Quotes about death
Writers have faced mortality with calm, defiance and dark humour. These quotes about death and endings suit a remembrance post as well as a philosophy page.
The library has 1,153 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 quotes about death
-
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, in Pudd’nhead Wilson -
When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
William Shakespeare Julius Caesar, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.
William Shakespeare Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. 1 -
For he being dead, with him is beauty slain, And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.
William Shakespeare Venus and Adonis, Line 1019 -
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
William Shakespeare Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 1 -
Trust no future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living present! Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life -
But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave.
William Wordsworth To a Young Lady. Dear Child of Nature -
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Book i. Line 1 -
The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket.
William Wordsworth The Excursion, Bk. I -
But shapes that come not at an earthly call Will not depart when mortal voices bid.
William Wordsworth Dion -
There is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there; There is no fireside, howsoe’er defended, But has one vacant chair.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Resignation -
She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and oh The difference to me!
William Wordsworth She dwelt among the untrodden ways -
For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity; To perish rather, swallowed up and lost, In the wide womb of uncreated night?
John Milton Paradise Lost -
Art is long, and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still like muffled drums are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life -
Tell me not, in mournful numbers, “Life is but an empty dream!” For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life -
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.
Thomas Browne Dedication to Urn-Burial, Chap. v -
Form’d by thy converse, happily to steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe.
Alexander Pope Essay on Man. Epistle iv, Line 379 -
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
John Milton Lycidas, Line 78 -
“Whom the gods love die young,” was said of yore.
Lord Byron Don Juan, Canto iv. Stanza 12 -
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
As a cowherd with his staff drives his cows into the stable, so do Age and Death drive the life of men.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 135 · translated by F. Max Müller -
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.
Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson -
I never knew what terror was before; I know it now. It is as if a hand of ice were laid upon one’s heart. It is as if one’s heart were beating itself to death in some empty hollow.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
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 Pudd’nhead Wilson -
I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by.
Abraham Lincoln April 16 -
Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded.
Abraham Lincoln October 22 -
If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret.
Confucius Analects, IV.8 · translated by James Legge -
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common-sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbour’s faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad die from the gambler.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 252 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Virtue is more to man than either water or fire. I have seen men die from treading on water and fire, but I have never seen a man die from treading the course of virtue.
Confucius Analects, XV.34 · translated by James Legge -
The superior man dislikes the thought of his name not being mentioned after his death.
Confucius Analects, XV.19 · translated by James Legge -
Man is born for uprightness. If a man lose his uprightness, and yet live, his escape from death is the effect of mere good fortune.
Confucius Analects, VI.17 · translated by James Legge -
One can survive everything nowadays except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Earnestness is the path of immortality, thoughtlessness the path of death. Those who are in earnest do not die, those who are thoughtless are as if dead already.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 21 · translated by F. Max Müller -
All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
Socrates -
Sleep is a death; oh, make me try By sleeping what it is to die, And as gently lay my head On my grave as now my bed!
Thomas Browne Religio Medici, Part ii. Sect. xii -
A mere madness, to live like a wretch and die rich.
Robert Burton Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i. Sect. 2, Memb. 3, Subsect. 12 -
Not nakedness, not platted hair, not dirt, not fasting, or lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, not sitting motionless, can purify a mortal who has not overcome desires.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 141 · translated by F. Max Müller -
The times are too grave and perilous for ambitious schemes and personal rivalries.
Abraham Lincoln October 7 -
All say, “How hard it is that we have to die”—a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson -
Sudden death alone is feared; hence confessors stay with lords.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 216 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epitaph on an Infant -
He who slays a king and he who dies for him are alike idolaters.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Ignorant; squaring the circle, a greater world. His opinions on suicide, on death. He suggests an indifference about salvation, without fear and without repentance.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 63 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear To be we know not what, we know not where.
John Dryden Aurengzebe, Act iv. Sc. 1 -
Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 211 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 147 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
He that defers his charity until he is dead is, if a man weighs it rightly, rather liberal of another man’s goods than his own.
Francis Bacon -
Of every ten three are ministers of life to themselves; and three are ministers of death.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 50.2 · translated by James Legge -
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
The people do not fear death; to what purpose is it to try to frighten them with death? If the people were always in awe of death, and I could always seize those who do wrong, and put them to death, who would dare to do wrong?
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 74.1 · translated by James Legge -
What other men thus teach, I also teach. The violent and strong do not die their natural death. I will make this the basis of my teaching.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 42.3 · translated by James Legge -
Keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen makes a lean will.
Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanack -
Epitynchanus saw Diotimus die, and then Epitynchanus died.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book VIII.25 · translated by George Long -
With mortal crisis doth portend My days to appropinque an end.
Samuel Butler Hudibras, Part i. Canto iii. Line 589 -
Heraclitus, after so many speculations on the conflagration of the universe, was filled with water internally and died smeared all over with mud. And lice destroyed Democritus; and other lice killed Socrates.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book III.3 · translated by George Long -
Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and in change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted by nature as to die.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book X.18 · translated by George Long -
The sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave.
Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanack -
One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him; and all this in a short time.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book IV.48 · translated by George Long -
The spirit of man, which God inspired, cannot together perish with this corporeal clod.
John Milton Paradise Lost
Who wrote most about death
- William Shakespeare 104
- Thomas Carlyle 40
- Marcus Aurelius 37
- Lord Byron 30
- Alexander Pope 28
- Epictetus 17
- Blaise Pascal 16
- Edward Young 16
- Horace 15
- Alfred Tennyson 14
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 13
- John Milton 13