death (n.)
- annihilation
- bane
- casualty
- catastrophe
- cessation
- changeableness
- coda
- conclusion
- consummation
- corruptibility
- crossbones
- culmination
- curtain
- deathblow
- decease
- demise
- denouement
- destination
- destiny
- destruction
- dissolution
- doom
- downfall
- dying
- effect
- end
- ending
- envoi
- ephemerality
- ephemeralness
- epilogue
- eradication
- eschatology
- evanescence
- expiration
- expiry
- extermination
- extinction
- extirpation
- fate
- finale
- finality
- finis
- finish
- finitude
- fleetingness
- fugacity
- goal
- grave
- impermanence
- impermanency
- instability
- izzard
- last
- liquidation
- mortality
- mutability
- obliteration
- omega
- passing
- payoff
- period
- perishability
- peroration
- quietus
- resolution
- ruin
- silence
- skull
- sleep
- stoppage
- term
- terminal
- termination
- terminus
- transience
- transiency
- transitoriness
- undoing
- volatility
- windup
death (v.)
death (adj.)
In death a hero, as in life a friend!
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
Death,—a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.
After death the doctor.
Death aims with fouler spite
At fairer marks.
All in the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.
How wonderful is Death!
Death and his brother Sleep.
I'm weary of conjectures,—this must end 'em.
Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me:
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
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.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand sweet song.
For I say this is death and the sole death,—
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest.
Death was now armed with a new terror.
I fled, and cry'd out, Death!
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh'd
From all her caves, and back resounded, Death!
Be thou faithful unto death.
While man is growing, life is in decrease;
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.
Then with no throbs of fiery pain,
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the nearest way.
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born.
Done to death by slanderous tongues.
Death calls ye to the crowd of common men.
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to heaven conveyed,
And bade it blossom there.
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels
For the first time her first-born's breath!
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke!
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm!
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song, and dance, and wine!
And thou art terrible!—the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know or dream or fear
Of agony are thine.
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?
We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement.
When all the blandishments of life are gone,
The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.
Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave.
Our days begin with trouble here,
Our life is but a span,
And cruel death is always near,
So frail a thing is man.
Dear, beauteous death, the jewel of the just!
Shining nowhere but in the dark;
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!
The thousand doors that lead to death.
Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,—'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Can storied urn, or animated bust,
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Heaven gives its favourites—early death.
His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.
O eloquent, just, and mightie Death! whom none could advise, thou hast perswaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawne together all the farre stretchèd greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!
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.
Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,—
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou hast slain another,
Learn'd and fair and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
Be thou faithful unto death.
This fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest.
He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,—
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.
Death forerunneth Love to win
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
Anarcharsis, on learning that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, said that "the passengers were just that distance from death."
Return unto thy rest, my soul,
From all the wanderings of thy thought,
From sickness unto death made whole,
Safe through a thousand perils brought.
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
One more unfortunate
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death.
Grim death.
Before mine eyes in opposition sits
Grim Death, my son and foe.
Death
Grinn'd horrible a ghastly smile, to hear
His famine should be fill'd.
1 Clo. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
2 Clo. But is this law?
1 Clo. Ay, marry, is 't; crowner's quest law.
The cup goes round:
And who so artful as to put it by!
'T is long since Death had the majority.
Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exit.
Death hath a thousand doors to let out life.
Death hath so many doors to let out life.
Heaven gives its favourites—early death.
After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions,
To keep mine honour from corruption,
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits
If any man obtains that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
. . . . . . .
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures,—love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,—
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
How wonderful is Death!
Death and his brother Sleep.
'T is strange that death should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
I fled, and cry'd out, Death!
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh'd
From all her caves, and back resounded, Death!
I would fain die a dry death.
Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal;
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.
Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,—
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret.
Oh death in life, the days that are no more!
The play's the thing
Wherein I 'll catch the conscience of the king.
In the midst of life we are in death.
Death in the pot.
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe.
We see time's furrows on another's brow,
And death intrench'd, preparing his assault;
How few themselves in that just mirror see!
Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.
Death is an eternal sleep.
But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet
Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet;
And Death is beautiful as feet of friend
Coming with welcome at our journey's end.
For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied,
A nature sloping to the southern side;
I thank her for it, though when clouds arise
Such natures double-darken gloomy skies.
Death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?
Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.
Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.
This fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest.
Euripides says,—
Who knows but that this life is really death,
And whether death is not what men call life?
O eloquent, just, and mightie Death! whom none could advise, thou hast perswaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawne together all the farre stretchèd greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field and his feet to the foe,
And leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame.
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hands on kings.
My little daughter lieth at the point of death.
Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.
Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.
Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.
Death rides on every passing breeze,
He lurks in every flower.
Let the world slide, let the world go;
A fig for care, and a fig for woe!
If I can't pay, why I can owe,
And death makes equal the high and low.
Man makes a death which Nature never made.
I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground.
As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
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.
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. . . . There is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.
Thales said there was no difference between life and death. "Why, then," said some one to him, "do not you die?" "Because," said he, "it does make no difference."
After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions,
To keep mine honour from corruption,
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.
Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.
This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.
Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep!" the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.
When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.
Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts:
Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured
Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed
By hymns of praise. From him alone of all
The powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof.
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame,—nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
There is a reaper whose name is Death,
And with his sickle keen
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,—
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret.
Oh death in life, the days that are no more!
Death rides on every passing breeze,
He lurks in every flower.
The righteous hath hope in his death.
And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath
Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death.
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.
The land of darkness and the shadow of death.
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delay'd to strike, though oft invok'd.
'T is strange that death should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
There was silence deep as death,
And the boldest held his breath
For a time.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
My voice is still for war.
Gods! can a Roman senate long debate
Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?
Diogenes the Cynic, when a little before his death he fell into a slumber, and his physician rousing him out of it asked him whether anything ailed him, wisely answered, "Nothing, sir; only one brother anticipates another,—Sleep before Death."
Sleep is a death; oh, make me try
By sleeping what it is to die,
And as gently lay my head
On my grave as now my bed!
Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age;
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky.
The sorrows of death compassed me.
I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of death.
Speak me fair in death.
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.
Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it; he died
As one that had been studied in his death
To throw away the dearest thing he owed,
As 't were a careless trifle.
So softly death succeeded life in her,
She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.
Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,
Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon,
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scattered in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 't were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems.
Falstaff sweats to death,
And lards the lean earth as he walks along.
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.
And as she looked around, she saw how Death the consoler,
Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever.
The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray,
To come to me: of cureless ills thou art
The one physician. Pain lays not its touch
Upon a corpse.
Out of the jaws of death.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them.
. . . .
Into the jaws of death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
There is no death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favour; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.
Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favour; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have waken'd death!
To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.
'T is not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die.
Each matin bell, the Baron saith,
Knells us back to a world of death.
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
Though this may be play to you,
'T is death to us.
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delay'd to strike, though oft invok'd.
Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,
Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon,
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scattered in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 't were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems.
I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of death.
As Caesar was at supper the discourse was of death,—which sort was the best. "That," said he, "which is unexpected."
Such were the notes thy once lov'd poet sung,
Till death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue.
Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heaven invites,
Hell threatens.
If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
To arms! to arms! ye brave!
The avenging sword unsheathe!
March on! march on! all hearts resolved
On victory or death!
The wages of sin is death.
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, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
In every hedge and ditch both day and night
We fear our death, of every leafe affright.
Euripides says,—
Who knows but that this life is really death,
And whether death is not what men call life?
A simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O grave! where is thy victory?
O death! where is thy sting?
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful beyond compare
Will paradise be found!
Man makes a death which Nature never made.
There is no death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
A death-bed's a detector of the heart.
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field and his feet to the foe,
And leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame.
And what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
