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Death Quotes

Famous Death Quotes

By , About.com Guide

Interestingly, as many poets and writers have talked about death, as have about birth. Some of it is sorrowful, other is actually happy. Read these death quotes that are chosen from famous literary works.

William Wordsworth
The clouds that gather round the setting sun, Do take a sober colouring from an eye, That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality.

Francis Bacon
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways, I keep and pass and turn again.

Benjamin Franklin
Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.

Walt Whitman
Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death.

Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done! The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.

Walt Whitman
Praised be the fathomless universe, For life and joy and for objects and knowledge curious; And for love, sweet love — But praise! O praise and praise, For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.

Walt Whitman
I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed; I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.

Walt Whitman
I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, “Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country — I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.”

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