Motivational Quotes

Death

A man's death makes everything certain about him. Of course, secrets may die with him. And of course, a hundred years later somebody looking through some papers may discover a fact which throws a totally different light on his life and of which all the people who attended his funeral were ignorant. Death changes the facts qualitatively but not quantitatively. One does not know more facts about a man because he is dead. But what one already knows hardens and becomes definite. We cannot hope for ambiguities to be clarified, we cannot hope for further change, we cannot hope for more. We are now the protagonists and we have to make up our minds.

- Berger, John

Best Quotes about Death

A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.

Alsop, Steward

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

Berra, Yogi

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, and yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

Byron, Lord

I'd rather die while I'm living then live while I'm dead.

Buffett, Jimmy

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

It's no accident that the church and the graveyard stand side by side. The city of the dead sleeps encircled by the city of the living.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

Never knock on Death's door: ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!

Matt Frewer

I'm not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying. Pain can be alleviated by morphine but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away.

Jarman, Derek

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

10.

We all of us waited for him to die. The family sent him a check every month, and hoped he'd get on with it quietly, without too much vulgar fuss.

Osborne, John

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Lowell, James Russell

14.

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

Butler, Samuel

15.

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

Carson, Johnny

16.

Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.

Browne, Sir Thomas

17.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

18.

Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He comet up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

Book Of Common Prayer

19.

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

Picabia, Francis

20.

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.

21.

Plan for this world as if you expect to live forever; but plan for the hereafter as if you expect to die tomorrow.

Gabirol, Ibn

22.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

23.

It's sad when our daddies die. Makes us one less person inside.

Pamela Ribon

24.

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

25.

I guess that's how death works. It doesn't matter if we're ready or not. It just happens.

Randy K. Milholland

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Teach me to live that I may dread, the grave as little as my bed.

Ken, Thomas

29.

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

Hazlitt, William

30.

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

31.

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

Bright, Grant M.

32.

Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Lincoln, Abraham

33.

There is left us ourselves to end ourselves.

William Shakespeare

34.

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

Auerbach, Red

35.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

Leonardo da Vinci

36.

Death is the enemy. I spent 10 years of my life singlemindedly studying, practicing, fighting hand to hand in close quarters to defeat the enemy, to send him back bloodied and humble and I am not going to roll over and surrender.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

37.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.

Woody Allen

38.

He would make a lovely corpse.

Dickens, Charles

39.

Let us go in; the fog is rising.

Dickinson, Emily

40.

To stop sinning suddenly.

Hubbard, Elbert

41.

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

42.

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

Cicero, Marcus T.

43.

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

Johnny Carson

44.

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

45.

If only I could understand the reason for my crying. If only I could stop this fear of dreaming that I'm dying.

Palmer, Laura

46.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

47.

Death doesn't frighten me.

Diana, Princess of Wales

48.

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.