30 Grave Quotes On Mortality

Exploring the theme of mortality can be profoundly moving and thought-provoking. Quotes about graves often encapsulate deep reflections on life, death, and the human experience. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 30 grave quotes that delve into these poignant topics. Whether you're seeking solace, wisdom, or a fresh perspective, these quotes offer a contemplative journey through the inevitabilities and meanings tied to our existence. Join us as we reflect on what it means to live and how we confront the inescapable reality of death.

1. “Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus; and we petty menWalk under his huge legs, and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonourable graves.” - William Shakespeare

2. “When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.” - Virginia Woolf

3. “To the Hesitating Purchaser:"If sailor tales to sailor tunes, Storm and adventure, heat and cold,If schooners, islands, and maroons And Buccaneers and buried GoldAnd all the old romance, retold, Exactly in the ancient way,Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of to-day:-So be it, and fall on! If not, If studious youth no longer crave,His ancient appetites forgot, Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,Or Cooper of the wood and wave: So be it, also! And may IAnd all my pirates share the grave, Where these and their creations lie!” - Robert Louis Stevenson

4. “Is that a stake, Bones, or are you just happy with my new dress?”“In this case, it’s a stake. You could always feel around for something more, though. See what comes up.” - Jeaniene Frost

5. “The dusty tombs of long-dead exorcist priests lay in the alcoves below, surmounted by stone effigies, the features eroded by the passing of time and the reverent caresses of their grateful parishioners, a reminder, she knew all too well, of the brevity of life.” - Sarah Ash

6. “Body is a home, a prison and a grave.” - James Runcie

7. “ Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot. (pause) Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener. At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can't go on! (Pause.) What have I said? ” - Samuel Beckett

8. “Here lies a Proof that Wit can never beDefence enough against Mortality” - Aphra Behn

9. “I love you. You have no idea what you are worth to me.” - Jeaniene Frost

10. “I missed you every minute this week and I don't want to spend another day without you. If my mom disowns me for being with a vampire, then that's her decision, but I've made mine, and I won't apologize or back down from it.” - Jeaniene Frost

11. “He gave the body a final kick and then turned to face me.“You and I need to talk, Kitten.”“Now?” I asked in disbelief, gesturing to the dead vampire near his feet.“It’s not like he’s going anywhere, so yeah. Now.” - Jeaniene Frost

12. “I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything should just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment'.” - Andy Warhol

13. “My father was English. He date-raped my mother so she's hated English men ever since. You know my boyfriend's English, and I'm, uh, I'm half-English, which she's never been real happy about. If she finds out I'm dating someone English, she'll ah, think I' turning my back on her and becoming a foreigner.'Cathy, that's the stupidest reason I've ever heard.” - Jeaniene Frost

14. “Pardon me, but there’s someone on the phone who says they have a call for you.”There’s a call to tell me I have a call?” he asked with heavy skepticism.” - Jeaniene Frost

15. “You chose to come to Paris, of all places,” Mencheres replied.So what? Got something against the French?” - Jeaniene Frost

16. “Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are callingFrom glen to glen, and down the mountain sideThe summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.But come ye back when summer's in the meadowOr when the valley's hushed and white with snow'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadowOh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.And if you come, when all the flowers are dyingAnd I am dead, as dead I well may beYou'll come and find the place where I am lyingAnd kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above meAnd all my dreams will warm and sweeter beIf you'll not fail to tell me that you love meI'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.” - Fred E. Weatherly

17. “THE BARROW In this high field strewn with stones I walk by a green mound, Its edges sheared by the plough. Crumbs of animal bone Lie smashed and scattered round Under the clover leaves And slivers of flint seem to grow Like white leaves among green. In the wind, the chestnut heaves Where a man's grave has been. Whatever the barrow held Once, has been taken away: A hollow of nettles and dock Lies at the centre, filled With rain from a sky so grey It reflects nothing at all. I poke in the crumbled rock For something they left behind But after that funeral There is nothing at all to find. On the map in front of me The gothic letters pick out Dozens of tombs like this, Breached, plundered, left empty, No fragments littered about Of a dead and buried race In the margins of histories. No fragments: these splintered bones Construct no human face, These stones are simply stones. In museums their urns lie Behind glass, and their shaped flints Are labelled like butterflies. All that they did was die, And all that has happened since Means nothing to this place.Above long clouds, the skiesTurn to a brilliant redAnd show in the water's faceOne living, and not these dead." — Anthony Thwaite, from The Owl In The Tree” - Anthony Thwaite

18. “Yes, I lay in my grave. But if you lie in a grave long enough, you get accustomed to it and you don't want to part from it. He had given me a pill of cyanide, He and his wife and their son also carried such pills. We all lived with death, and I want you to know that one can fall in love with death. Whoever has loved death cannot love anything else any more. When the liberation came and they told me to leave, I didn't want to go. I clung to the threshold like an ox being dragged to the slaughter. ("Hanka")” - Isaac Bashevis Singer

19. “What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave.” - Criss Jami

20. “With horror he perceived that, by uniting himself as he had with the dead, he had cut himself off from the living. Stripped of all earthly hope, bereft of every consolation, he was rendered as poor as mortal can possiblybe on this side of the grave.” - Ludwig Tieck

21. “My work was done, so it was time to start digging my grave again.” - Anthony Kiedis

22. “When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death.” - Kyung-Sook Shin

23. “The grave and the image are equally links with the irrecoverable and symbols for the unimaginable.” - C.S. Lewis

24. “We are given to the great, for great purpose, to great ends. We are given to the grave, for grave purposes, to grave ends.” - Kami Garcia

25. “Truth is not of this world; and they were fools who looked for her in the bottom of a well; her temple is the grave! her oracles, dust and ashes! ("The Forsaken of God")” - William Mudford

26. “For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith.” - Criss Jami

27. “If you continue to dig the same hole in the same place in your life, eventually you will be standing in a grave.” - Shannon L. Alder

28. “These are the kinds of things a guy thinks about when he visits his own grave.” - Kami Garcia

29. “Every second I spend waiting,Drags me closer to this grave.I'm not alone.No, I'm just on my own.” - Tegan Quin

30. “I'll be as silent as the grave.” - Stevenson Robert Louis