Quotes About Death

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

— Joseph Stalin

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.

— Clarence Darrow

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.

— H. L. Mencken

Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.

— William Hazlitt

I shall never act differently, even if I have to die for it many times.

— Socrates

If I could drop dead right now, I’d be the happiest man alive.

— Samuel Goldwyn

I cannot forgive my friends for dying; I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.

— Logan Pearsall Smith

But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?

— Job 14:10

When good men die, their goodness does not perish.

— Euripides

May my last breath be drawn through a pipe and exhaled in a pun.

— Charles Lamb

The general outlook is not that the person has died but that the person has lived.

— William Buchanan, on writing obituaries

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

— W. H. Auden

It is a disturbing truth that even undertakers die sometimes.

— Arnold Bennett

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

— John Donne

It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

— Woody Allen

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

— Isaac Asimov

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

— Winston Churchill

Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up.  I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something.  Anything except sticking me in a goddamn cemetery.  People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday and all that crap.  Who wants flowers when you’re dead?  Nobody.

— J. D. Salinger

Eternity is a terrible thought.  I mean, when’s it going to end?

— Tom Stoppard

In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.

— Benjamin Franklin

Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is thy sting?  O grave, where is thy victory?

— 1 Corinthians 15:54-55

Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.  For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

— John Donne

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoke of the soul.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have a rendezvous with Death at some disputed barricade.

— Alan Seeger

It’s a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.

— Andrew Young

Death is the price of revolution.

— H. Rap Brown

We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.

— Angela Davis

If you’re afraid to die, you will not be able to live.

— James Baldwin

The present life is naught but a diversion and a sport; surely the Last Abode is Life, did they but know?

— Koran 19:64

Death is just a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees.

— J. J. Furnas

I hope to see my Pilot face to face when I have crost the bar.

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Adam, the first great benefactor of our race.  He brought death into the world.

— Mark Twain

To die will be an awfully big adventure.

— James M. Barrie

It hath been often said that it is not death but dying which is terrible.

— Henry Fielding

If this is dying, I don’t think much of it.

— Lytton Strachey (attrib.)

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child.  Things never get back to the way they were.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the death of his first son

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

— Mark Twain

Why fear death?  It is the most beautiful adventure in life.

— Charles Frohman, supposedly said as he was dying in the torpedoing of SS Lusitania

How can they tell?

— Dorothy Parker, on being informed of the death of President Calvin Coolidge

His death was the first time that Ed Wynn ever made anyone sad.

— Red Skelton

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

— Burial service, The Book of Common Prayer