Death Quotes, Quotations & Sayings

A person starts dying when they stop dreaming.
Williams

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
Woody Allen

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so.
John Donne

Death defies the doctor.
Proverb

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

There’s no repentance in the grave.
Isaac Watts

Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to life.
Cesare Pavese

I detest life-insurance agents. They always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
Stephen Leacock

My husband is dead.
- I’ll bet he’s just using that as an excuse.
I was with him to the end.
- No wonder he passed away.
I held him in my arms and kissed him.
- So it was murder!
Groucho Marx

My name is death; the last best friend am I.
Robert Southey

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice.
William Shakespeare

Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it: he died
As one that had been studied in his death
To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d
As ’twere a careless trifle.
William Shakespeare

I am told he makes a very handsome corpse, and becomes his coffin prodigiously.
Oliver Goldsmith

The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Andrew Marvell

Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon’d;
Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.
William Shakespeare

Death must simply become the discreet but dignified exit of a peaceful person from a helpful society that is not torn, not even overly upset by the idea of a biological transition without significance, without pain or suffering, and ultimately without fear.
Philippe Ariès

Death is my neighbour now.
Edith Evans

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Thomas Gray

The hero is strangely akin to those who die young.
Rainer Maria Rilke

I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave - thank God for the quiet grave - O! I can feel the cold earth upon me - the daisies growing over me - O for this quiet - it will be my first.
John Keats

Graveyards have a morbid reputation. Many people associate them with death.
Bishop of Bath and Wells

How often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.
Alexander Pope

He had rather
Groan so in perpetuity, than be cured
By the sure physician, death.
William Shakespeare

He hath shook hands with time.
John Ford

He’d make a lovely corpse.
Charles Dickens

The killing was the best part. It was the dying I couldn’t take.
Craig Volk,

Dar’st thou die?
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

Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.
Alexander Pope

Now he is dead! Far hence he lies
In the lorn Syrian town;
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down.
Matthew Arnold

O pity the dead that are dead, but cannot make
the journey, still they moan and beat
against the silvery adamant walls of life’s exclusive city.
D. H. Lawrence