Quotations

Death, Parting & Sorrow

Anonymous

You can shed tears that she is gone
or you can smile because she has lived
[She is gone, chosen as preface for the order of service for the funeral of Elizabeth the Queen Mother, April 9 2002]

Old men go to death; but death comes to young men [Proverb]

Six feet of earth make all men equal [Proverb]


Samuel Butler, 1835-1902, English writer

To himself everyone is an immortal; he may know that he is going to die,
but he can never know that he is dead. [Ibid]


Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-82, American writer

Goodbye, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou art not my friend, and i'm not thine. [Poems: Goodbye 1847]


A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, 1895-1936, English poet & scholar

The man that runs away
Lives to die another day [Ibid: The day of battle]


Octavio Paz, Mexican poet

We are condemmed
to kill time:
Thus we die
bit by bit [cuento de los Jardines 1968]


William Shakespeare 1564-1616, English dramatist

A man can die but once [King Henry IV, part II 3 1597-8]

If i must die
I will encounter darkness as bride,
And hug it in mine arms. [Ibid]

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end. [Ibid 60]

He that dies pays all debts [The Tempest 3 1611-12]


Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, English poet

How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep. [Queen Mab 1813]

First our pleasures die - and then
Our hopes, and then our fears - and when
These are dead, the debts is due. [Prometheus Unbound 1818-19]

Peace is in the grave.
The grave hides all things beautiful and good:
I am God and cannot find it there. [Ibid]

Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted. [Ibid]

Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep, - that death is slumber. [Mont Blanc]

The flower that smile today
Tomorrow dies. [Mutability]


Sophocies, c.496-c.406bc, Greek poet

Daeth is not the greatest of ills; it is worse to want to die, and may not be able to. [Electra c.450bc]


Stanislaus {Leszcynski], 1677-1766, King of Poland

He who fears death dies everytime he thinks of it. [Oeuvres du philosophe bienfaisant 1760]


William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, English poet

There is
One great society alone on earth;
The noble Living and the noble Dead. [The Prelude 1799-1805]


William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Irish poet

A drunkard is a dead man
And all dead men are drunk [A Drunken Man's Praise of Sobrety 1938]


Edward Young, 1683-1765, English churchman and poet

Death but entombs the body; life the soul [Night III; Night Thoughts]