison, Joseph

45.

'Tis all a Checker-board of Nights and days where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays, and one by one back in the Closet lays.

Khayyam, Omar

46.

We need not fear life, because God is the Ruler of all and we need not fear death, because He shares immortality with us.

Landers, Ann

47.

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

King Jr. Martin Luther

48.

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

Horace

49.

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

50.

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.

Canetti, Elias