quotations about death,

For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out.
~I Timothy 6:7

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
~Matthew Arnold

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on the other side citizens; on this side orphans, on the other side children.
~Henry Ward Beecher

I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
~Woody Allen

Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the law of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.
~William E. Gladstone, Four term Prime Minister of England

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
~Leonardo Da Vinci

It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death,’ or Death doesn't matter.’ There is death. And it matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter. ~C. S. Lewis

A man is not completely born until he is dead.
~Benjamin Franklin

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying. ~Martin Luther

Death is the golden key that opens the door to eternity.
~John Milton

He has gone over to the majority.
~Petronius

Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening.
~Sir Walter Scott

God's finger touched him and he slept.
~Lord Alfred Tennyson

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.
~Mark Twain

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
~I Corinthians 15:26

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.
~Amelia Burr

People living deeply have no fear of death.
~Anais Nin

It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.
~Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Death? Why this fuss about death. Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! ... Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
~Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or "broken heart," is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. ~Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Suicide Note, August 17, 1935.

Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.
~Epicurus

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
~Winston Churchill

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. ~W. Somerset Maugham

Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.
~Toni Morrison

The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.
~Ernest Becker

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
~Gilda Radner

The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.
~Ernest Becker

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. ~Isaac Asimov

...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
~Sogyal Rinpoche

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.
~Robert Fulghum

Destroying is a necessary function in life. Everything has its season, and all things eventually lose their effectiveness and die.
~Margaret J. Wheatley

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.
~James F. Bymes

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.
~John Muir

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
~George S. Patton, Jr.

We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.
~David Sarnoff

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
~Charles Darwin

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
~Albert Einstein

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.
~Ayn Rand

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.
~A. Sachs

When I pass, speak freely of my shortcomings and my flaws. Learn from them, for I'll have no ego to injure.
~Aaron McGruder

Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
~Bertolt Brecht

Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon.
~David Assael

If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.
~George Burns

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
~Leonardo da Vinci

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
~Plato

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
~Publilius Syrus

I guess that's how death works. It doesn't matter if we're ready or not. It just happens.
~Randy K. Milholland