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

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

The world is the mirror of myself dying.

Miller, Henry

You haven't lost anything when you know were it is. Death can hide but not divide.

Havner, Vance

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

W. Somerset Maugham

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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

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

Cocteau, Jean

Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death -- of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

10.

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat.

Conrad, Joseph

11.

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

Camus, Albert

12.

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.

13.

Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.

Bronte, Emily

14.

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

Einstein, Albert

15.

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

Gray, Thomas

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Picabia, Francis

19.

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

20.

I stay a little longer, as one stays, to cover up the embers that still burn.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

21.

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

Forster, Edward M.

22.

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

Buffett, Jimmy

23.

Death is the final wake-up call.

Horton, Doug

24.

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.

25.

Nothing that is really good and God-like dies.

Arndt, Ernest Moritz

26.

Being prepared for loss is never the same as being ready for it.

Randy K. Milholland

27.

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

28.

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

Randy K. Milholland

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

32.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

Plato

33.

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

34.

We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.

Browne, Sir Thomas

35.

The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.

Publilius Syrus

36.

Death doesn't frighten me.

Diana, Princess of Wales

37.

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

William Shakespeare

38.

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.

39.

A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

40.

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

Fromm, Erich

41.

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

42.

It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.

KuBler-Ross, Elisabeth

43.

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

44.

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

Nepos, Cornelius

45.

If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.