Death Quotes Index
1. Four Types of Death Quotes
2. Graphical Death Quotes
3. Text-only Death Quotes
Death quotes are one of the most sought-after types of readable death content that people search on the internet. Among other forms, death quotes can be:
Panegyrical Death Quotes
Also known as euology. A formal speech or opus publicly praising someone or something)
Adagial / Proverbial
Also known as adages. Not to be confuse with music's adagio, An old saying, which has obtained credit by long use. Or an old saying, which has been overused or that is considered a trite maxim.
“Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage” (Lady Macbeth)
Epigrammatic Death Quotes
An inscription in stone.
Aphoristic Death Quotes
An original laconic phrase conveying some principle or concept of thought.
“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.”
―Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-Gita, Text 2.13
“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.”
―John Donne, “Holy Sonnets” (1633), No. 10, line 1
“I that in heill wes and gladness,
Am trublit now with gret seiknes,
And feblit with infermité;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Our plesance heir is all vane glory,
This fals warld is bot transitory,
The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle;
Timor mortis conturbat me.”
―William Dunbar, “The Lament for the Makars”, line 1.
“All birth is a capital crime, punishable with death.”
―Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage : India and Her Neighbors
“He was my counsel in affairs, was my oracle in taste, the standard to whom I submitted my trifles, and the genius that presided over poor Strawberry.”
―Horace Walpole On the death of his friend John Chute (1776)
“Eternal Power!
Grant me through obvious clouds one transient gleam
Of thy bright essence in my dying hour!”
―William Thomas Beckford “A Prayer”, line 14; cited from Cyrus Redding Memoirs of William Beckford of Fonthill (London: Charles J. Skeet, 1859) vol. 2, p. 283.
“This is it
no more fun
the death of all joy
has come.”
―James Douglas Morrison
“I believe it is gradually becoming conceded that the agonies
which universal belief once attached to the idea of death are rather
imaginary than real. Yet the hour of dissolution is almost invariably
accompanied by groans and contortions, which tell tales of the bitter
pang felt somewhere in the depths of that mysterious being which is
becoming disjointed. While the dying man, if still fully conscious, fre
quently asserts that he is in ecstasy beyond compare, tense muscles and
writhing limbs are telling another story. What is it that is suffering?”
―Fitz Hugh Ludlow, “The Hasheesh Eater”, Ch. 6 “The Mysteries of The Life-Sign Gemini”
“Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”
―Stephen King, “Pet Sematary” introduction
“There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.”
―Jorge Luis Borges, “The Immortal” (1949)
“O Death, our masked friend and maker of opportunities, when thou wouldst open the gate, hesitate not to tell us beforehand; for we are not of those who are shaken by its iron jarring.”
―Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913)
“On a huge hill, Cragged and steep, Truth stands,
and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe;
And what the hills suddenness resists, winne so;
Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight, Thy Soule rest,
for none can worke in that night.”
― John Donne, “Satyre” III (c. 1598)
“Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best,
To use my self in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.”
―John Donne, “Song (Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go)”, stanza 1
“For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness
He ruined me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.”
―John Donne, “A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day”, stanza 2
“When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.”
―John Donne, “XXVI Sermons, No. 26, Death's Duel”, last sermon, February 15, 1631
“I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite.”
―John Donne, “Holy Sonnets” (1633), No. 5, line 1.
“At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.”
―John Donne, “Holy Sonnets” (1633), No. 7, line 1
“All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain.”
―John Donne, “Holy Sonnets” (1633), No. 7, line 6.
“If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?”
―John Donne, “Holy Sonnets” (1633), No. 9, line 1
“Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke.”
―John Donne, “Holy Sonnets” (1633), No. 10, line 9
“Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest – and so am I.”
— John Dryden
“It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus”
―Robert Browning, From “Cleon; regarding death and afterlife”
“Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I save and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again.”
―Robert Browning, “At the 'Mermaid'”(1876)
“Strange secrets are let out by Death
Who blabs so oft the follies of this world.”
―Robert Browning, “Paracelsus”, Part 2, line 112.
“For I say this is death and the sole death,—
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest.”
―Robert Browning, “A Death in the Desert” (1864), Part 2, line 112.
“Death's truer name
Is "Onward," no discordance in the roll
And march of that Eternal Harmony
Whereto the world beats time.”
―Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Death of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale”
“Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.”
―Alfred Lord Tennyson, Choric Song, st. 2, from “The Lotus-Eaters” (1832)
“I, with respect, die with the beginning of dignity. Lay down your life with dignity. Don’t lay down with tears and agony. It’s nothing to death. It’s like Mac said, it’s just stepping over to another plane. Don’t be this way. Stop this hysterics.”
—Rev. Jim Jones, Jonestown, Guyana, November 18 1978
“Each man bears within himself his own dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from birth to death, how many hours can we count filled with pleasure, with prosperous and effective action?”
―Charles Baudelaire
“The sword sung on the barren heath,
The sickle in the fruitful field;
The sword he sung a song of death,
But could not make the sickle yield.”
―William Blake, “The Sword Sung”
“The fountain of death makes the still water of life play.”
―Rabindranath Tagore, “Stray Birds” (1916), verse 225
“Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.”
―Rabindranath Tagore, “Stray Birds” (1916), verse 268
“Art is the tree of life.
SCIENCE is the Tree of DEATH
ART is the Tree of LIFEGOD is JESUS”
―William Blake, “The Laocoön”
“It is not dead that which can eternal lie; and with strange aeons even Death may die.”
―Howard Phillips Lovecraft
“When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless.”
―John Milton, On His Blindness (1652)
“The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow.”
―Lord Byron, “And Thou Art Dead as Young and Fair” (1812).
“I live,
But live to die: and, living, see no thing
To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,
A loathsome and yet all invincible
Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I
Despise myself, yet cannot overcome—
And so I live. Would I had never lived!”
―Lord Byron “Cain” (1821), Act I, sc. i
“One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”
―John Donne, “Holy Sonnets” (1633), No. 10, line 13
Content Attributions
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_Byron
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Dunbar
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred,_Lord_Tennyson
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Browning
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jim_Morrison
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Beckford
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Horace_Walpole
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Blake
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Milton
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Donne
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_King
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore