Death Quotes

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Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar: Allah's Apostle said, "When the Jews greet you, they usually say, 'As-Samu 'alaikum (Death be on you),' so you should say (in reply to them), 'Wa'alaikum (And on you)."

Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.

In French: Notre nature est dans le mouvement; le repos entier est la mort.

Certainlie these things agree, The Priest, the Lawyer, & Death all three: Death takes both the weak and the strong. The lawyer takes from both right and wrong, And the priest from living and dead has his Fee.

Benjamin Franklin

Thy soul shall find itself alone 'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still.

Edgar Allan Poe

This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.

If it be aught toward the general good, Set honor in one eye and death i' th' other, And I will look on both indifferently; For let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honor more than I fear death.

William Shakespeare

This fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest.

William Shakespeare

If you fight with all your might, there is a chance of life; where as death is certain if you cling to your corner

You want to have proven to you that the soul is imperishable and immortal, and you think that the philosopher who is confident in death has but a vain and foolish confidence, if he thinks that he will fare better than one who has led another sort of life, in the world below, unless he can prove this; and you say that the strength and divinity of the soul, and of her existence prior to our becoming men, does not necessarily imply her immortality.... For any man, who is not devoid of natural feeling, has reason to fear, if he has no knowledge or proof of the soul's immortality. That is what I suppose you to say, Cebes, which I designedly repeat, in order that nothing may escape us...

Death is neither a good nor a bad thing, for that alone which is something can be a good or a bad thing: but that which is nothing, and reduces all things to nothing, does not hand us over to either fortune, because good and bad require some material to work upon. Fortune cannot take ahold of that which Nature has let go, nor can a man be unhappy if he is nothing.

Seneca the Younger

Agathon: But all that talk about death being the same as sleep.
Socrates: Yes, the difference is that when you're dead and somebody yells, "Everybody up, it's morning," it's very hard to find your slippers.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but caring little for it, and even less about the imperfections of my garden.

Michel de Montaigne

But I am the real Strider, fortunately. I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will.

J. R. R. Tolkien

I met a Californian who would
Talk California—a state so blessed,
He said, in climate, none had ever died there
A natural death.

Memento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?

Virtue is the death of conscience because it is the habit of Good, and yet the ethic of the honest man infinitely prefers virtue to the noblest agonies of conscience. Thus, being poses nonbeing and eliminates it. There is only being

Jean-Paul Sartre

A lethargy of sleep,
Most like to death, so calm, so deep.

Death's stamp gives value to the coin of life; making it possible to buy with life what is truly precious.

Rabindranath Tagore

The bay-trees in our country are all withered,
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven.
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth,
And lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change.
Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap;
The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,
The other to enjoy by rage and war.
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

William Shakespeare

No Carthaginian denied Moloch, because to do so would have required more courage that was required to face death in battle.

Bertrand Russell

When the next year the raiders returned and landed near Jarrow they were stoutly attacked while harassed by bad weather. Many were killed. Their "king" was captured and put to a cruel death, and the fugitives carried so grim a tale back to Denmark that for forty years the English coasts were unravaged.

Winston Churchill

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; and every coming together a foretaste of the resurrection.

Arthur Schopenhauer

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

Death is terrible, but still more terrible is the feeling that you might live for ever and never die.