Motivational Quotes

Death

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

Best Quotes about Death

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.

Man, Paul De

Death always waits. The door of the hearse is never closed.

Bayly, Joseph

Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.

Colton, Charles Caleb

No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.

Broch, Hermann

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

There is left us ourselves to end ourselves.

William Shakespeare

Your body must become familiar with its death -- in all its possible forms and degrees -- as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.

Hammarskjold, Dag

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

10.

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

Aaron McGruder

11.

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

12.

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

13.

I'd rather get my brains blown out in the wild than wait in terror at the slaughterhouse.

Craig Volk

14.

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

15.

A man should not leave this earth with unfinished business. He should live each day as if it was a pre-flight check. He should ask each morning, am I prepared to lift-off?

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

16.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. My advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

18.

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

Nepos, Cornelius

19.

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

Plato

20.

The difficulty about all this dying, is that you can't tell a fellow anything about it, so where does the fun come in?

James, Alice

21.

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.

22.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

23.

'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

24.

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

Milton, John

25.

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

Matt Frewer

26.

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

Einstein, Albert

27.

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

28.

How long after you are gone will ripples remain as evidence that you were cast into the pool of life?

Bright, Grant M.

29.

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

Ellis, Alice Thomas

30.

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

Durrell, Lawrence

31.

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

32.

It is not death, but dying, which is terrible.

Fielding, Henry

33.

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

Ken, Thomas

34.

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

35.

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

Craig Volk

36.

I am not the least afraid to die.

Darwin, Charles R.

37.

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

Bronte, Emily

38.

All that tread, the globe are but a handful to the tribes, that slumber in its bosom.

Bryant, William C.

39.

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.

Lawrence, D. H.

40.

A person doesn't die when he should but when he can.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

41.

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

42.

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

Eliot, George

43.

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.

Cary, Joyce

44.

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus

45.

Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.

Gide, Andre

46.

Nothing that is really good and God-like dies.

Arndt, Ernest Moritz

47.

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.

Donne, John

48.

Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.

Gurdjieff, George

49.

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

50.

Life is one of the most important causes of death.

Kocher, Gerhard