Death, quotes

Most people in Leadington, like most people else­where, are either asleep or dead.

Death – mysterious, untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain and indignity – would be released upon this city, and go hither and thither seeking his victims.

It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die. On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.

She lay night after night in a confused terror, trying to imagine if death was perpetual night, or an abyss of flames she had to jump over to reach the golden fields on the far side, or a sphere like the inside of a gigantic balloon full of soaring choirs and light attenuated through limitless stained-glass windows.

What is agony of the spirit? To advance toward death without seizing hold of the Water of Life.

Death was a blessing, so great, so deep that we can fathom it only at those moments, like this one now, when we are reprieved from it. It was the return home from long, unspeakably painful wanderings, the correction of a great error, the loosening of tormenting chains, the removal of barriers---it set a horrible accident to rights again.

There are worse things than dying, we both know that.

When I die I want your hands on my eyes.

We are mortals, not gods. We die. Death is in our nature. Without that fee paid in advance, the world does not come to us. That is the hard bargain life makes with us—with all of us, every one—and the condition we share...

If I was dead,
and my bones adrift
like dropped oars
in the deep, turning earth;
or drowned,
and my skull a listening shell
on the dark ocean bed.

Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.

I have seen death in many forms, but never has it appeared to me in a more fearsome aspect than in that dark grimy apartment, which looked out upon one of the main arteries of suburban London.

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.

We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.

There’s more sympathy wasted over dead and rotten skunks than there is justice done to straight, honest-livin’ chaps.

Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him.

You see, to me, for just a moment, despite all of the colors that touch and grapple with what I see in this world, I will often catch an eclipse when a human dies.

She was one of those who felt every death. She'd never learned to read the casualty lists over breakfast and then go off and have a perfectly pleasant day, as the vast majority of civilians did. If she had learned to do that, she mightn't have been here.

Eventually they die. This is the end of the story.

Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows that too many people have died?

Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it.

The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living.

Unto God the lord belong the issues of death.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

They were assured, of course, of the inerrable equality of death, but nobody wanted that kind of equality.

I'm not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family. I'll be around a long time. A thousand years from now a whole township of my offspring will be biting sour apples in the gumwood shade.

Immortality is a concept. If you take 'mortality' as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then 'immortality' is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal.

People who die at your age, that’s tragic. People who die at my age, that’s expected.

When Grandma died I found her. I didn't know she was dead. I just knew that she wasn't eating the jam and cream sandwiches.

I understand what it is to die, I think. Now I do, anyway. Not death itself, I still can't comprehend that. But dying. If I stop walking, I'll come to an end.

Speaking of death in English has always had, for me, a disquieting finality.

We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest.

But death is just a door into another dimension.

In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest—without asking to be paid.

To be honest about it, I'm not trying to die. I'm just waiting for death to come. Like sitting on a bench at the station, waiting for the train.

There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them.

You gentlemen kill with your power, with your money, and sometimes just with your words: you tell them you're doing them a favor. True, no blood flows, the man is still alive, but you've killed him all the same. I don't know whose sin is greater—yours or mine.

Though I than He – may longer live He longer must – than I – For I have but the power to kill, Without – the power to die.