Quotations about:
    death

DEATH: You see. No shock. No engulfment. No tearing asunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.

George Clayton Johnson (1929-2015) American writer

Twilight Zone, 3×16 “Nothing in the Dark” (5 Jan 1962)

There is a difference between tragedy and blind brutal calamity. Tragedy has meaning, and there is dignity in it. Tragedy stands with its shoulders stiff and proud. But there is no meaning, no dignity, no fulfillment, in the death of a child.

Walter M. Miller Jr. (1923-1996) American science fiction writer

“The Will” (1953)

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]

A Grief Observed, ch. 1 (1961)
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Every hour wounds. The last one kills.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist

American Gods, epigraph (2001)
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Gaiman notes this as an "old saying." It is frequently found on sun dials or other clocks, sometimes in Latin. Variations:

• "All hours wound; the last one kills."
• "All the hours wound you, the last one kills."
• "They all wound; the last one kills."
• "Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat."
• "Omnes vulnerant. Postuma necat."

Sister Mattie could be rather fatalistic at times; it was why she was such a good poisoning instructor. Death, felt Sister Mattie, must come to everyone in the end. Sometimes it simply required a little help.

Gail Carriger (b. 1976) American archaeologist, author [pen name of Tofa Borregaard]

Curtsies & Conspiracies (2013)

There is not so much Comfort in the having of Children as there is Sorrow in parting with them.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer

Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #4932 (1732)
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I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator

Letter to the Chicago Times (27 Mar 1890)

A stranger to human nature, who saw the indifference of men about the misery of their inferiors, and the regret and indignation which they feel for the misfortunes and sufferings of those above them, would be apt to imagine that pain must be more agonizing, and the convulsions of death more terrible, to people of higher rank than to those of meaner stations.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) Scottish economist

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1.3.2 (1759)

What sort of a lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? Even the insane call, ‘Come back,’ is all for my own sake. I never even raised the question whether such a return, if it were possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal?

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]

A Grief Observed (1961)

In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest — without asking to be paid.

Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, critic [Albert Chinualumogu Achebe]

A Man of the People (1966)

I hate that I’ve become one of those old men who visits a cemetery to be with his dead wife. When I was (much) younger I used to ask Kathy what the point would be. A pile of rotting meat and bones that used to be a person isn’t a person anymore; it’s just a pile of rotting meat and bones. The person is gone — off to heaven or hell or wherever or nowhere. You might as well visit a side of beef.

When you get older you realize this is still the case. You just don’t care. It’s what you have.

John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer

Old Man’s War (2005)

GUIDERIUS: Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet

Cymbeline, Act 3, sc. 2, l. 331ff (3.2.331-336) (1611)
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In youth, the years stretch before one so long that it is hard to realize that they will ever pass, and even in middle age, with the ordinary expectation of life in these days, it is easy to find excuses for delaying what one would like to do but does not want to; but at last a time comes when death must be considered.

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]

The Summing Up, ch. 3 (1938)

I’ll clue you in on a secret: death is not the worst thing that could happen to you. I know we think that; we are the first society ever to think that. It’s not worse than dishonor; it’s not worse than losing your freedom; it’s not worse than losing a sense of personal responsibility.

William "Bill" Maher (b. 1956) American comedian, political commentator, critic, television host.

Be More Cynical (2000)

‘Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes.

Christopher Bullock (1690?-1724) English actor and dramatist

The Cobler of Preston [Toby Guzzle] (1716)
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Earliest spotting of the phrase; if not popular before, it was subsequently picked up by a number of sources prior to the more famous formulation by Benjamin Franklin in 1789. More discussion: Nothing Is Certain, Except Death and Taxes – Quote Investigator.

“Gun-wielding recluse gunned down by local police” isn’t the epitaph I want. I am hoping for “Witnesses reported the sound up to two hundred kilometers away” or “Last body part finally located”.

James Nicoll (b. 1961) Canadian reviewer, editor

Usenet (2005)

ANTONY: The evil men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet

Julius Caesar, Act 3, sc. 2, l. 84ff (3.2.84-85) (1599)
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Romeo and Juliet died. I always liked that in a teen romance story.

James Nicoll (b. 1961) Canadian reviewer, editor

“Sex AND violence!?” rec.arts.sf.written (26 Feb 1996)

The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) American industrialist and philanthropist

“Wealth,” North American Review (Jun 1889)

Reprinted in The Gospel of Wealth (1889).

The dead don’t need justice. That’s for those of us who are left looking down at the remains.

Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author

Skin Game (2014)

LAFEW: Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead,
excessive grief the enemy to the living.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet

All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 1, sc. 1, l. 57ff (1.1.57-58) (1602?)
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PELAGEA VLASOVA: Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) German poet, playwright, director, dramaturgist

The Mother (1930)

Remember, though we struggle against things because we are afraid of them, it is often the other way round — we get afraid because we struggle. Are you struggling, resisting? Don’t you think Our Lord says to you ‘Peace, child, peace. Relax. Let go. Underneath are the everlasting arms. Let go, I will catch you. Do you trust me so little?’ Of course, this may not be the end. Then make it a good rehearsal.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]

Letter to Mary Willis Shelburne (17 Jun 1963)

Discussing the closeness of death.

Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]

A Grief Observed (1961)

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.

Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions “on the further shore,” pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There’s not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn’t be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the Spiritualists bait their hook! “Things on this side are not so different after all.” There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.

And that, just that, is what I cry out for, with mad, midnight endearments and entreaties spoken into the empty air.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]

A Grief Observed (1961)

“So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly, then?” I asked.

He blinked at me as if I were stupid.

“Well what do you think you do?” he said. “You die of course. That’s what deadly means.”

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer

Last Chance to See, ch. 2 (1990)

He died doing what he loved most: not being dead.

Joss Whedon (b. 1964) American screenwriter, author, producer [Joseph Hill Whedon]

Tweet (3 Oct 2014)
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We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author

Night Watch (2002)

Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author

Small Gods (1992)

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, ch. 7 epigraph “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar” (1894)

Nine men in ten are suicides.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist

Poor Richard’s Almanack (Oct 1749)

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) English poet

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” st. 9, l. 33ff (1751)
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He first deceased; she for a little tried
To live without him: liked it not, and died.

Henry Wotton (1568-1639) English author, diplomat, politician

“Upon the Death of Sir Albertus Moreton’s Wife” (1651)

See, I know you entertain some kind of eternal life fantasy because you’ve chosen not to smoke; let me be the first to pop that fucking bubble and send you hurtling back to reality — because you’re dead too. And you know what doctors say: “Shit, if only you’d smoked, we’d have the technology to help you. It’s you people dying from nothing who are screwed.” I got lots of stuff waiting for me: oxygen tent, iron lung, electronic voice box; it’s like going to Sharper Image when I die.

Bill Hicks (1961-1994) American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, musician [William Melvin "Bill" Hicks]

Relentless (1992)

I can’t think of a more wonderful thanksgiving for the life I have had than that everyone should be jolly at my funeral.

Lord Mountbatten (1900-1979) British statesman and naval officer (Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, b. Prince Louis of Battenberg)

(Attributed)
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Quoted in Richard Hough, Mountbatten (1980).

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, — so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet

Sonnet 2: “Time does not bring relief,” Renascence: and Other Poems (1917)
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The sonnets were not originally numbered, nor did they include titles. Later collections with this poem reduced the number of exclamation points (e.g.).

SIMON: What happens if they board us?
ZOE: If they take the ship, they’ll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing. And if we’re very, very lucky, they’ll do it in that order.

Joss Whedon (b. 1964) American screenwriter, author, producer [Joseph Hill Whedon]

Firefly, 1×01 “Serenity” (pilot) (20 Dec 2002)

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) German writer, critic, philanthropist, Nobel laureate [Paul Thomas Mann]

The Magic Mountain (1924)

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth —
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American poet

“The Bustle in a House” (c. 1866)

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.

Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801-1866) Scottish letter-writer, wife of Thomas Carlyle [née Jane Baillie Welsh]

Letter to Thomas Carlyle (27 Dec 1853)

You have no lease of your lives, and death is not bound to give you warning before it gives you that deadly blow that will send you to everlasting misery or everlasting felicity.

Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer

The Hypocrite Detected, Anatomized (1650)

I have to apologize to you that I am still among the living. There will be a remedy for this however.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist

Letter to Tyffany Williams (25 Aug 1946)

Tyffany, a child in South Africa, had written of her surprise to learn that Einstein was still alive.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

Epicurus (341-270 BC) Greek philosopher

The Vatican Collection of Epicurean Sayings [Sententiae Vaticanae], #31
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Alt. trans.: "One can attain security against other things, but when it comes to death all men live in a city without walls."

As I write these last words, my window, which looks west over the gardens of the Foreign Mission, is open: it is six in the morning; I can see the pale and swollen moon; it is sinking over the spire of the Invalides, scarcely touched by the first golden glow from the East; one might say that the old world was ending, and the new beginning. I behold the light of a dawn whose sunrise I shall never see. It only remains for me to sit down at the edge of my grave; then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, into eternity.

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) French writer, politican, diplomat

Memoirs from Beyond the Grave [Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe], Book 42, ch. 18 (1848-1850) [tr. Kline]

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic

The Rambler, #48 (1 Sep 1750)
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Is it not better to die valiantly, than ignominiously to lose our wretched and dishonoured lives after being the sport of others’ insolence?

[Nonne emori per virtutem praestat quam vitam miseram atque inhonestam, ubi alienae superbiae ludibrio fueris, per dedecus amittere?]

Catiline (108-62 BC) Roman politician [Lucius Sergius Catilina]

Quoted in Sallust, Catiline’s War, Book 20, pt. 9 [tr. Rolfe]

Alt. trans.: "Is it not better to die in a glorious attempt, than, after having been the sport of other men's insolence, to resign a wretched and degraded existence with ignominy?"

One does not learn how to die by killing others.

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) French writer, politican, diplomat

Memoirs from Beyond the Grave [Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe], Book 8, ch. 4 (1848-1850) [tr. Kline]

It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week.

Susanna Clarke (b. 1949) British author

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004)

Dead he is not, but departed — for the artist never dies.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet

“Nuremberg,” st. 13

How small man is on this little atom where he dies! But how great his intelligence! He knows when the face of the stars must be masked in darkness, when the comets will return after thousands of years, he who lasts only an instant! A microscopic insect lost in a fold of the heavenly robe, the orbs cannot hide from him a single one of their movements in the depth of space. What destinies will those stars, new to us, light? Is their revelation bound up with some new phase of humanity? You will know, race to be born; I know not, and I am departing.

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) French writer, politican, diplomat

Memoirs from Beyond the Grave [Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe], Book 42, ch. 18 (1848-1850) [tr. Kline]

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

A. E. Housman (1859-1936) English scholar and poet [Alfred Edward Housman]

More Poems, #36 (1936)
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Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency, but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist

Letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy (13 Nov 1789)
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See Bullock.

To-morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

John Milton (1608-1674) English poet

“Lycidas,” l. 193 (1638)
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When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) American computer inventor, entrepreneur

Commencement Address, Stanford University (2005)
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Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of — maybe it’s ’cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated. Somehow it lives on, but sometimes I think it’s just like an on-off switch. Click and you’re gone. And that’s why I don’t like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) American computer inventor, entrepreneur

(Attrbuted)

Quoted by his biographer, Walter Isaacson, in a 60 Minutes interview (Oct 2011)