100+ Thoughts Of Death Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

quote death is not extinguishing the light it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn rabindranath tagore Quotes

The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.

source: Samuel Johnson, Robert ARMITAGE (1850). “Doctor Johnson: his religious life and his death. By the author of “Dr. Hookwell,” etc. [Robert Armitage].”, p.456

topic: Life Is, Thoughts Of Death, Whole

Refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear.

- Seneca the Younger

topic: Fear, Bother, Thoughts Of Death, Grim

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

- Rabindranath Tagore

topic: Inspirational, Death, Rest In Peace, Spiritual Light, Memorial For Loved One

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

- William Shakespeare

topic: Inspirational, Death, Courage, Someone Dying, Meaningful Death

One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watching

- Gerard Way

topic: Life, Change, Death, Times Have Changed, Source Of Life

The song is ended, but the melody lingers on...

- Irving Berlin

source: Title of song (1927)

topic: Song, Prayer, Memorial, Inspirational Death, Memorial Stone

Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come

- William Shakespeare

source: 'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 2, sc. 2, l. 30

topic: Death, Fate, Ides Of March, Someone Dying, Death And Dying

That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.

- William Wordsworth

source: William Wordsworth, “Ode On Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood”

topic: Strength, Time, Flower, Inspirational Bereavement, Our Condolences

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.

- Marcel Proust

topic: Death, Thinking, People, Fear Of Dying, Thoughts Of Death

The grave itself is but a covered bridge, Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

source: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1861). “The poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, including his translations and notes”, p.217

topic: Death, Grieving, Light, Life After Death, Funerals And Death

True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things.

- Stendhal

source: "De L'Amour (On Love)". Book by Stendhal, Fragments, sec. 46, 1822.

topic: Love, Pay, Easy, Thoughts Of Death

She laughed and danced with the thought of death in her heart.

- Hans Christian Andersen

topic: Heart, Thoughts Of Death

We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it. I don't think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they'd make fewer foolish mistakes.

- Dmitri Shostakovich

topic: Mistake, Struggle, Writing, Writing And Thinking, Foolish Mistakes

A life-worshipper's philosophy is comprehensive. He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic: now haunted by the thought of death and now a Dionysian child of nature; now a pessimist and now, with a change of lover or liver or even the weather, an exuberant believer that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.

- Aldous Huxley

source: Aldous Huxley (1970). “Collected Works: Do what you will”

topic: Love, Children, Philosophy, Thoughts Of Death, Liver

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim - objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.

- Oscar Wilde

topic: Life, Death, Waiting, Thoughts Of Death

Bonhoeffer thought of death as the last station on the road to freedom.

- Eric Metaxas

source: Eric Metaxas (2011). “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy”, p.358, Thomas Nelson Inc

topic: Lasts, Bonhoeffer, Thoughts Of Death

There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply--and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.

- Stevie Smith

topic: Running, Night, Fog, Thoughts Of Death

The premonition of death may for many be a stimulus to novelty of experience: the imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality.

- David Riesman

source: David Riesman (1955). “Selected essays from Individualism reconsidered”

topic: May, Novelty, Preoccupation, Premonition, Triviality

We do not know whether it is good to live or to die. Therefore, we should not take delight in living, nor should we tremble at the thought of death. We should be equiminded towards death. This is the ideal. It may be long before we reach it, and only a few of us can attain it. Even then, we must keep it constantly in view, and the more difficult it seems of attainment, the greater should be the effort we put forth.

- Mahatma Gandhi

source: Mahatma Gandhi (1993). “Gandhi on Nehru”

topic: Death, Views, Long, Thoughts Of Death

Death is the most misunderstood phenomenon. People have thought of death as the end of life. That is the first, basic misunderstanding.

- Rajneesh

topic: Death, People, Misunderstood, Thoughts Of Death

The thought of death leaves me in perfect peace, for I have a firm conviction that our spirit is a being of indestructible nature; it works on from eternity to eternity, it is like the sun, which though it seems to set to our mortal eyes, does not really set, but shines on perpetually.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

topic: Spiritual, Eye, Shine On, Perfect Peace, Thoughts Of Death

How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.

- Will Durant

topic: Suffering, Thoughts Of Death

For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

source: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (2013). “Carmilla: A Critical Edition”, p.50, Syracuse University Press

topic: Girl, Sweet, Morning, Unwelcome, Thoughts Of Death

To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.

- Christopher Hitchens

source: "Hitch-22: A Memoir". Book by Christopher Hitchens, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 20, 2010.

topic: Yeats, Being A Dad, Thoughts Of Death, Serfs

She thought of death like the seam of a hem: each time you lose someone close, it unraveled a little. You could still go along with your life, but you'd be forever tripping over something you previously took for granted.

- Jodi Picoult

source: Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #2: Perfect Match, Second Glance, and My Sister's Keeper”, p.721, Simon and Schuster

topic: Forever, Hem, Littles, Tripping, Took For Granted

If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. No other practice so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one -surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.

- Muriel Spark

source: "The prime of Miss Jean Brodie; The comforters; The only problem; The driver's seat; Memento mori".

topic: Practice, Eggs, Remembrance, Insipid, Expectancy

It is with a rush of home-sickness that the thought of death presents itself.... Such sentiment is the eternal stock of all religions, modified indeed by changes of time and place, but indestructible, because its root is so deep in the earth of man's nature. The breath of religious initiators passes over them; a few "rise up with wings as eagles" [Isaiah 40:31], but the broad level of religious life is not permanently changed. Religious progress, like all purely spiritual progress, is confined to a few.

- Walter Pater

topic: Death, Spiritual, Religious, Indestructible, Religious Life

Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril.

- Blaise Pascal

source: Blaise Pascal (2007). “Thoughts”, p.63, Cosimo, Inc.

topic: Death, Thinking, Bears, Thoughts Of Death

I myself become terrified of death when I am in a negative state of mind. But the thought of death ceases to bother me once I become productive.

- Hayao Miyazaki

topic: Mind, Negative, States, Thoughts Of Death

Old age diminishes our strength; it takes away our pleasures one after the other; it withers the soul as well as the body; it renders adventure and friendship difficult; and finally it is shadowed by thoughts of death.

- Andre Maurois

topic: Adventure, Soul, Age, Thoughts Of Death

The thought of death deceives us; for it causes us to neglect to live.

- Luc de Clapiers

source: Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

topic: Causes, Deceiving, Neglect, Thoughts Of Death

It used to be I thought of death as a man something like Grandfather a friend of his a kind of private and particular friend like we used to think of Grandfather's desk not to touch it not even to talk loud in the room where it was.

- William Faulkner

source: William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.172, Modern Library

topic: Death, Men, Thinking, Thoughts Of Death

Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.

- Cesare Pavese

topic: Thoughts Of Death

Fatigue dulls the pain, but awakes enticing thoughts of death. So! that is the way in which you are tempted to overcome your loneliness -- by making the ultimate escape from life. -- No! It may be that death is to be your ultimate gift to life: it must not be an act of treachery against it.

- Dag Hammarskjold

topic: Pain, Work, Loneliness, Treachery, Enticing

The thought of death sits easy on the man Who has been born and dies among the mountains.