Better to die a thousand deaths than wound my honor.
Joseph Addison

To die will be an awfully big adventure.
James Matthew Barrie

We all want to be happy, and we're all going to die. … You might say those are the only two unchallengeably true facts that apply to every being on this planet.
William Boyd

You can't get out of life alive.
Les Brown

Rest is for the dead.
Thomas Carlyle

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
Samuel Butler

Every time I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.
Lillian Carter

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
Winston Churchill

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
Antoine de Saint Éxupéry

We weep over the graves of infants and the little ones taken from us by death; but an early grave may be the shortest way to heaven.
Tryon Edwards

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz "Anger in the Sky" (1943)

He who doesn't fear death dies only once.
Giovanni Falcone

Death is an eternal sleep.
Joseph Fouché

No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.
Sigmund Freud "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1920)

Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.
Christian Furchtegott Gellert

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 "The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman"

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

War is death’s feast.
George Herbert "Outlandish Proverbs"

Only the young die good.
Oliver Herford

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
Herbert Hoover

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private citizens will occasionally kill theirs.
Elbert Hubbard

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Delores Ibarruri

In the long run, we are all dead.
John Maynard Keynes

Every soul must taste of death.
Koran

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, "On Death and Dying," 1969

There is no such thing as death. In nature nothing dies. From each sad remnant of decay, some forms of life arise so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it.
Charles Mackay

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
William Somerset Maugham

...it is only death which is hopeless.
Maria McIntosh

If a child shows himself incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate his kind.(You can quote me as saying this to Tank . .)
Don Marquis "The Almost Perfect State"

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
John Milton "Paradise Lost"

Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good.
William Mitford

We die only once, and for such a long time!
Moliere

The idea is to die young as late as possible.
Ashley Montagu

The dead have nothing except the memory they’ve left.
Ferenc Molnár

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.
Edvard Munch

Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.
Anais Nin

Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
P. J. O'Rourke

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
Jean Rostand

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness, of a belief.
Arthur Schnitzler

Boy, when you are 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 goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you are dead? Nobody.
J. D. Salinger

Death--the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.
Walter Scott

Men have died from time to time, and the worms have eaten 'em, but not for love.
William Shakespeare "As You Like It"

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste death but once.
Of all the wonders that I have yet heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it come.
William Shakespeare "Julius Caesar"

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
William Shakespeare "Macbeth"

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare "Macbeth"

... To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there 's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there 's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life ...
William Shakespeare "Hamlet"

And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.
George Bernard Shaw "Caesar and Cleopatra"

There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
Agnes Smedley

Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.
Bruce Springsteen

But what is all this fear of and opposition to oblivion? What is the matter with the soft darkness, the dreamless sleep?
James Thurber

A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
Percival Arland Ussher

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

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Voltaire "War"

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
Alice Walker

Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.(So if I can talk about it over the dinner table does that make it alright? ::smirks::)
Oscar Wilde

Death observes no ceremony.
John Wise

Our birth is nothing but our death begun, as tapers waste the moment they take fire.
Edward Young

All men think all men mortal, but themselves.
Edward Young

When on my day the evening shadows fall,
I will go down to where a quiet river flows
Into a sea from whence no man returns;
And there embark for lands where life immortal grows.
Thomas Tiplady

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Oscar Wilde

Yet spirit immortal, the tomb cannot bind thee,
But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun
Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee
A name which before thee no mortal hath won.
Leonard Heath "The Grave of Bonaparte"

When all the blandishments of life are gone,
The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.
George Sewell "The Suicide"

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me:
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree.
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember
And if thou wilt, forget.
Christina Rossetti "Song"

What matters Death, if Freedom be not dead?
No flags are fair, if Freedom's flag be furled.
Who fights for Freedom, goes with joyful tread
To meet the fires of Hell against him hurled.
Joyce Kilmer "The Peacemaker"

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die.
Robert Louis Stevenson "Requiem" (Engraved on his gravestone)

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T. S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"

Though they go mad, they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again,
Though lovers be lost, love shall not.
And death shall have no dominion.
Dylan Thomas "And Death Shall Have No Dominion"

They never fail who die
In a great cause: the block may soak their gore;
Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls --
But their spirit walks abroad.
George Gordon, Lord Byron "Marino Faliero"

There is no death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
Henry W. Longfellow "Resignation"

There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality;
whatever hath no beginning, may be confident to the end.
Thomas Browne

The first time I died, I walked my ways;
I followed the file of limping days.
I held me tall, with my head flung up,
But I dared not look on the new moon's cup.
I dared not look on the sweet young rain,
And between my ribs was a gleaming pain.
The next time I died, they laid me deep.
They spoke worn words to hallow my sleep.
They tossed me petals, they wreathed me fern,
They weighted me down with a marble urn.
And I lie here warm, and I lie here dry,
And watch the worms slip by, slip by.
Dorothy Parker "Epitaph"

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hands on kings.
James Shirley "Contention of Ajax and Ulysses"

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land.
Christina Rossetti "Remember"

Life and death: they are one, at core entwined.
Who understands himself from his own strain
presses himself into a drop of wine
and throws himself into the purest flame.
Rainer Maria Rilke "Life and death: they are one" Christmas, 1922

Keep not your roses for my dead, cold brow
The way is lonely, let me feel them now.
Arabella Smith "If I Should Die To-Night"

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 "Thoughts for a Sunshiny Morning"

In any man who dies there dies with him,
his first snow and kiss and fight...
Not people die but worlds die in them.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko

If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.
Rudyard Kipling "Epitaphs of War"

I want to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While laughter lies upon my lips,
And lights are in my hair.
Georgia Douglas Johnson

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life to be sure, is nothing much to loose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
A.E. Housman "Here Dead Lie We"

For he who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day;
But he who is in battle slain
Can never rise and fight again.
Oliver Goldsmith "The Art of Poetry on a New Plan"

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there, I did not die.
Anonymous

Dying is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
Sylvia Plath

Death is the end of life; ah why
Should life all labour be? . . .
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence - ripen, fall, and cease;
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease
. Alfred, Lord Tennyson "The Lotos-Eaters" (1833)

Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
Thomas F. Healey

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

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 "Holy Sonnets X"

A grave is such a quiet place.
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The carriage held just Ourselves -
And Immortality.
Emily Dickinson "Poem 712"

My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
T. S. Eliot

Am I going down
To where there's no return
How long can I go on
Listening to my fears
I'm so tired of living
On borrowed time
Trouble "Borrowed Time"

And though you want to last forever,
You know you never will,
You know you never will,
And the good-bye makes the journey harder still.
Cat Stevens "O Very Young"

I’m not scared of dyin’ and I don’t really care
if it’s peace you find in dyin’
well then let the time be near.
And when I die
and when I’m gone
there’ll be one child born
and a world to carry on.
Laura Nyro "And When I Die"

It's the heart afraid of dying, that never learns to dance;
It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance;
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give;
And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live.
Bette Midler, "The Rose"

In my time of dying, want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home
Well, well, well, so I can die easy
Well, well, well, so I can die easy
Robert Plant "In My Time Of Dying"

And honey, I miss you and I'm bein' good
And I'd love to be with you if only I could
Bobby Russell "Honey"

Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body achin' all the time
Goodbye everybody, I got to go
Got to leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, oooo
I don't want to die
Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all
Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody"