73+ Quotes on Death and Mortality
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death.
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.
Although the constant shadow of certain death looms everyday, the pleasures and joys of life can be so fine and affecting that the heart is nearly stilled in astonishment.
Death a friend that alone can bring the peace his treasures cannot purchase, and remove the pain his physicians cannot cure.
Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man’s cottage door and at the palaces of kings.
Death is a release from the impressions of sense, and from impulses that make us their puppets, from the vagaries of the mind, and the hard service of the flesh.
As men we are all equal in the presence of death.
We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.
Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.
People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.
Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men.
Years, following years, steal something every day;
At last they steal us from ourselves away.
Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.
Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.
There is nothing certain in a man's life but that he must lose it.
Men fear death as children to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.
When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever.... I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
The goal of all life is death.
I'm not afraid of dying. To me dying is like getting out of one car and into another
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.
Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
Forget not death, O man! For you may be certain of one thing, he forgets not thee.
Death is softer by far than tyranny.
You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper.
No one knows whether death is really the greatest blessing a man can have, but they fear it is the greatest curse, as if they knew well.
Death tugs at my ear and says: “Live, I am coming.”
There is only one ultimate and effectual preventive for the maladies to which flesh is heir, and that is death.
God is growing bitter, He envies man his mortality.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
To the psychotherapist an old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it.
The resounding echo of the mortal coil, echoes in the ears of those who are unprepared for it. To some, it sounds like a symphony – to other, a death toll.
Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.
Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.
Death is a friend of ours and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray,
To come to me: of cureless ills thou art
The one physician. Pain lays not its touch
Upon a corpse.
From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.
Jut as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Life is but a moment, death also is but another.
Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.
Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
Death has a hundred hands and walks by a thousand ways.
That which is so universal as death must be a benefit.
Death is a Dialogue between.. the Spirit and the Dust.
There is a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat some time or other.
He who doesn't fear death dies only once.
We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.
You can evade life, but you can not evade Death.
It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up - that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.
Death never takes the wise man by surprise; He is always ready to go.
I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.
Death is a debt we all must pay.
Someday I'll be a weather-beaten skull resting on a grass pillow,
Serenaded by a stray bird or two.
Kings and commoners end up the same,
No more enduring than last night's dream.
Some things are so completely ludicrous that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all deaths.
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.
Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.
Death always brings with it a kind of stupefaction, so difficult is it for the human mind to realize and resign itself to the blank and utter nothingness.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near.
It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for.
It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.
Death is a black camel which kneels at every man's gate.
A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.
Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
Take death for example. A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it, and often consider its intrusion a tragic event. Yet we’d find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were to much of it.
We pass and leave you lying. No need for rhetoric, for funeral music, for melancholy bugle-calls. No need for tears now, no need for regret.
We took our risk with you; you died and we live. We take your noble gift, salute for the last time those lines of pitiable crosses, those solitary mounds, those unknown graves, and turn to live our lives out as we may.
Which of us were fortunate--who can tell? For you there is silence and cold twilight drooping in awful desolation over those motionless lands. For us sunlight and the sound of women's voices, song and hope and laughter, despair, gaiety, love-life.
Lost terrible silent comrades, we, who might have died, salute you.
