Motivational Quotes

Death

Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.

- Ionesco, Eugene

Best Quotes about Death

There is left us ourselves to end ourselves.

William Shakespeare

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

Horace

But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet; And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.

Lowell, James Russell

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

Dyer, Wayne

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

Picabia, Francis

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

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

A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.

Gurdjieff, George

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.

10.

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

Jefferson, Joseph

11.

When one by one our ties are torn, and friend from friend is snatched forlorn; When man is left alone to mourn, oh! then how sweet it is to die!

Barbauld, Anna Letitia

12.

To leave is to die a little... one leaves behind a little of oneself at any hour, at any place.

Haracourt, Edmond

13.

We are all dead men on leave.

Levine, Eugene

14.

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.

15.

Ionesco, Eugene

16.

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

17.

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

Keats, John

18.

O how small a portion of earth will hold us when we are dead, who ambitiously seek after the whole world while we are living.

Philip II

19.

I am not the least afraid to die.

Darwin, Charles R.

20.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

21.

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

Guthrie, Arlo

22.

There is some comfort in dying surrounded by one's children.

Ann Radcliffe

23.

That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.

Cicero, Marcus T.

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

Huxley, Aldous

27.

Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.

Arendt, Hannah

28.

As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: so man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. [Job 14:11-12]

Bible

29.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

30.

He has gone over to the majority.

Petronius

31.

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

32.

The pomp of death is far more terrible than death itself.

Lee, Nathaniel

33.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

34.

The pride of dying rich raises the loudest laugh in hell.

Foster, John W.

35.

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

Pamela Ribon

36.

Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side.

Maclaren, Alexander

37.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

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

Butler, Samuel

39.

Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.

Milton, John

40.

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

41.

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

Fielding, Henry

42.

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

43.

Death is the last enemy: once we've got past that I think everything will be alright.

Ellis, Alice Thomas

44.

Oh you who have been removed from God in his solitude by the abyss of time, how can you expect to reach him without dying?

Hallaj

45.

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.

46.

I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first things in youth and yet last the longest in the dust.

Byron, Lord

47.

He that lives to forever, never fears dying.

Penn, William

48.

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

Havner, Vance

49.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

50.

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