Shakespeare Death Quotes

Death Quotes That Tug Your Heart

Killing Of Hotspur
Puttnam/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Shakespeare's tragedies have some deeply moving death-quotes. His quotations on death bring tears rolling down the cheeks. The sadness in the quotes moves you so much that you feel as though you have experienced a great loss. Here is a page of some of Shakespeare's most moving death quotes.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Sc. I
"This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad."

Hamlet, Act V, Sc. II
"This fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest."

Hamlet, Act II, Sc. II
"They are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death, you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live."

HamletAct III, Sc. I

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause."

Julius Caesar, Act II, Sc. II
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once."

Julius Caesar,​ Act II, Sc. II
"When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."

King Henry IV. Part II, Act I, Sc. II
"I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion."

Macbeth, Act V, Sc. V
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow."

Macbeth, Act V, Sc. VI
"
Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death."

Othello, Act II, Sc. I
"
If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have waken'd death!"

The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Sc. I
"
I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground. "

Twelfth Night, Act III, Sc. IV
"Out of the jaws of death."

Measure for Measure,  Act III, Sc. 1 
"If I must die
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms."

Richard II, Act III, Sc. II
"Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay;
The worst is death, and death will have his day."

Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Sc. III
"Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death."

Cymbeline,  Act IV, Sc. 2
"
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust."

Henry VI, Part III, Act V, Sc. 2
"
My sick heart shows
That I must yield my body to the earth,
And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe.
Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge,
Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle;
Under whose shade the ramping lion slept:
Whose top-branch overpeer'd Jove's spreading tree,
And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind."

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Khurana, Simran. "Shakespeare Death Quotes." ThoughtCo, Aug. 26, 2020, thoughtco.com/shakespeare-death-quotes-2833100. Khurana, Simran. (2020, August 26). Shakespeare Death Quotes. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/shakespeare-death-quotes-2833100 Khurana, Simran. "Shakespeare Death Quotes." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/shakespeare-death-quotes-2833100 (accessed March 29, 2024).