QUOTES ON DEATH

When the black and mortal blood of man has fallen to the ground ... who then can sing spells to call it back again?

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.

Death means nothing to men like me. It's the event that proves them right.

It is easy to go down into Hell;

Night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide;

But to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air--

There's the rub, the task.

Death ... a melancholy and shocking extremity.

Anything dead coming back to life hurts.

The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, forever, on my best affections. Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them.

That is the gods' work, spinning threads of death

through the lives of mortal men,

an all to make a song for those to come.

Dead men don't bite.

The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he's dying don't give him pity for others, no sir.

There are evils worse than death.

But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad schilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after.

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

Death is the end of every worldly pain.

Certain, when I was born, so long ago,

Death drew the tap of life and let it flow;

And ever since the tap has done its task,

And now there's little but an empty cask.

Call no man happy till he is dead.

Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!... How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile creature!

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

Since the order of world is regulated by death, perhaps is it better for God we do not believe in him and we fight with all our might against death, without raising our eyes heavenward where he keeps silent.

Who dies in youth and vigour, dies the best.

Peace is in the grave.

I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,

I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras ascending, while others doubtless await me,

An unknown sphere more real than I dream'd, more direct, darts awakening rays about me, So long!

Remember my words, I may again return,

I love you, I depart from materials,

I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.

I want the dead to be dead. Forever. And I want to be one of them. Except that of course you can't be one of them. You can't be one of the dead because what has no existence can have no community. No community. My heart warms just thinking about it. Silence. Blackness. Aloneness. Peace. And all of it only a heartbeat away.

Hell strives with grace for conquest in my breast.

What shall I do to shun the snares of death?

Them that die will be the lucky ones!

Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.

Let every man in mankind's frailty

Consider his last day; and let none

Presume on his good fortune until he find

Life, at his death, a memory without pain.

Death commences too early--almost before you're half acquainted with life--you meet the other.

They are carnal both of them, love and death, and thus their terror and their great magic!

Understand death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you.

And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it; he died

As one that had been studied in his death,

To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,

As 'twere a careless trifle.

But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods

can defend a man, not even one they love, that day

when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.

Each of us must expect an end of living in this world; let him who may win glory before death: for that is best at last for the departed warrior.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.

Death is the veil which those who live call life;

They sleep, and it is lifted.

Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.

Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance — to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.

Even the stout of heart shrink when they see the approach of death.

I don't know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness.

Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;-- the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!

Methinks, by most, 'twill be confess'd

That Death is never quite a welcome guest.

So we drove on toward death in the cooling twilight.

Know thy birth!

For dost thou art, and shalt to dust return.

I'll make death love me; for I will contend

Even with his pestilent scythe.

He that dies pays all debts.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendent world; or to be worse than worst

Of those that lawless and incertain thought

Imagine howling!--'t is too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

It is seldom men think of death in the pride of their health and strength.

All is possible for those who dare to die!

For life be, after all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin', and death be all that we can rightly depend on.

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