|
|
Mors sceptra ligonibus aequat.
(Death levels sceptre and the law.)
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: inscribed over a 14th century mural painting once at Battle Church, Sussex
|
Death's pale flag advanced in his cheeks.
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: Seven Champions (pt. III, ch. XI)
|
Go thou, deceased, to this earth which is a mother, and spacious
and kind. May her touch be soft like that of wool, or a young
woman, and may she protect thee from the depths of destruction.
Rise above him, O Earth, do not press painfully on him, give him
good things, give him consolation, as a mother covers her child
with her cloth, cover thou him.
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: Vedic Funeral Rite, quoted in the "New York Times" on the death of Buffalo Bill
|
Death is a black camel, which kneels at the gates of all.
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: Vedic Funeral Rite, quoted in the "New York Times" on the death of Buffalo Bill
|
Call no man happy till he is dead.
Author: Aeschylus
Source: Agamemnon (938), earliest reference
|
But when the sun in all his state,
Illumed the eastern skies,
She passed through glory's morning gate,
And walked in Paradise.
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Source: A Death Bed
|
Somewhere, in desolate, wind-swept space,
In twilight land, in no man's land,
Two hurrying shapes met face to face
And bade each other stand.
"And who are you?" cried one, a-gape,
Shuddering in the glimmering light.
"I know not," said the second shape,
"I only died last night."
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Source: Identity
|
The white sail of his soul has rounded
The promontory--death.
Author: William Alexander, Earl of Stirling
Source: The Icebound Ship
|
Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before,
Advanced a stage or two upon that road
Which you must travel in the steps they trod.
Author: Aristophanes
Source: Fragment (II), translation by Cumberland
|
He who died at Azan sends
This to comfort all this friends:
Faithful friends! It lies I know
Pale and white and cold as snow;
And ye say, "Abdallah's dead!"
Weeping at the feet and head.
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your sighs and prayers;
Yet I smile and whisper this:
I am not the thing you kiss.
Cease your tears and let it lie;
It was mine--it is not I.
Author: Edwin Arnold
Source: He Who Died at Azan
|
Her cabin'd ample spirit,
It fluttered and fail'd for breath;
Tonight it doth inherit
The vasty hall of death.
Author: Matthew Arnold
Source: Requiescat
|
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's
troublesome.
Author: Matthew Arnold
Source: Requiescat
|
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls
a butterfly.
Author: Matthew Arnold
Source: Requiescat
|
What then remains, but that we still should cry
Not to be born, or being born to die.
Author: Matthew Arnold
Source: Requiescat
|
It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant,
perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
Author: Francis Bacon
Source: Essays--Of Death
|
Men fear Death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that
natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the
other.
Author: Francis Bacon
Source: Essays--Of Death
|
Death is the universal salt of states;
Blood is the base of all things--law and war.
Author: Philip James Bailey
Source: Festus (sc. A Country Town)
|
The death-change comes.
Death is another life. We bow our heads
At going out, we think, and enter straight
Another golden chamber of the king's
Larger than this we leave, and lovelier.
And then in shadowy glimpses, disconnect,
The story, flower-like, closes thus its leaves.
The will of God is all in all. He makes,
Destroys, remakes, for His own pleasure, all.
Author: Philip James Bailey
Source: Festus (sc. Home)
|
So fades a summer cloud away;
So sinks the gale when storms are o'er;
So gently shuts the eye of day;
So dies a wave along the shore.
Author: Mrs. Anna Letitia Barbauld
Source: The Death of the Virtuous
|
It is only the dead who do not return.
Author: Bertrand Barere
Source: Speech
|
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
Author: Sir James Matthew Barrie
Source: Peter Pan
|
But whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle's van,
The fittest place where man can die
Is where he dies for man.
Author: Michael Joseph Barry
Source: The Place to Die (vol. II, p. 809), in "The Dublin Nation"
|
Death hath so many doors to let out life.
Author: Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
Source: The Custom of the Country (act II, sc. 2)
|
We must all die!
All leave ourselves, it matters not where, when,
Nor how, so we die well; and can that man that does so
Need lamentation for him?
Author: Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
Source: Valentinian (act IV, sc. 4)
|
The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in
darkness; and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to
them all.
Author: Bible
Source: Ecclesiastes (ch. II, v. 14)
|
If there were dreams to sell, what would you buy?
Author: Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Source: None
|
A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.
Author: Thomas Mann
Source: None
|
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
Author: Ashley Montagu
Source: None
|
Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
Author: John Muir
Source: None
|
From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.
Author: Edvard Munch
Source: None
|
To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
Source: None
|
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
Author: Charles Sanders Peirce
Source: None
|
There are so many little dyings that it doesn't matter which of them is death.
Author: Kenneth Patchen
Source: None
|
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
Author: William Penn
Source: None
|
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
Author: Albert Pike
Source: None
|
We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.
Author: Marcel Proust
Source: None
|
God is becoming bitter, he envies man his mortality.
Author: Jacques Rigaut
Source: None
|
Boy, when you are dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a god dam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you are dead? Nobody.
Author: J. D. Salinger
Source: None
|
We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.
Author: David Sarnoff
Source: None
|
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
Source: None
|
The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.
Author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Source: None
|
My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarf's in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures.
Author: George Bernard Shaw
Source: None
|
While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil.
Author: John Taylor
Source: None
|
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
Author: Mark Twain
Source: None
|
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
Author: Mark Twain
Source: None
|
All say, 'How hard it is that we have to die' - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
Author: Mark Twain
Source: None
|
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
Author: Leonardo Da Vinci
Source: None
|
A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
Author: Percival Arland Ussher
Source: None
|
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
Author: Alice Walker
Source: None
|
Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
Author: Tennessee Williams
Source: None
|
