“Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night.”
Socrates
PhilosophyPeace
Death Quotes
200 FAMOUS QUOTES · DEATH
Death Quotes
Read 200 of the best death quotes about grief, loss, remembrance and the meaning of life, from Shakespeare, Seneca, John Donne, the Bible and more.
“No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.”
Plato
MysteryFear Of Death
“Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we have lost becomes a pleasant memory to us.”
Seneca
RemembranceGrief
“Let not the eyes be dry when we have lost a friend, nor let them overflow. We may weep, but we must not wail.”
Seneca
GriefBalance
“He whom you think lost has but been sent on ahead.”
Seneca
ComfortLoss
“Death is such as generation is, a mystery of nature.”
Marcus Aurelius
NatureMystery
“Near is thy forgetfulness of all things; and near the forgetfulness of thee by all.”
Marcus Aurelius
ImpermanenceHumility
“The longest-lived and he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived.”
Marcus Aurelius
Present MomentPerspective
“Never say of anything, 'I have lost it'; but, 'I have returned it.' Is your child dead? It is returned.”
Epictetus
AcceptanceLoss
“Nature has given us life on loan, like a sum of money, with no fixed day for its repayment.”
Cicero
LifeMortality
“To philosophise is to learn to die.”
Michel de Montaigne
PhilosophyPreparation
“Let us disarm him of his novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequently in our thoughts as death.”
Michel de Montaigne
Facing DeathCourage
“The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty.”
Michel de Montaigne
FreedomPreparation
“Wherever your life ends, it is all there.”
Michel de Montaigne
LifeCompleteness
“Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark.”
Francis Bacon
Fear Of DeathHuman Nature
“It is as natural to die as to be born.”
Francis Bacon
NatureAcceptance
“Death openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.”
Francis Bacon
LegacyReputation
“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.”
Samuel Johnson
Living WellLegacy
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
Samuel Johnson
FocusFunny
“It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.”
Jonathan Swift
NatureFaith
“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
Thomas Gray
MortalityHumility
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.”
Thomas Gray
EveningEndings
“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
Thomas Gray
Unknown LivesRemembrance
“A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears.”
William Wordsworth
LossGrief
“But she is in her grave, and, oh, the difference to me!”
William Wordsworth
GriefLove