Death famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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My father was a film-maker. He always said he wanted to go like Humphrey Jennings, the legendary director who stepped backwards over a cliff while framing a better shot.
-- A. A. Gill -
Funerals are important rituals. They don't just recognize that a life has ended; they recognize that a life was lived.
-- Aaron Eckhart -
Death is a black camel, which kneels at the gates of all.
-- Abdelkader El Djezairi -
Let us not doubt that God has a father's pity towards us, and that in the removal of that which is dearest to us He is still loving and kind. Death separates, but it also unites. It reunites whom it separates.
-- Abraham Coles -
I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
Cursed is the man who dies, but the evil done by him survives.
-- Abu Bakr -
Death to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father's house into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining.
-- Adam Clarke -
He who is completely sanctified, or cleansed from all sin, and dies in this state, is fit for glory.
-- Adam Clarke -
For good undone, and gifts misspent, and resolutions vain
-- Adam Lindsay Gordon -
There must be some unwritten law that says about fifty people have to move into your house when somebody dies. If it weren't for the smell of death clinging to the walls, you might think it was your family's turn to host the month neighborhood potluck supper.
-- Adam Rapp -
I think death has a right to its own courage and dignity and self-respect.
-- Adela Rogers St. Johns -
I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come. And then - I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn't, luckily, have to bother about that.
-- Agatha Christie -
There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
-- Agnes Smedley -
Often in winter the end of the day is like the final metaphor in a poem celebrating death: there is no way out.
-- Agustin Gomez-Arcos -
They say we die twice - once when the last breath leaves our body and once when the last person we know says our name.
-- Al Pacino -
He died a long painful death. However, you'll be happy to hear that just a few years later he was reincarnated as Shirley MacLaine.
-- Al Yankovic -
So die as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted.
-- Alan Seeger -
If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.
-- Alan Watts -
To perceive that form reveals the void, and to see that the void reveals form, is the secret for the overcoming of death. To the extent that one is unaware of space, one is unaware of one's own eternity — it's the same thing!
-- Alan Watts -
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.
-- Albert Camus -
Have you noticed that only death arouses our emotions? How we love thee friends who have just passed away, right? How we admire those master who no longer speak, their mouths full of dirt. We them we are not obligated.
-- Albert Camus -
There is but one freedom, to put oneself right with death. After that everything is possible.
-- Albert Camus -
Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.
-- Albert Camus -
Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.
-- Albert Einstein -
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
-- Albert Einstein -
When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.
-- Albert Einstein -
The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
-- Albert Einstein -
I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.
-- Albert Einstein -
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
-- Albert Einstein -
A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
-- Albert Einstein -
A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
-- Aldous Huxley -
I was afraid of the pain of dying and terribly reluctant to leave the world behind because I liked life a lot, even if it had been pretty tough sometimes.
-- Alexander Dolgun -
Death is the fate no one can escape. The question, then, is, How does one die? A person can die like a hero or like a coward. The difference is that the hero can face death without fear, whereas the coward can't.
-- Alexander Lowen -
Good God! 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 -
If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death.
-- Alexander Smith -
Death takes away the commonplace of life.
-- Alexander Smith -
To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.
-- Alexander Smith -
If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.
-- Alexander Smith -
A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.
-- Alexander the Great -
I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
-- Alexander the Great -
Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
-- Alfred Hitchcock -
A year after Hemingway died on the front page, Faulkner went off after a binge, as if dying was nobody's business but his own.
-- Alfred Kazin -
God's finger touched him, and he slept.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson -
There is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne -
there ain't no use in dyin' 'fore yer time. Lots of folks is walkin' 'round jes' as dead as they'll ever be.
-- Alice Hegan Rice -
It'll be with me like it was with Uncle Ned's ole ox, I reckon; he kep' a-goin' an' a-goin' till he died a-standin' up, an' even then they had to push him over.
-- Alice Hegan Rice -
The difficulty about all this dying, is that you can't tell a fellow anything about it, so where does the fun come in?
-- Alice James -
Death is the last enemy: once we've got past that I think everything will be alright.
-- Alice Thomas Ellis -
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
-- Alice Walker -
There are many tired gardeners but I've seldom met old gardeners. I know many elderly gardeners but the majority are young at heart. Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized. The one absolute of gardeners is faith. Regardless of how bad past gardens have been, every gardener believes that next year's will be better. It is easy to age when there is nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for, gardeners, however, simply refuse to grow up.
-- Allan Armitage -
The clever way death cuts us down, but makes it look like just a thinning-out. Generations never fall with one blow - that would be too sad and too obvious. Death prefers to do it piecemeal. The meadow is attacked from several sides at the same time. One of us goes one day; another some time afterwards; you have to stand back and look around you to take in what's missing, to grasp the vast slaughter of your generation...
-- Alphonse Daudet -
Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.
-- Alphonse de Lamartine -
Death, with funereal shades in vain surrounds me, My reason through his darkness seeth light: 'Tis the last step which brings me close to Thee: 'Tis the veil falling, 'twixt Thy face and mine.
-- Alphonse de Lamartine -
ORPHAN, n. A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude . . .
-- Ambrose Bierce -
MARTYR, One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine own is open at thy feet.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Homicide, /n./ The slaying of one human by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he died by one kind or another - the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Funeral: a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Death is only as strong as you believe it to be.
-- Amy Neftzger -
My husband is everything to me and without him it's just not the same.
-- Amy Winehouse -
Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.
-- Anais Nin -
I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.
-- Anais Nin -
The descent to Hades is the same from every place.
-- Anaxagoras -
The descent into Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.
-- Anaxagoras -
Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.
-- Andre Breton -
The power of god has given men the ability to realize that he does not exist.
-- Andre Santos -
My prayer to the Lord every day, is this-I have been a great sinner. I do not deserve Heaven. Let me stay here.
-- Andres Segovia -
We are born with two incurable diseases, life, from which we die, and hope, which says maybe death isn't the end.
-- Andrew Greeley -
When death comes, he respects neither age nor merit. He sweeps from the earthly existence the sick and the strong, the rich and the poor, and should teach us to live to be prepared for death.
-- Andrew Jackson -
Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.
-- Andrew Sachs -
Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.
-- Andy Warhol -
Our greatest prejudice is against death. It spans age, gender and race. We spend immeasurable amounts of energy fighting an event that will eventually triumph. Though it is noble not to give in easily, the most alive people I've ever met are those who embrace their death. They love, laugh and live more fully.
-- Andy Webster -
In one sense there is no death. The life of a soul on earth lasts beyond departure. You will always feel that life touching yours, that voice speaking to you. He/She lives on in your life and in the lives of all others that knew him/her.
-- Angelo Patri -
You broke me bodily. The heart ain't the half of it, And I'll never learn to laugh at it In my good natured way. In fact, I'm laughing less in general, But I learned a lot at my own funeral. And I knew you'd be the death of me, So I guess that's the price I pay.
-- Ani DiFranco -
What do you have in mind - inhumement, entombment, inurnment, interment? Some people lately just prefer in-sarcophogus-ment.
-- Anjanette Comer -
The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday.
-- Ann Druyan -
There is some comfort in dying surrounded by one's children.
-- Ann Radcliffe -
It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.
-- Anna Akhmatova -
When one by one our ties are torn, and friend from friend is snatched forlorn; when man is left alone to mourn, oh! then how sweet it is to die!
-- Anna Letitia Barbauld -
It's so unfair that we should die, just because we are born.
-- Anna Magnani -
Do not save your loving speeches For your friends till they are dead; Do not write them on their tombstones, Speak them rather now instead.
-- Anna Mickelson -
I have been alone since my husband died. I stay in my home. I don't date. It's hard to date when you're at home. Nobody knows you.
-- Anna Nicole Smith -
The stones and trees, insensible to time, / Nor age nor wrinkle on their front are seen; / If Winter come, and greenness then do fade / A Spring returns, and they more youthful made; / But man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid.
-- Anne Bradstreet -
If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can I prize thy love more than whole mines of Gold. Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay, The heavens reward thee manifold repay, Then while we live, in love let's so persevere That when we live no more, we may live ever.
-- Anne Bradstreet -
There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest.
-- Anne Enright