72 Sad Quotes About Death That Will Make You Cry

Death knocks on our doors by surprise, it can be the loss of a loved one, something, or someone who’s very important to us, it leaves us an unfathomable pain and grief.

Sometimes, it may seem that we can’t bear the pain and we realize that people come and go. Here are some quotes about death from those people who have traveled the path of loss and grief before us that will make you cry.

72 Quotes That Will Make You Cry

1. “Only a moment you stayed, but what an imprint your footprints have left in our hearts.” – Dorothy Ferguson

2. “Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.” – David Gerrold

3. “Every man dies – not every man really lives.” – William Ross Wallace

4. “A good laugh and long sleep are the two best cures for anything.” – Irish proverb

5. “We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

6. “No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time in my business.’” – Paul e. Tsongas

7. “After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

8. “Death, in itself, is nothing; but we fear, to be we know not what, we know not where.” – John Dryden

9. “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.” – Chuck Palahniuk

10. “Dying is like coming to the end of a long novel–you only regret it if the ride was enjoyable and left you wanting more.” – Jerome p. Crabb

11. “A man dies… only a few circles in the water prove that he was ever there. And even they quickly disappear. And when they’re gone, he’s forgotten, without a trace, as if he’d never even existed. And that’s all.” – Wolfgang Borchert

12. “Death aims only once, but never misses.” – Edward Counsel

13. “Death is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul.” – E.H. Chapin

14. “It is natural to die as to be born.” – Francis Bacon

15. “Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.” – Mark Twain

16. “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.” – Bertrand Russell

17. “It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.” – Samuel Johnson

18. “Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.” – Marcus Aurelius

19. “A friend who dies, it’s something of you who dies.” – Gustave Flaubert

20. “Death never takes a wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.” – Jean de la Fontaine

21. “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” – Steve Jobs

22. “I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.” – Corazon Aquino

23. “When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.” – Laurie Halse Anderson

24. “Grief is the price we pay for love.” – Queen Elizabeth II

25. “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

26. “Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us every day. Unseen, unheard, but always near, still loved, still missed and very dear.” – Unknown

27. “Death is a distant rumor to the young.” – Andrew A. Rooney

28. “In the long run, we are all dead.” – John Maynard Keynes

29. “All that live must die, passing through nature to eternity.” – William Shakespeare

30. “Loss and possession, death and life are one. There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.” – Hilaire Belloc

31. “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” – Unknown

32. “I want to be all used up when I die.” – George Bernard Shaw

33. “Even the best of friends cannot attend each other’s funeral.” – Kehlog Albran

34. “Is there a life after death? Can I never get some peace?”– Gerhard Kocher

35. “We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead — and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dying and then they would be honest so much earlier.” – Mark Twain

36. “Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.” – George Eliot

37. “The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.” – Seneca the Younger

38. “We come and cry and that is life, we cry and go and that is death.” – Unknown

39. “Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred — it installs the poet in his immortality and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch, the dropsy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust — the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.” – William Hazlitt

40. “Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may swell.” – Henry Ward Beecher

41. “I should know enough about the loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone – you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.” – Alyson Noel

42. “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” – Unknown

43. “Nothing is sadder than the death of an illusion.” – Arthur Koestler

44. “Don’t send me flowers when I’m dead. If you like me, send them while I’m alive.” – Brian Clough

45. “When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.” – Tecumseh

46. “Death is the solution to all problems. No man – no problem.” – Joseph Stalin

47. “Who am I? Not the body, because it is decaying; not the mind, because the brain will decay with the body; not the personality, nor the emotions, for these, also will vanish with death.” – Ramana Maharshi

48. “Suicide is man’s way of telling God, ‘You can’t fire me – I quit.’” – Bill Maher

49. “Life and death are illusions. We are in a constant state of transformation.” – Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

50. “Death keeps no calendar.” – English Proverb

51. “The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired.” – Robert Southey

52. “You cannot stop loving your friend because he’s dead, especially if he was better than anyone alive, you know?” – Jerome Salinger

53. “Dying is a troublesome business: there is a pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing — a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.” – George Bernard Shaw

54. “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe

55. “No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply.” – Billy Graham

56. “Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.” – Andrew Sachs

57. “We will all, someday, experience death, and become obsolete as a dead leaf falling from a tree, crushed by passers-by to ashes underlying the earth.” – Kim Elizabeth

58. “When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.” – Sogyal Rinpoche

59. “We do not die because we have to die; we die because one day, and not so long ago, our consciousness was forced to deem it necessary.” – Antonin Artaud

60. “People fear death even more than pain. It’s strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.” – Jim Morrison

61. “When I read obituaries, I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically, I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I’m dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.” – Don Delillo

62. “In the end, living is defined by dying. Bookended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end.” – Bernard Beckett

63. “Death always leaves one singer to mourn.” – Katherine Anne Porter

64. “Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.” – Isaac Asimov

65. “Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and – as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis – emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness.” – Annie Besant

66. “Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.” – Brennan Manning

67. “Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven.” – Tryon Edwards

68. “Death does not concern us because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.” – Epicurus

69. “It’s funny how most people love the dead, once you’re dead, you’re made for life.” – Jimi Hendrix

70. “Nothing in life is promised except death.” – Kanye West

71. “The goal of all life is death.” – Sigmund Freud

72. “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” –Henry Ward Beecher

Conclusion

Accepting death or the loss of someone once we loved is a very hard path to take, it requires a strong will to move on and continue with life. But as wise men would say, contemplating death is way scarier than death itself. Seek solace through your loved ones or consider online grief counseling as it would help you overcome the trauma.

I hope these quotes that will make you cry, which reflect the grief, loss, and sorrow of those who have gone through it, may bud a hope in your heart and spark a will to change these feeling of grievance into acceptance and for the better.