Quotes About Death

On human decay and what can be done about it

It's just that there are other ways to spend your time as a cadaver. Get involved with science. Be an art exhibit. Become part of a tree. Some options for you to think about. Death. It doesn't have to be boring.

An hour? What do you do with a dead person for an hour? Mom had been sick for a long time; we'd done our grieving and crying and saying goodbye. It was like being served a slice of pie you didn't want to eat. We felt it would be rude to leave, after all the trouble they'd gone to.

Being dead is absurd. It's the silliest situation you'll find yourself in. Your limbs are floppy and uncooperative. Your mouth hangs open. Being dead is unsightly and stinky and embarrassing, and there's not a damn thing to be done about it.

But gross anatomy lab is not just about learning anatomy. It is about confronting death.

It didn't bother them that the corpses would arrive at their doors, to quote Ruth Richardson, "compressed into boxes, packed in sawdust,…trussed up in sacks, roped up like hams…

My mom was never a cadaver; no person ever is. You are a person and then you cease to be a person, and a cadaver takes your place. My mother was gone. The cadaver was her hull. Or that was how it seemed to me.

And there are no pockets in shrouds!

On Wednesday, September 3, I'd been awake at five in the morning for an interview with Charles Gibson on Good Morning, America. Apparently, I still hadn't accepted Diana's death because at the end of our talk Charles observed, "It's wonderful to hear you speaking about her in the present tense. Do you realize you've been doing that?" I hadn't been aware of this at all.

She had said she wanted to be a "princess for the world." The world's sorrow for her untimely death made it undeniably clear that she was, indeed, "the people's princess," as Tony Blair had so eloquently called her.

I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave

But soon, I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct.

I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death - a state which I feared yet did not understand.

But soon, he cried, with sad and solemn enthusiasm, I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pyre triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.

Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?

If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.

One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race.

Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavor to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.

And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart.

these are my enticements, and they are sufficent to conquer all fear and danger or death... with the induction of the joy of a child feels when embarks a little boat.

What is the world, except that which we feel? Love, and hope, and delight, or sorrow and tears; these are our lives, our realities, to which we give the names of power, possession, misfortune, and death.

I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain.

Death! mysterious, ill-visaged friend of weak humanity! Why alone of all mortals have you cast me from your sheltering fold? Oh, for the peace of the grave! the deep silence of the iron-bound tomb! that thought would cease to work in my brain, and my heart beat no more with emotions varied only by new forms of sadness!