Death quotes
3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside death — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul's death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc."
"I believe this thought, of the possibility of death - if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong."
"How little room Do we take up in death, that, living, know No bounds!"
"Life is a hurdle and you'll never clear it. Death is the end of the ride and you fear it."
"Death is better than disease."
"Death is the chillness that precedes the dawn; We shudder for a moment, then awake In the broad sunshine of the other life."
"Men after death ... are understood worse than men of the moment, but heard better."
"We should turn our death into a celebration, even if only out of a malice towards life: towards the woman who wants to leave--us!"
"Soon is the struggle past, and to the earth, To the eternal sun, I render back These atoms, joined in me for pain and pleasure."
"Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield! Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason, Resplendent daughter of the head divine, Wise foundress of the system of the world, Guide of the stars, who are thou then, if thou, Bound to the tail of folly's uncurb'd steed, Must, vainly shrieking, with the drunken crowd, Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss."
"We fear death, yet we long for slumber and beautiful dreams."
"Manifestly, dying is nothing to a really great and brave man."
"If you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!"
"A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur."
"It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork."
"All human beings are like travelers floating down the eternal river of time, embarking at a certain point and disembarking again at another point in order to make room for others waiting below the river to come aboard."
"Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame."
"Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a wise man, the life and death of Jesus are those of a god."
"The sun had, in the meanwhile, sunk behind the Ettersberg. We felt in the wood the chill of the evening, and drove all the quicker to Wiemar, and to Goethe's house. Goethe urged me to go in with him for a while, and I did so. He was in an extremely engaging mood. He talked a great deal about his theory of colors, and of his obstinate opponents; remarking that he was sure that he had done something in this science."
"The truth is that everything causes everything else. We do not speak therefore of one thing causing another. There are no secrets. It's just we thought they said dead when they said bread."
