50 Inspirational Quotes About Dying That Will Change Your Perspective on Life

"What do we say to the Lord of Death? 'Not today.' "

- George R.R. Martin

"Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back."

- Marcus Aurelius

"If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it. Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now."

- Leo Babauta

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

- Mark Twain

"The meaning of life is that it stops."

- Franz Kafka

"Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it."

- Haruki Murakami

"You only live twice: Once when you're born And once when you look death in the face."

- Ian Fleming

"If you live each day as it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."

- Steve Jobs

"Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change."

- Isabel Allende

"For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance."

- Kahlil Gibran

"Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you've lived."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived."

- Willa Cather

"I am ready to meet my maker. Whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."

- Winston Churchill

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome."

- Isaac Asimov

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people live."

- George Bernard Shaw

"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."

- Anne Lamott

"Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever."

- J.K. Rowling

"There is something about losing a mother that is permanent and inexpressible—a wound that will never quite heal."

- Susan Wiggs

"When he shall die take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun."

- William Shakespeare

"My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."

- Clarence Budington Kelland

"My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me."

- Jim Valvano

"A father is the one friend upon whom we can always rely. In the hour of need, when all else fails, we remember him upon whose knees we sat when children."

- éMile Gaboriau

"This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments—and you get the tears at the end, too."

- Harlan Coben

"There is no expiration date on the love between a father and his child."

- Jennifer Williamson

"When a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him lies on the paths of men."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Say not in grief 'he is no more' but live in thankfulness that he was."

- Hebrew Proverb

"Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well."

- Buddhist saying

"Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve."

- Earl Grollman

"The melody that the loved one played upon the piano of your life will never be played quite that way again, but we must not close the keyboard and allow the instrument to gather dust. We must seek out other artists of the spirit, new friends who gradually will help us to find the road to life again, who will walk the road with us."

- Joshua Loth Liebman

"We do not have to rely on memories to recapture the spirit of those we have loved and lost – they live within our souls in some perfect sanctuary which even death cannot destroy."

- Nan Witcomb

"Everybody is going to be dead one day, just give them time."

- Neil Gaiman

"I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to."

- Jimi Hendrix

"It's not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It's part of the deal we made."

- Mitch Albom

"We see a hearse; we think sorrow. We see a grave; we think despair. We hear of a death; we think of a loss. Not so in heaven. When heaven sees a breathless body, it sees the vacated cocoon & the liberated butterfly."

- Max Lucado

"Those who are afraid of death will carry it on their shoulders."

- Federico García Lorca

"Say not in grief that she is no more, but say in thankfulness that she was. A death is not the extinguishing of a light but the putting out of the lamp because the dawn has come."

- Rabindranath Tagore

"Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them."

- George Eliot

"If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them."

- James O'Barr

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness but of power. They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love."

- Washington Irving

"If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever."

- A.A. Milne

"If you ever lose someone dear to you, never say the words they’re gone. They’ll come back."

- Prince

"Remembering is an act of resurrection, each repetition a vital layer of mourning, in memory of those we are sure to meet again."

- Nancy Cobb

"To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead."

- Samuel Butler

"Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity."

- Terri Guillemets

"Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well-used brings happy death."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened."

- Dr. Seuss

"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies."

- William Penn

"Every life is noted and is cherished, and nothing loved is ever lost or perished."

- Madeleine L'Engle

"The comfort of having a friend may be taken away but not that of having had one."

- Seneca

"Wherever a beautiful soul has been, there is a trail of beautiful memories."

- Ronald Reagan

"You are gone, but thank you for all these soft, sweet things you left behind. In my home, in my head, in my heart."

- Nikita Gill

"Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything."

- C.S. Lewis

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

- Isaac Asimov

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

- Thomas Campbell

"Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise."

- Les Miserables

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."

- Marcus Aurelius

"If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."

- Albert Pike

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."

- Edvard Munch

"The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them."

- Lois McMaster Bujold

"Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying."

- Jean Cocteau

"I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens."

- Woody Allen

"I intend to live forever, or die trying."

- Groucho Marx

"I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life."

- Corazon Aquino

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

- J. Robert Oppenheimer

"If we must die, we die defending our rights."

- Sitting Bull

"I'll sleep when I'm dead."

- Warren Zevon

"In the long run we are all dead."

- John Maynard Keynes

"It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Dying is easy, it's living that scares me to death."

- Annie Lennox

"Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live."

- Henry van Dyke

"No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow."

- Euripides

"When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead."

- John Greenleaf Whittier

"I'm gonna live till I die."

- Frank Sinatra

"The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living."

- W. H. Auden

"Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it."

- W. Somerset Maugham

"Cursed is the man who dies, but the evil done by him survives."

- Abu Bakr

"If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die."

- Maya Angelou

"We die only once, and for such a long time."

- Moliere

"For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity."

- William Penn

"Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more."

- Virginia Woolf

"When you're dead, you're dead. That's it."

- Marlene Dietrich

"Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality."

- Emily Dickinson

"Say not in grief that he is no more but live in thankfulness that he was."

- Hebrew Proverb

"Those we love never truly leave us. There are things that death cannot touch."

- Jack Thorne

"Grief is the price we pay for love."

- Queen Elizabeth II

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal."

- From a headstone in Ireland

"No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear."

- C.S. Lewis

"We need never be afraid of our tears."

- Charles Dickens

"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it."

- W. Somerset Maugham

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."

- Helen Keller

"I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize that I’m listening to it."

- George Carlin

"Immortality … a fate worse than death."

- Edgar A. Shoaff

"Death is nature’s way of saying, ‘Your table is ready."

- Robin Williams

"The idea is to die young as late as possible."

- Ashley Montagu

"Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived."

- Madeleine L'Engle

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

- Dr. Seuss

"We get no choice. If we love, we grieve."

- Thomas Lynch

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

- Joseph Stalin

"There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief."

- Aeschylus

"Sometimes, when one person is absent, the whole world seems depopulated."

- Alphonse de Lamartine

"Grief is itself a medicine."

- William Cowper

"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Our grief is as individual as our lives."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Honest listening is one of the best medicines we can offer the dying and the bereaved."

- Jean Cameron

"Life is stressful, dear. That’s why they say ‘rest in peace."

- David Mazzucchelli

"It's better to burn out than to fade away."

- Neil Young

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

- Voltaire

"Death should take me while I am in the mood."

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

"I will welcome happiness for it enlarges my heart; Yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards for they are my due; Yet I will welcome obstacles for they are my challenge."

- Og Mandino

"Some people come in your life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons."

- Mother Teresa

"Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death."

- William S. Burroughs

"People touch our lives if only for a moment, And yet we're not the same from that moment on, The time is not important, The moment is forever."

- Fern Bork

"Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them."

- Margaret Mitchell

"Life is not the way it is supposed to be. It is the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."

- Virginia Satir

"Those things that hurt instruct."

- Benjamin Franklin

"There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery."

- Dante Alighieri

"Lives are like rivers: eventually they go where they must. Not where we want them to."

- Richard Russo

"I'd rather be dead than sing 'Satisfaction' when I'm 45."

- Mick Jagger

"Death will be a great relief. No more interviews."

- Katharine Hepburn

"Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow."

- Benjamin Disraeli

"Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal."

"In the night of death, hope sees a star."

"The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible."

"The fact that something has happened to a million other people diminishes neither grief nor joy."

"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live."

"Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er-wrought heart and bids it break."

"Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever."

"Sorrow makes us all children again."

"All that lives must die."

"Life is but a walking shadow."

"Grief fills the room up of my absent child."

"Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die."

- Unknown

"There is no friend like a sister, in calm or stormy weather."

"If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane, I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again."

"Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, may looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow."

"When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure."

"Why does it take a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye?"

"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps."