Death Quotes & Books

There is but one freedom, to put oneself right with death. After that everything is possible. I cannot force you to believe in God, Believing in God amounts to coming to terms with death. When you have accepted death, the problem of God will be solved-and not the reverse...
-Allbert Camus

We survive death regardless of whether we have been good or bad. We survive with memory, personality, and capacity for recognition...
-Arthur Ford

Death is going from one room to another, ultimately to the most beautiful room...
-Mendel of Kotzk

In reality, there is no death because you are not the body. Let the body be there or not be there, your existence is always there; it is eternal...
-Nisargadatta

It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it...
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Death as the termination of life is the greatest lie which has been perpetrated upon mankind. For the truth is that it is quite impossible to kill YOU. Only the body can die. The real YOU, as an individual consciousness which dwells within that body, is entirely beyond death...
-Ormond McGill

It is the duty of a doctor to prolong life. It is not his duty to prolong death...
-Thomas Horder

Men cling to and gratify the flesh as though it were going to last forever...
James Allen

The body is not a home but an inn and that only briefly...
Seneca

(Our body is) a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors and a misfit from the start...
Ralph W. Emerson

Many people treat their bodies as if they were rented from Hertz-something they are using to get around in but nothing they genuinely care about understanding...
Chungliang Al Huang

You are not the body, you are only wearing your body; you are that which activates the body...
Shantidasa

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred...
Walt Whitman

There is nothing the body suffers that the soul does not profit by...
George Meredith

Verily, there is no freedom from pleasure and pain for one while he dwells in the body...
The Upanishads

The body is the soul's house. Shouldn't we take care of our house that it doesn't fall into ruin?...
Philo

The body is a tabernacle in which the transmissible human spirit is carried for a while, a shell for the immortal seed that dwells in it and has created it...
George Santayana

Good men spiritualize their bodies...
Benjamin Wichcote

Believe not that man consists of flesh, skin and veins. The real part of man is his soul, and the things just mentioned are only outward coverings. They are only veils, not the real man...
The Zohar

People so often give up in death and that is a pity. Death is not a tragedy to be feared, but actually it is an opportunity for transformation...
Sogyal Rinpoche

We should teach our children to think no more of their bodies when dead, then they do of their hair when cut off, or of their old clothes when they are done with them...
George Macdonald

Thinking and talking about death need not be morbid; they may be quite the opposite. Ignorance and fear of death overshadow life, while knowing and accepting death erases this shadow...
Lily Pincus

Death, when we consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence. I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that this image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness...
Wolfgang A. Mozart

Death is a part of life not to be shunned or dreaded or feared, but to be welcomed with a glad and ready smile when it comes in its own good way and time...
Ralph W, Trine

Only the dead are free, the chain is broken but perhaps they miss their chains?...
Eva-Lisa Manner

Death is not a deplorable event; it is the journey's end, the owner getting out of the car when the time is up and the goal is reached. It is a consummation, a happy conclusion, or at least it ought to be, if only all are wise enough to treat it as such and be prepared for it...
Sathya Sai Baba

We must die! These words are hard, but they are followed by a great happiness: it is in order to be with God that we die...
Francis de Sales

Death will always be among us. We shall never escape it. Dying is part of the process of living. We must not fear it. We must not hide it. We must not ignore it. We must not deny it. Death is...
Robert W. Buckingham

It is worth dying to find out what life is...
T. S. Eliot

When you die you lose your body. That is all there is to it. Nothing else is lost...
-P. M. H. Atwater

I think of death as some delightful journey that I shall take when all my tasks are done...
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

You fear death because you identify with the body. If you identified with the reality which activates the body you wouldn't be so attached to the clay garment-the body...
Peace Pilgrim

Death teaches us to live; it gives us a boundary to map our living within. Death's hammer breaks through the mirror separating us from light...
David Meltzer

Death is a delightful hiding-place for weary men...
Herodotus

Death means no more to me than what a caterpillar experiences when it sheds its old skin and emerges into the full light of a new day as a butterfly...
David Manners

Death is no death if it raises us in a moment from darkness to light, from weakness to strength, from sinfulness into holiness...
harles Kingsley

Death is the quick transition to life in another form; the putting off of the old coat and the putting on of a new; a passing not from light to darkness but from light to light, according as we have lived here..
Ralph W. Trine

No one who is fit to live need fear to die. To us here, death is the most terrible word we know. But when we have tasted its reality, it will mean to us birth, deliverance, a new creation of ourselves...
George S. Merriam

Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasures, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day...
Ralph W. Emerson

Asking why you have to die is like asking why you have to grow up physically as well as spiritually. It
is all part of the human experience and upon death you go into a freer living...
-Peace Pilgrim

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead...
-Albert Einstein

Do not allow death to disturb you, do not let the demise of flesh be the cause of pain or anguish. It is merely riddance of your vehicle, the sloughing off of your clothes...
-Shantidasa

Death is simply a shedding of the physical body, like the butterfly coming out cocoon. It is a transition into a higher state of consciousness, where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, to be able to grow, and the only thing you lose is something you don't need anymore .. your physical body. It's like putting away your winter coat when spring comes...
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

How foolish to cling to life when God has ordained otherwise...
-Manrique

Life is a great surprise, I do not see why death should not be a greater one...
-Wadimir Nabokov

Death is not the end of things. Death can be spoken only of the body. The soul is eternal, undying and indestructible. Every death wrung out by the fire of a lofty ideal liberates the soul into the knowledge of its immortality-a kingdom of absolute peace and bliss...
-Papa Ramdas

Do not stand at my grave and weep.



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 glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
(Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!
Mary Frye (1932)