Quotes to inspire and reflect

Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

For the dead there are no more toils.

Nobody knows, in fact, what death is, nor whether to man it is not perchance the greatest of all blessings; yet people fear it as if they surely knew it to be the worst of evils.

Even the bold will fly when they see Death / drawing in close enough to end their life.

When the lamp is shattered / The light in the dust lies dead— / When the cloud is scattered / The rainbow’s glory is shed. / When the lute is broken, / Sweet tones are remembered not; / When the lips have spoken, / Loved accents are soon forgot.

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.

The tongues of dying men / Enforce attention like deep harmony.

There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing.

Death takes us piecemeal, not at a gulp.

Death either destroys or unhusks us. If it means liberation, better things await us when our burden’s gone: if destruction, nothing at all awaits us; blessings and curses are abolished.

Rich man and poor move side by side toward the limit / of death.

The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end for ever.

All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.

It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / “Aha, my little dear,” I say, / “Your clan will pay me back one day.”

The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.

God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees; tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most.

Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble / What would have sunk to dust!

Even Rome cannot grant us a dispensation from death.

It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death.

So take care of your life and take notice and be observant, for the number of widows is always far greater than the number of widowers.

Not all the preaching since Adam / Has made Death other than Death.

You may complete as many generations as you please during your life; none the less will that everlasting death await you.

Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who / Before us passed the door of Darkness through, / Not one returns to tell us of the Road, / Which to discover we must travel too.

Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie, / Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented th^ majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor, and survival a thing beyond the bounds of possibility.

One thing is sure, there are just two respectable ways to die. One is of old age, and the other is by accident.

We dread life’s termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.

Death's dark way / Must needs be trodden once, however we pause.

There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern—why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

Few are wholly dead: / Blow on a dead man’s embers / And a live flame will start.

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.

Is life a boon? / If so, it must befall / That Death, whene’er he call, / Must call too soon.

Death surprises us in the midst of our hopes.

What good can come from meeting death with tears?... If a man / Is sorry for himself, he doubles death.

To die with glory, if one has to die at all, / is still, I think, pain for the dier.

Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart’s position.

Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all human evils, and of baseness, and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death?

Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.

I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker.

God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man’s grave is his Sabbath.

You’ll find it—when you try to die— / The Easier to let go— / For recollecting such as went— / You could not spare—you know.

The distance that the dead have gone / Does not at first appear— / Their coming back seems possible / For many an ardent year.

We never know we go when we are going— / We jest and shut the Door— / Fate—following—behind us bolts it— / And we accost no more—.

Death is the supple Suitor / That wins at last— / It is a stealthy Wooing / Conducted first / By pallid innuendoes / And dim approach / But brave at last with Bugles.

Death is always sad, I suppose, to us who look forward to it: I expect it will seem very different when we can look back upon it.

The dead are all holy, even they that were base and wicked while alive. Their baseness and wickedness was not they, was but the heavy and unmanageable environment that lay round them.

What is this Death?—a quiet of the heart? / The whole of that of which we are a part?