DEATH
See also: Bereavement; Dying; Grief; Life after death
For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
The Bible, Genesis 3:19 kjv
I am going the way of all the earth.
The Bible, Joshua 23:14 kjv
Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.
The Bible, Job 5:26 kjv
I would not live alway.
The Bible, Job 7:16 kjv
The sorrows of death compassed me.
The Bible, Psalm 18:4 kjv
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
The Bible, Psalm 116:15
The righteous hath hope in his death.
The Bible, Proverbs 14:32 kjv
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
The Bible, Ecclesiastes 12:7 kjv
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
The Bible, 1 Corinthians 15:26
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
The Bible, 1 Corinthians 15:55 kjv
To live is Christ, and to die is gain.
The Bible, Philippians 1:21 kjv
For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
The Bible, 1 Timothy 6:7 kjv
… it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
The Bible, 2 Timothy 1:10
God buries His workmen but carries on His work.
Author unknown
Many who plan to seek God at the eleventh hour die at 10:30.
Author unknown
I have sent for you that you may see how a Christian can die.
Joseph Addison, on his deathbed to his stepson.
God who redeemed me by Himself, who by His grace bound me to Himself in this life of the cloister without my merit. To Him I go.
St Aelred of Rievaulx, his farewell words to his monks, as he was dying, in 1167
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
Woody Allen
There are three kinds of death in this world. There’s heart death, there’s brain death, and there’s being off the network.
Guy Almes
To the good man to die is gain. The foolish fear death as the greatest of evils, the wise desire it as a rest after labors and the end of ills.
Ambrose
It is necessary to die, but nobody wants to; you don’t want to, but you are going to, willy-nilly. A hard necessity that is, not to want something which can not be avoided. If it could be managed, we would much rather not die; we would like to become like the angels by some other means than death. We want to reach the kingdom of God, but we don’t want to travel by way of death. And yet there stands Necessity saying: “This way, please.” Do you hesitate, man, to go this way, when this is the way that God came to you?
Augustine of Hippo
Of this I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die some time. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest … And of what consequence is it what kind of death puts an end to life, since he who has died once is not forced to go through the same ordeal a second time? They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them.
Augustine of Hippo
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark.
Francis Bacon
On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that, citizens; on this side, orphans; on that, children; on this side, captives; on that, freemen.
Henry Ward Beecher
Ignorance of death is destroying us. Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.
Saul Bellow
Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die.
Rule of St Benedict
Die: To stop sinning suddenly.
A. Bierce
They shall not grow old, as we that are left
grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years
condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the
morning
We will remember them.
Lawrence Binyon
Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a mandie so entirely submissive to the will of God.
Prison doctor describing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s death
In the midst of life we are in death.
Book of Common Prayer
The waters are rising, but so am I. I am not going under but over. Do not be concerned about dying; go on living well, the dying will be right.
Last words of Catherine Booth, wife of Salvation Army founder William Booth
I do not dare read the New Testament for fear of awakening a storm of anxiety and doubt and dread, of having taken the wrong path, of having been a traitor to the plain and simple God.
Gamaliel Bradford, famous biographer, as he neared the end of his life
Lord, if any have to die this day, let it be me, for I am ready.
Billy Bray
To go back is nothing but death: to go forward is fear of death, and life everlasting beyond it. I will yet go forward.
John Bunyan
I John Calvin, servant of the Word of God in the church of Geneva, weakened by many illnesses … thank God that he has not only shown mercy to me, his poor creature … and suffered me in all sins and weaknesses, but what is more than that, he has made me a partaker of his grace to serve him through my work … I confess to live and die in this faith which he has given me, inasmuch as I have no other hope or refuge than his predestination upon which my entire salvation is grounded. I embrace the grace which he has offered me in our Lord Jesus Christ, and accept the merits of his suffering and dying that through him all my sins are buried; and I humbly beg him to wash me and cleanse me with the blood of our great Redeemer, as it was shed for all poor sinners so that I, when I appear before his face, may bear his likeness.
Calvin’s will
We don’t know life: how can we know death?
Confucius
Come Love, come Lord, and that long day
For which I languish, come away.
When this dry soul those eyes shall see
And drink the unseal’d source of Thee,
When glory’s sun faith’s shades shall chase,
Then for Thy veil give me Thy face.
Richard Crashaw
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou
shalt die!
John Donne
Death be not proud, though some have
called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think’st thou dost
overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill
me.
John Donne
Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.
John Donne
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.
John Dryden
So softly death succeeded life in her,
She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.
John Dryden
I must not think it strange if God takes in youth those whom I would have kept on earth until they were older. God is peopling eternity, and I must not restrict him to old men and women.
Jim Elliot
“Who gathered this flower?” The gardener answered, “The Master.” And his fellow-servant held his peace.
Epitaph
A Christian in this world is but gold in the ore; at death the pure gold is melted out and separated and the dross cast away and consumed.
Flavel
No man should be afraid to die, who hath understood what it is to live.
Thomas Fuller
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
This machine will take off a head in a twinkling, and the victim will feel nothing but a sense of refreshing coolness. We cannot make too much haste, gentlemen, to allow the nation to enjoy this advantage.
J.I. Guillotin
Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.
Bishop Hall
He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave.
Matthew Henry
Death is as the foreshadowing of life. We die that we may die no more!
Herman Hooker
God hath my daily petitions, for I am at peace with all men, and He is at peace with me, and this witness makes the thoughts of death joyful.
Richard Hooker, his last words
The approach of death is very dreadful. I am afraid to think on that which I know I cannot avoid. It is vain to look round and round for that help which cannot be had. Yet we hope and hope, and fancy that he who has lived today my live tomorrow.
Samuel Johnson,
who however found when his death actually approached that his fears “were calmed and absorbed by the prevalence of his faith, and his trust in the merits and propitiation of Jesus Christ.”
Teach me to live that I may dread,the grave as little as my bed.
Thomas Ken
In the long run we are all dead.
John Maynard Keynes
It is not darkness you are going to, for God is Light. It is not lonely, for Christ is with you. It is not unknown country, for Christ is there.
Charles Kingsley
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
While I thought I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
Leonardo da Vinci
There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
C.S. Lewis
It is hard to have patience with people who say, “There is no death,” or, “Death doesn’t matter.” There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter.
C.S. Lewis
All the first Christians could face death with a smile.
M. Lloyd-Jones
Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;
’T was an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Joe Louis
Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.
Martin Luther
How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.
George Macdonald
I came from God, and I’m going back to God, and I won’t have any gaps of death in the middle of my life.
George Macdonald
Now I leave off to speak any more to creatures, and turn my speech to Thee, O Lord. Now I begin my intercourse with God which shall never be broken off. Farewell, father and mother, friends and relations.
Farewell, meat and drink.
Farewell, the world and all delights.
Farewell, sun, moon, and stars.
Welcome, God and Father.
Welcome, sweet Lord Jesus, Mediator of the New Covenant.
Welcome, Blessed Spirit of Grace, God of all Consolation.
Welcome, Glory.
Welcome, Eternal Life.
Welcome, death.
The martyrdom of Hugh MacKail
And to the faithful, death the gate of life.
John Milton
Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.
John Milton
The valley of the shadow of death holds no darkness for the child of God. There must be light, else there could be no shadow. Jesus is the light. He has overcome death.
D.L. Moody
Some day you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal – a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body.
D.L. Moody
There is one single fact which we may oppose to all the wit and argument of infidelity, namely, that no man ever repented of being a Christian on his death bed.
Hannah More
So that he seemed not to relinquish life, but to leave one home for another.
Cornelius Nepos
After the fever of life; after weariness, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death; at length the white throne of God; at length the beatific vision.
J.H. Newman
Death stung himself to death when he stung Christ.
William Romaine
Death – the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.
Walter Scott
Remember death and the attractions of life will fade away before you.
Shenouda III
To die well is the action of the whole life.
Richard Sibbes
Death is only a grim porter to let us into a stately palace.
Richard Sibbes
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
Josef Stalin
He is not dead, this friend; not dead,
Gone some few, trifling steps ahead,
And nearer to the end;
So that you, too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
You fancy dead.
Robert Louis Stevenson
God’s finger touched him, and he slept.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Until our Master summons us, not a hair on our head can perish, not a moment of our life be snatched from us. When He sends for us, it should seem but the message that the child is wanted at home.
Anthony Thorold
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Mark Twain
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain
The faith that looks through death.
William Wordsworth