Sourced and curated.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Ecclesiastes 12:7

931 BC

★ 1.3

Epigram

Neither fear your death's day nor long for it.

Martial

Epigrams · 103

★ 1.3

There's an experienced rebel, Time, And in his squadrons Poverty; There's Age that brings along with him A terrible artillery: And if against all these thou keep'st thy crown, Th'usurper Death will make thee lay it down.

Thomas Flatman

1682

★ 1.8

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at it while it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Yann Martel

Life of Pi (novel) · 2001

★ 1.8

Historical literature

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death!... Thou hast drawn together all the farstretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet (here lies).

Sir Walter Raleigh

1614

★ 1.9

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

Henry Fielding

Amelia · 1751

★ 1.9

Pale death, the grand physician, cures all pain; The dead rest well who lived for joys in vain.

John Clare

1841

★ 1.9

Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.

Ivan Turgenev

1860

★ 1.9

We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear.

Hermann Hesse

Narcissus and Goldmund · 1930

★ 1.9

Film · Western (film) · Western

You never had a rope around your neck. Well, I'm going to tell you something. When that rope starts to pull tight, you can feel the devil bite your ass!

Tuco

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly · 1966

★ 1.9

Biography

Autumn is quite beautiful here but all the same has a funereal air, like all beautiful autumns-something like a funereal relaxation of things.

Marcel Duchamp

★ 1.9

Prepare to meet thy God.

Amos 4:12

750 BC

★ 1.9

If a man die, shall he live again?

Job

Job 14:14 · 500 BC

★ 1.9

Fable and fairytale

Death never takes the wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.

Jean de La Fontaine

1678

★ 1.9

And come he slow, or come he fast, It is but Death who comes at last.

Sir Walter Scott

1808

★ 1.9

Speech

Death, the refuge, the solace, the best and kindliest and most prized friend and benefactor of the erring, the forsaken, the old, and weary, and broken of heart, whose burdens be heavy upon them, and who would lie down and be at rest.

Mark Twain

1883

★ 1.9

A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.

Thomas Mann

The Magic Mountain · 1924

★ 1.9

Film · War (film) · War

Have faith in your Creator, my son, death comes to us all.

Father Dupree

Paths of Glory · 1957

★ 1.9

Letter

When the grim reaper comes to get me, he'll have to give me a few extra hours to revise my last words.

Flannery O'Connor

1959

★ 1.9

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

Vladimir Nabokov

1962

★ 1.9

Film · Historical drama (film) · Drama (film) · Historical drama · Drama

If you're afraid of dying, shows you have a life worth keeping.

Dr. Nicholas Garrigan

The Last King of Scotland · 2006

★ 1.9

Wisdom literature

Remember: it is not given to man to take his goods with him. No one goes away and then comes back.

The Song of the Harper

2600 BC

★ 2.0

As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.

Ecclesiastes 5:15

931 BC

★ 2.0

He will swallow up death forever, And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces; The rebuke of His people He will take away from all the earth; For the Lord has spoken.

Isaiah 25:8

681 BC

★ 2.0

If any man thinks he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die. He is never born, and he never dies. He is in Eternity, he is for evermore. Never-born and eternal, beyond times gone or to come, he does not die when the body dies.

Bhagavad Gita

200 BC

★ 2.0

Play · Tragedy (play)

Men must endure Their going hence even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all.

King Lear · 1606

★ 2.0

O Death! the poor man's dearest friend, The kindest and the best!

Robert Burns

1784

★ 2.0

Essay

It is better to be a fool than to be dead.

Robert Louis Stevenson

1881

★ 2.0

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

Langston Hughes

1936

★ 2.0

Last words

Allow me to depart to the house of the Father.

Pope John Paul II

2005

★ 2.0

Invisible before birth are all beings and after death invisible again. They are seen between two unseens. Why in this truth find sorrow?

Bhagavad Gita

200 BC

★ 2.1

As a man leaves an old garment and puts on one that is new, the spirit leaves his mortal body and puts on one that is new.

Bhagavad Gita

200 BC

★ 2.1

Poem · Didactic poem · Philosophical literature

Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

Lucretius

On the Nature of Things · 55 BC

★ 2.1

Poem · Philosophical literature · Didactic poem

Death therefore is nothing to us nor does it concern us a scrap, seeing that the nature of the spirit we possess is something mortal.

Lucretius

On the Nature of Things · 55 BC

★ 2.1

Epigram

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.

Publilius Syrus

Sententiae · 43 BC

★ 2.1

Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.

Apostle Paul

Romans 5:12 · 56

★ 2.1

Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

Revelation 6:8

★ 2.1

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits.

John Webster

The Duchess of Malfi · 1614

★ 2.1

Because I could not stop for Death - He kindly stopped for me.

Emily Dickinson

1886

★ 2.1

Treatise · Philosophical literature

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

1922

★ 2.1

Film · Western (film) · Western

We brought nothing into this world and it's certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Amen.

Thomas Dunson

Red River · 1948

★ 2.1

Film · Fantasy drama (film) · Drama (film) · Fantasy drama · Drama

My body is ready, but I am not.

Antonius Block

The Seventh Seal · 1957

★ 2.1

Film · Epic (film) · Historical drama (film) · Epic · Historical drama

Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That's why he's not afraid of it.

Spartacus

Spartacus · 1960

★ 2.1

TV program · Crime (TV) · Drama (TV) · Crime · Drama

Shut the fuck up and let me die in peace.

Mike Ehrmantraut

Breaking Bad · 2012

★ 2.1

Courtroom speech · Speech · Philosophical literature

Death is, you see, one or the other of two things: either to be dead is to be non-existent, as it were, and a dead person has no awareness of anything at all; or else, as we are told, the soul undergoes some sort of transformation, or exchanging of this present world for another.

Socrates

Plato, Apology · 399 BC

★ 2.2

Wherever you may be, death will overtake you, though you be in raised-up towers.

Muhammad

The Quran, The Koran, 2:225 · 632

★ 2.2

Anyone's death always releases something like an aura of stupefaction, so difficult is it to grasp this irruption of nothingness and to believe that it has actually taken place.

Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary · 1857

★ 2.9

Play · Comedy (play)

The sense of death is most in apprehension, And the poor beetle that we tread upon In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.

Measure for Measure · 1616

★ 2.9

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

Apostle Paul

Romans 7:24 · 56

★ 3.0

Play · Tragedy (play)

The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?

Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go... Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the hand with which we hold off death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in the winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 3.0

Novel · Adventure novel

H. Rider Haggard

King Solomon's Mines · 1885

★ 3.5

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1928

★ 3.5

Inscription · Poem

There is no one who returns from beyond that he may tell of their state that he may tell of their lot that he may set our hearts at ease until we make our journey to the place where they have gone.

Harper's Songs

1700 BC

★ 3.5

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.

John Donne

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes · 1624

★ 3.5

Short story

A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die... Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.

Jack London

1902

★ 3.5

Religious literature

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life.

The Book of Common Prayer

1928

★ 3.5

Film · Epic (film) · War (film) · Epic · War

I remember my mother when she was dyin', looked all shrunk up and gray. I asked her if she was afraid. She just shook her head. I was afraid to touch the death I seen in her. I couldn't find nothin' beautiful or uplifting about her goin' back to God. I heard of people talk about immortality, but I ain't seen it.

Private Witt

The Thin Red Line · 1998

★ 3.5

The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.

Psalm 115:17

450 BC

★ 3.6

Letter

We are continually dying; I while I am writing these words, you while you are reading them, others when they hear them or fail to hear them. I shall be dying when you read this, you die while I write, we both are dying, we all are dying, we are dying forever.

Petrarch

1360

★ 3.6

Play · Comedy (play)

Suns, that set, may rise again: But if, once, we lose this light, 'Tis with us perpetual night.

Ben Jonson

Volpone · 1606

★ 3.6

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

Sir Thomas Browne

1658

★ 3.6

Play · Comedic play

'Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but death and taxes.

Christopher Bullock

1716

★ 3.6

Letter

How often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.

Alexander Pope

1732

★ 3.6

Sermon

The bodies of those that made such a noise and tumult when alive, when dead, lie as quietly among the graves of their neighbors as any others.

Jonathan Edwards

1834

★ 3.6

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing; Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1873

★ 3.6

I heard the old, old men say, “Everything alters, And one by one we drop away.”

W.B. Yeats

1903

★ 3.6

I that have not your faith, how shall I know That in the blinding light beyond the grave We’ll find so good a thing as that we have lost?

W.B. Yeats

1910

★ 3.6

Play

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

Bertolt Brecht

1931

★ 3.6

We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying.

D.H. Lawrence

Last Poems · 1932

★ 3.6

Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all.

W.B. Yeats

1933

★ 3.6

Film · Drama (film) · Drama

Just old age. It's the only disease, Mr. Thompson, you don't look forward to being cured of.

Mr. Bernstein

Citizen Kane · 1941

★ 3.6

Film · Biography (film) · Drama (film) · Biography · Drama

Death comes for us all, my lords. Yes, even for kings he comes.

Sir Thomas More

A Man for All Seasons (film) · 1966

★ 3.6

Newspaper

If there wasn't death, I think you couldn't go on.

Stevie Smith

1969

★ 3.6

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Apostle Paul

1st Corinthians 15:55 · 55

★ 3.7

Play · Comedy (play)

He that dies pays all debts.

It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal.

The Tempest · 1616

★ 3.7

Sermon · Religious literature

John Donne

1621

★ 3.7

Essay

Age will not be defied.

Francis Bacon

1625

★ 3.7

Biography

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Samuel Johnson

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D · 1777

★ 3.7

Poem · Magazine

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Knickerbocker · 1838

★ 3.7

Film · Film noir · Drama (film) · Drama

Funny how gentle people get with you once you're dead.

Joe Gillis

Sunset Boulevard · 1950

★ 3.7

Film · Epic (film) · Historical drama (film) · Epic · Historical drama

All men lose when they die and all men die. But a slave and a free man lose different things.

Spartacus

Spartacus · 1960

★ 3.7

Film · Comedy (film) · Fantasy (film) · Comedy · Fantasy

Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Please open his mouth. Now, mostly dead is slightly alive.

Miracle Max

The Princess Bride · 1987

★ 3.7

Film · Teen (film) · Drama (film) · Teen · Drama

We are food for worms, lads...because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die.

John Keating

Dead Poets Society · 1989

★ 3.7

For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.

Ecclesiastes 9:5

931 BC

★ 3.8

Philosophical literature

Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are death is not come, and when death is come, we are not.

Epicurus

Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers · 240

★ 3.8

Poem · Magazine

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Knickerbocker · 1838

★ 3.8

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

Herman Melville

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale · 1851

★ 3.8

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

Mark Twain

Pudd'nhead Wilson · 1894

★ 3.8

Film · Fantasy drama (film) · Drama (film) · Fantasy drama · Drama

No man can live faced with Death, knowing everything's nothingness.

Antonius Block

The Seventh Seal · 1957

★ 3.8

Film · Fantasy drama (film) · Drama (film) · Fantasy drama · Drama

Death visited me this morning. We are playing chess together.

Antonius Block

The Seventh Seal · 1957

★ 3.8

How long does a man spend dying?

Pablo Neruda

1958

★ 3.8

Philosophical literature

Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

Socrates

Plato, Apology · 339 BC

★ 3.9

Play · Tragedy (play)

Is it sin to rush into the secret house of death Ere death dare come to us?

We all end up dead, it's just a question of how and why.

Antony and Cleopatra · 1607

★ 3.9

Epigram · Philosophical literature

We shall die alone.

Blaise Pascal

Pensees · 1662

★ 3.9

Film · Epic (film) · Historical drama (film) · Epic · Historical drama

William Wallace

Braveheart · 1995

★ 3.9

Courtroom speech · Speech · Philosophical literature

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know.

Socrates

Plato, Apology · 399 BC

★ 4.0