"And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living."
-T.S. Eliot
"Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark; and as that
natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other."
-Francis Bacon
"Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely."
-Albert Camus
"Let the world slide, let the world go; A fig for care, and a fig for woe! If I can't pay, why I can owe, And death makes equal the high and low."
-John Heywood
"I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exit."
-John Webster
"I want to be cremated so people won't come to worship at my bones."'
-Albert Einstein
"Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave."
-Bishop Hall
"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 Barabauld
"Death is the king of this world: 'tis his park
Where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain
Are music for his banquet."
-George Eliot
"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
"Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold :
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold."
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"I'm so happy dancing while the grim reaper
cuts, cuts, cuts, but he can't get me.
I'm as clever as can be, and I'm very quick but don't forget;
we've only got so many tricks.
no one lives forever."
-Danny Elfman
"Sleep,
Those little slices of Death
How I loathe them."
-Edgar Allen Poe
"Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave."
-Bishop Hall
"But I will be,
A bridegroom in my death, and run into't
As to a lover's bed."
-William Shakespeare
"Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily as lying down. The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you."
-Woody Allen
"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."
-Leonardo Da Vinci
"Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love."
-Edward Young
"Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament."
-Paul De Man
"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
"Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk.
It is walking toward me, without hurrying."
-Jean Cocteau
"Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely."
-Albert Camus
"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.'"
-Dorothy Parker
"I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exit."
-John Webster
"I feel no pain dear mother now,
But oh, I am so dry!
O take me to a brewery,
And leave me there to die."
-Anonymous (19th century)
"But your dead will live; their bodies will rise.
You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy.
Your dew is like the dew of the morning;
the earth will give birth to her dead."
-Isaiah 26:19
"Death is as sure for that which is born,
as birth is for that which is dead.
Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable."
-Bhagavad Gita
"The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living."
-W. H. Auden
"And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death."
-Walt Whitman
"The death of what's dead is the birth of what's living."
-Arlo Guthrie
"I do not believe that any man fears to be dead,
but only the stroke of death."
-Francis Bacon
"A dead atheist is someone who is all dressed up with no place to go."
-James Duffecy
"We are all dead men on leave."
-Eugene Levine
"'T is strange that death should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest."
-William Shakespeare
"And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living."
-T.S. Eliot
"One owes respect to the Living. To the Dead, one owes only Truth."
-Voltaire
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once."
-William Shakespeare
"Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead.
Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already."
-Raymond Chandler
"This suspense is killing me, I hope it lasts."
-Willy Wonka
"Truth sits upon the lips of dying men."
-Matthew Arnold
"Pale death with an impartial foot knocks at the hovels of the poor and the palaces of king."
-Horace
"But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"
-William Shakespeare
"I'd rather die while I'm living then live while I'm dead."
-Jimmy Buffet
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-Aldous Huxley
"Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live."
-Henry Van Dyke
"Death always waits. The door of the hearse is never closed."
-Joseph Bayly
"Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature."
-Marcus Aurellus Antonius
"And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings."
-William Shakespeare
"Life does not cease to be funny when people die
any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
-George Bernard Shaw
"Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever."
-Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross
"One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly."
-Nietzsche
"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death."
-Revelation 6:8
"It is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live."
-Victor Hugo
"Death is a Dialouge between, The Spirit and the Dust."
-Emily Dickinson
"And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death."
-Walt Whitman
"That is not dead
Which can eternal lie
Yet with strange aeons
Even death may die."'
-H.P. Lovecraft
"A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist."
-Steward Alsop
"While man is growing, life is in decrease;
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun."
-Edward Young
"The world is the mirror of myself dying."
-Henry Miller
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens."
-Woody Allen
"Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heaven invites,
Hell threatens."
-Edward Young
"When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language."
-John Donne
"I am ready to meet my maker, but whether my maker is prepared for thegreat ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
-Winston Churchill
"A person doesn't die when he should but when he can."
-Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez
Taken from Death Clock.com [obituaries].