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Quotes About Death

Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time.
~ John Steinbeck
The wedding was in Monterey, a sombre boding ceremony in a little Protestant chapel. The church had so often seen two ripe bodies die by the process of marriage that it seemed to celebrate a mystic double death with its ritual.
~ John Steinbeck
When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror
~ John Steinbeck
The bird looked much smaller dead than alive. Jody felt a little mean pain in his stomach, so he took out his pocketknife and cut off the bird's head. Then he disemboweled it, and took off its wings; and finally he threw all the pieces into the brush. He didn't care about the bird, or its life, but he knew what older people would say if they had seen him kill it; he was ashamed because of their potential opinion.
~ John Steinbeck
I always found in myself a dread of west and love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.
~ John Steinbeck
Casy said solemnly, This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now his dead, an' that don't matter...
~ John Steinbeck
Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice.
~ John Steinbeck
They's a time of change, an' when that comes, dyin' is a piece of all dyin', and bearin' is a piece of all bearin', an' bearin' an' dyin' is two pieces of the same thing. An' then things ain't so lonely anymore. An' then a hurt don't hurt so bad.
~ John Steinbeck
There is no dignity in death in battle. Mostly that is a splashing about of human meat and fluid, and the result is filthy, but there is a great and almost sweet dignity in the sorrow, the helpless, the hopeless sorrow, that comes down over a family with the telegram. Nothing to say, nothing to do, and only one hope—I hope he didn't suffer—and what a forlorn and last-choice hope that is.
~ John Steinbeck
Well, suppose there's a slight doubt that the boy should be in the army and we send him and he gets killed." "I see. Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you?" "I don't want blame." "Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn't carry any pleasant egotism.
~ John Steinbeck
Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, hut he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immortality he deeply felt, and the one crack in his wall caused the whole structure to crash. I think he had always thought he could argue himself out of death. It was a personal opponent and one he could lick.
~ John Steinbeck
And just as war is always for somebody else, so it is also true that someone else always gets killed. And Mother of God! that wasn't true either. The dreadful telegrams began to sneak sorrowfully in, and it was everybody's brother. Here we were, over six thousand miles from the anger and the noise, and that didn't save us.
~ John Steinbeck
No," he said, "that's not my right. Nobody has the right to remove any single experience from another. Life and death are promised. We have a right to pain.
~ John Steinbeck
It's a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man's life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.
~ John Steinbeck
You think it was a sin to let my wife die like that?'' "Well,'' said Casy, "for anybody else it was a mistake, but if you think it was a sin—then it's a sin. A fella builds his own sins right up from the groun'.
~ John Steinbeck
Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead.
~ John Steinbeck
He stared between his knees at the floor. "No," he said, "that's not my right. Nobody has the right to remove any single experience from another. Life and death are promised. We have a right to pain.
~ John Steinbeck
The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did it will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift through his fingertips.The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
~ John Steinbeck
Well, she thought, here it is just as I knew it would be. Here was her death. Her mind flashed to see if she had forgotten anything—will made, letters burned, new underwear, plenty of food in the house for dinner. She wondered whether she had turned out the light in the back room. It was all in a second. Then she thought there might be an outside chance of survival.
~ John Steinbeck
This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don' know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters.
~ John Steinbeck
A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead.
~ John Steinbeck
Homicide thats a big word means i killed a guy. seven years. im sprung in four for keep'n my nose clean. (18) the hich hiker is saying this to the truck driver and i think it puts alot of meanning to the book because the truck driver just realized that he could have just died. it adds suspense to the story and makes it kinda scary.
~ John Steinbeck
Then Samuel died and the world shattered like a dish.
~ John Steinbeck
No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration.
~ John Steinbeck