Quotes about death

There will be sleeping enough in the grave

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark

This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

To die will be an awfully big adventure.

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at without winking.

Jealousy is always born with love, but does not always die with it.

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves!

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that you didn’t see him do it.

Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead.

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

It is only the gods who taste of death. Apollo has passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on. Nero and Narcissus are always with us.

Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.

A dead body revenges not injuries.

ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.

AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

APOSTATE, n. A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.

APOTHECARY, n. The physician’s accomplice, undertaker’s benefactor and grave worm’s provider.

BODY-SNATCHER, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker. The hyena.

ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.

EPAULET, n. An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military officer from the enemy—that is to say, from the officer of lower rank to whom his death would give promotion.

EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

FUNERAL, n. A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.

GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.

HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live.

HEARSE, n. Death’s baby-carriage.

HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that.

LONGEVITY, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death.

MANES, n. The immortal parts of dead Greeks and Romans. They were in a state of dull discomfort until the bodies from which they had exhaled were buried and burned; and they seem not to have been particularly happy afterward.

MARTYR, n. One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.

MISERICORDE, n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.

NON-COMBATANT, n. A dead Quaker.

PHONOGRAPH, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.

PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.

RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.

REQUIEM, n. A mass for the dead which the minor poets assure us the winds sing o’er the graves of their favorites. Sometimes, by way of providing a varied entertainment, they sing a dirge.

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.

Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.

We do not wish to lose life; we do wish to gain glory, and this makes brave men show more tact and address in avoiding death, than rogues show in preserving their fortunes.

It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary that you should so salt your truth that it will no longer—quench thirst?

It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

Why should those who are happy expect one who is miserable to die before them in a graceful attitude, like the gladiator before the Roman mob?

Scholars are generally malignant when they are refuting others; and if they think a man is making a mistake, they straightway look upon him as their mortal enemy.

At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.

It is said of a man that he will soon die, when he acts in any way unlike himself.

Bodies which rot while they are still alive, and are edified by the detailed contemplation of their own decay; dead men who remain in the world for the ruin of others, and feed their death on the living,—to this have come our makers of literature.

If ever the volto sciolto and the pensieri stretti are necessary, they are so in these affairs. A grave, dark, reserved, and mysterious air has fœnum in cornu. An even, easy, unembarrassed one invites confidence, and leaves no room for guesses and conjectures.