98 Quotes Of The Deceased

In the realm of timeless wisdom and profound reflections, the words of those who have departed continue to inspire, provoke thought, and offer comfort. Our curated collection of the top 98 quotes of the deceased is a tribute to the enduring power of their legacy. These quotes, drawn from diverse minds and eras, provide insights into the human condition, capturing emotions, philosophies, and observations that remain relevant across generations. Dive into this compilation to explore the echoes of the past that still resonate with meaning today.

1. “Isn’t it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn’t going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls “the National Geographic.” She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it’s too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa’s camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn’t take it with him when he left her. She said, “Maybe he wanted you to have it.” I said, “But I was negative-thirty years old.” She said, “Still.” Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls!” - Jonathan Safran Foer

2. “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.” - Mother Jones

3. “All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one...” - Stephen King

4. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” - Plato

5. “The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.” - Czesław Miłosz

6. “The dead are way more organized than the living.” - China Miéville

7. “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” - N.H. Kleinbaum

8. “Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast.)” - Bram Stoker

9. “Yet a mysterious gate lay open within her shadow; and all my flesh was aware of black pathways and hovels and the silence one observes when the dead are near.” - Joe Bousquet

10. “You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.” - Barbara Kingsolver

11. “To them I'm simply an object from the past that they wish will disappear Then why do I exist? Why am I alive? When I thought about this I could find no answer. But as you live you need a reason otherwise it's the same as being dead, I then came to this conclusion I exist to kill every human besides myself. Fighting only for yourself living while only loving yourself If you think that everybody else simply exist to allow you to experience that feeling nothing is better then that world. As long as there are people in this world for me to kill and continue to feel that joy of living my existence will not vanish.” - Masashi Kishimoto

12. “There. My ears are all dead. Now you try."Three times I repeated the movements she'd made. Slowly, carefully, but nothing left me with the impression that my ears had died. The wine was rapidly circulating through my system."I do believe that my ears aren't dying properly, " I said, disappointed.She shook her head. "That's okay. If your ears don't need to die, there's nothing wrong with them not dying.” - Haruki Murakami

13. “When the dead departed, they took away any falsehoods that they might have allowed us to believe while alive; we who are left behind have to embark on a different life, since the dead are no longer here to help us deceive ourselves.” - Yiyun Li

14. “Don't worry, goat boy. The milkman is dead.” - Rick Riordan

15. “There is nothing so actively alive as the dead.” - Jessie Douglas Kerruish

16. “Clearly the Old One had the capacity to kill - or easily deliver some sort of final ending that sounded remarkably like death.” - Garth Nix

17. “All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.” - Samuel Beckett

18. “But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem:they might point to the catkins hangingfrom the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the raindescending on black earth in early spring. ---And we, who always think of happinessrising, would feel the emotionthat almost baffles uswhen a happy thing falls.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

19. “For if we're destroyed, the knowledge is dead...We're nothing more than dust jackets for books...so many pages to a person...” - Ray Bradbury

20. “As if the dead really do persist, even in a bottle of wine.” - Thomas Pynchon

21. “The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

22. “I didn't know what to say to her - I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.” - John Green

23. “There is only one way to fight, and that's dirty. Clean gentlemanly fighting will get you nowhere but dead, and fast. Take every cheap shot, every low blow, absolutely kick people when they're down, and maybe you'll be the one who walks away.” - Jeaniene Frost

24. “None of the dead come back. But some stay.” - St. John the Divine

25. “when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.” - William S. Burroughs

26. “I got a shotgun and a backhoe and no one looks under a septic tank for a dead body. (Bubba)” - Sherrilyn Kenyon

27. “Do you recall Fred Merriville?”She stared at him. “Fred Merriville? Pray, what has he to say to anything?”“The poor fellow has nothing to say: he’s dead, alas!” - Georgette Heyer

28. “Think about this: You don't know when these people are going to die. They could get into a car today and be killed on the way home. Did they ever hear about Jesus? God has put you in their lives to be His ambassador. You're His megaphone, through which He wants to call out to them to come to Him and be saved.” - Ryan Dobson

29. “For now. But if I ever decide you're useless, you are a dead man."To be killed by you is to be desired more than a life excluded from your service."Bravo." Her Imperial Viciousness laughed with genuine feeling. "Bra-vo!” - Frank Beddor

30. “There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what's dead. It won’t complain. ” - Jeanette Winterson

31. “It seems as if Americans like to be the center of attention even after they're dead.” - Hidekaz Himaruya

32. “Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.” - Wilfred Owen

33. “...the dead have a way of becoming saints in the eyes of their survivors...” - Rachel Vincent

34. “One dead body required two men either to bury it or to transport it to the rear. A wounded soldier, on the other hand, immobilized five men for an indeterminate amount of time; and who knew whether it was even worth the effort.” - STEPHANE AUDEGUY

35. “I'm alive but I have no life. I'm alive but also dead. I'm dead and alive.” - Dean Koontz

36. “That settles it, no more books about vampire before bedtime.” - Amanda Ashley

37. “You don't think I'm going to deflower you under your father's roof, do you?” - Amanda Ashley

38. “The old world told men merely about to live and to die.Today men think about defeating death and resurrection.” - Toba Beta

39. “You gotta take chances in this life or you're alreadydead.” - Megan McCafferty

40. “as they die, the ones we love, we lose our witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is nothing left but the endless flow.” - Anne Rice

41. “Sometimes dead is better” - Stephen King

42. “Nice. I like a little desperation ina guy. It builds character.” - Stacey Kade

43. “Sometimes I wait at the bottom of those dark stairs, I sit at the bottom of the stairs, I wait beyond the bottom of the stairs and listen to the sounds my wife and children make as they sleep, the sounds our animals make as they step carefully through our dreams and out the other side to polished floor and cold window. Sometimes I wait so long I become unsure if I am asleep, or awake, or dead.” - Steve Rasnic Tem

44. “Here it is necessary briefly to consider the question of the cult of ancestors before venturing farther. The spirits of the departed are believed to be possessed of supernatural powers which they did not enjoy in the flesh. They may also be dissatisfied or malignant in consequence of being suddenly deprived of life, and if they are neglected by the living, are apt to be revengeful. Therefore they must be cajoled and propitiated. Fear of beings belonging to a mysterious state or sphere of which he knew nothing continually haunted and terrified primitive man and induced in him what is known as" the dread of the sacred." It was every man's personal duty to attend to the demands or requirements of his deceased ancestors. At first he would succour his own immediate forebears with food and gifts; but it must have been borne in upon him that when his parents joined the great majority, the care of the spirits of their parents likewise devolved upon him... and, by degrees, he might even come to regard himself as responsible for the well-being of a line of spirit ancestors of quite formidable genealogy. These, through his neglect, might starve in their tombs; or, alternatively, they might crave his company. Because of vengeance or loneliness they might send disease upon him, for the savage almost invariably believes illness to be brought about by the action of jealous or neglected ancestors. The loneliness of the spirit-world is the dead man's greatest excuse for desiring the company of his descendants.” - Lewis Spence

45. “The dead are jealous, jealous, jealous and they will do anything to keep you from the living, the lucky living. They will argue with you, and distract you, and if that doesn't work, they will even let you hug them, and dance for you, and kiss you, and laugh, anything to keep you. The dead are selfish. Jealous. Lonely. Desperate. Hungry. ("The Chambered Fruit")” - M. Rickert

46. “Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.” - Bill Bryson

47. “The dead do not hurt you; only the living do.” - Tess Gerritsen

48. “If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.” - Chuck Palahniuk

49. “Free, I think. They're free.(is this why she joined them?)I feel so-So relieved.I pick up the pace as I near the opening, my hands gripping my rifle but I have a feeling I ain't gonna need it.(ah, Viola, I knew I could count-)Then I reach the opening and stop.Everything stops.My stomach falls right thru my feet."They're all gone?" Davy says, coming up beside me.Then he see what I see."What the-?" Davy says.The Spackle ain't all gone.They're still here.Every single one.All 1150 of them.Dead.” - Patrick Ness

50. “He is sorry-For everything-For Prentisstown-For Viola-For Ben-For every failure and every wrong-For letting his pa down-And he's looking up at me-And he's begging me-He's begging me-Like I'm the only one who can forgive him-Like it's only me who's got the power-Todd?-Please-And all I can say is "Davy-"And the fright and the terror in his Noise is too much-It's too much-And then it stops.Davy slumps, eyes still open, eyes still staring back at me, eyes still asking (I swear) for me to forgive him.And he lies there, still.Davy Prentiss is dead.” - Patrick Ness

51. “He just summoned the dead with coke and cheeseburgers” - Rick Riordan

52. “Life is but a dream for the dead.” - Gerard Way

53. “In tombs of gold and lapis lazuliBodies of holy men and women exudeMiraculous oil, odour of violet.But under heavy loads of trampled clayLie bodies of the vampires full of blood;Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet("Oil and Blood")” - W.B. Yeats

54. “The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, blank eyes, and stiff bodies, which, when not unnaturally shrunken, were unnaturally swollen, had always intolerably affected him. He felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy which was something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities - his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of reselltment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence - was altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side - a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of that which he was ever ready to encounter. ("A Tough Tussle")” - Ambrose Bierce

55. “By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Physically, several seconds ago, mentally, ages ago.” - Koushun Takami

56. “The dead think they can get away with anything because you'll feel sorry for them. If you play cards with the dead, make sure you deal and don't let them buy you drinks. They'll slip you a formaldehyde roofie and pry the gold fillings out of your teeth.” - Richard Kadrey

57. “I wonder what it's like to be dead.” - Sebastian Faulks

58. “I am Cinna's bird, ignited, flying frantically to escape something inescapable. The feathers of flame that grow from my body. Beating my wings only fans the blaze. I consume myself, but to no end.Finally, my wings begin to falter, I lose height, and gravity pulls me into a foamy sea the color of Finnick's eyes. I float on my back, which continues to burn beneath the water, but the agony quiets to pain. When I am adrift and unable to navigate, that's when they come. The dead.The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.The small white bird tinged in pink dives down, buries her claws in my chest, and tries to keep me afloat."No, Katniss! No! You can't go!"But the ones I hated are winning, and if she clings to me, she'll be lost as well. "Prim, let go!" And finally she does.” - Suzanne Collins

59. “Granny looked up at the zombie. He was - or, technically, had been - a tall, handsome man. He still was, only now he looked like someone who had walked through a room full of cobwebs.'What's your name, dead man?' she said.” - Terry Pratchett

60. “Does it help?” he asks. “The e-mailing.”She nods. “A tiny bit. It’s strange. You’re writing a letter to someone who’s never going to read it, so it kind of frees you up a bit.” - Melina Marchetta

61. “And won’t he grow up to be the healthiest of young men, all because she kept him safe? Ready for the world. Ready to one day conquer it. To travel. Get on a train. Go to work. Get blown out of her life.Maybe she should be having that glass of wine and cigarette after all.” - Melina Marchetta

62. “Quisiera entrar en la muerte sin miedo y sin culpa” - Pablo Simonetti

63. “There was something dead in my heart.I tried to figure out what it was by the strength of the smell. I knew that it was not a lion or a sheep or a dog. Using logical deduction, I came to the conclusion that it was a mouse.I had a dead mouse in my heart.” - Richard Brautigan

64. “Respect the dead, learn from them, do not follow or avenge them.” - Evan Meekins

65. “I sit alone in a dead world. The wind blows hot and dry, and the dust gathers like particles of memory waiting to be swept away. I pray for forgetfulness, yet my memory remains strong, as does the outstretched arm of the oppressive air. It seems as if the wind has been there since the beginning of the nightmare. Sometimes loud and harsh, a thousand sharp needles scratching at my reddened skin. Sometimes a whisper, a curious sigh in the black of night, of words more frightening than pain. I know now the wind has been speaking to me. Only I couldn't understand because I was too scared. I am scared now as I write these words. Still, there is nothing else to do.” - Christopher Pike

66. “Of course I want to kill you," said Skulduggery. "I want to kill most people. But then where would I be? In a field of dead people with no one to talk to.” - Derek Landy

67. “Meanwhile, we have carved out a place for ourselves among the dead; the glittering pinnacles of commerce rise along the skyline, their foundations sunk in a charnel house; and the lost lie forgotten below us as, overhead, we persaude ourselves that we are immortal and carry on the business of life.” - Catharine Arnold

68. “The Romans feared their dead. In fact, Roman funeral customs derived from a need to propitiate the sensibilities of the departed. The very word funus may be translated as dead body, funeral ceremony, or murder. There was a genuine concern that, if not treated appropriately, the spirits of the dead, or manes, would return to wreak revenge” - Catharine Arnold

69. “There're three reasonspeople get away from here:gone good, gone bad orgone dead.” - Emma Cameron

70. “For the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours.” - E.M. Forster

71. “Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings...but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.” - Margaret Atwood

72. “Madoka: Won't anyone notice that Mami-san is dead?Homura: Mami Tomoe's only relatives are distant relations. It will be quite some time before anyone files a missing persons report. When one dies on that side of the wards, not even a body is left behind. She'll wind up forever a "missing person"... That is what happens to magical girls in the end.Madoka: ...That's too cruel! Mami-san has been fighting all alone for a long time for everyone's sake! For no one to even notice that she's gone... That's just too lonely a fate...Homura: It is just that kind of contract that gives us the power in the first place. It isn't for anyone else's sake. We fight on for the sake of our own prayer. So for no one to notice... for the world to forget us... That is just something we have to accept.” - Magica Quartet

73. “Being dead does have its advantages.”-Alastor” - Dana Michelle Burnett

74. “Whatever she is now she's better than she was," said Bedloe. "Being dead is better than being dull, being dead is better than not being aware.” - Ray Bradbury

75. “How came she by her death? How came she there? Was she slain by accident, or had she met with violence? were the questions that pressed upon our thoughts. But we said little then and after a time left her where we found her. It mattered not to her that the bed was hard or the air cold.("A Night In An Old Castle")” - George Payne Rainsford James

76. “[...]It is as if after surviving so much, there was no longer reason to survive.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

77. “A hero is not measured by the lives that he has saved. A hero is measured by the number of the dead that he did not join.” - Robert J.A. Gilbert

78. “Dead, but not allowed to die. Alive, but as good as dead.” - Suzanne Collins

79. “Thank you, Dr. Phil, for that fine psychological assessment," I snapped and motioned my chin to Disco. "Why don't you and Oprah here go take a long walk off a short plank and do the world a favor?” - J.A. Saare

80. “Dead or alive, true leaders can inspire an entire army.” - Peter Mohrbacher

81. “How quickly the dead faded into each other,” - Ian McEwan

82. “He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not here to start trouble. I am just doing some research for my thesis.”“If you don’t get out of this bar, you are going to be writing your thesis via Ouija board.” - Jessica Fortunato

83. “Until two days ago what had driven him was the will to survive: deep, animal, full of rage—but always part of him had not cared at all whether he lived or died. Now he did care, and very deeply, and so for the first time in a long time he was afraid. To love life is, of course, a wonderful thing, but not on this day of all days.” - Paul Hoffman

84. “The dead don't stay dead in this town! Haunted Richmond II-Pamela K. Kinney” - Pamela K. Kinney

85. “The death of loved ones often awakens the death inside of us.” - Sandra Chami Kassis

86. “The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.” - William Lloyd Garrison

87. “One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction – nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.” - H.G. Wells

88. “A dead man’s vanity: his ashes full of life that cannot be deceased before a living being’s pride.” - Munia Khan

89. “The difference between the one who remembers Allah and the one who doesn’t is like the living and the dead.” - Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf

90. “The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.” - Jane Goodall

91. “This would have once been a place for contemplation. He looked up at the towers surrounding him. Many of the dead bodies had been removed. Their places had been taken by the living.” - Rupert Thomson

92. “There’s no getting better, Storm. This is it.” There’s no coming back from the dead.” - K.A. Tucker

93. “Most people say about graveyards: "Oh, it's just a bunch of dead people. It's creepy." But for me, there's an energy to it that it not creepy, or dark. It has a positive sense to it.” - Tim Burton

94. “Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.” - Carol Ann Duffy

95. “I alone knew what I had suffered. I alone knew what it felt like to be alive but dead.” - Phoolan Devi

96. “Saige, Mother is . . .” I briefly close my eyes and swallow, clearing my mouth from saliva. “Mother is dead.” - Jada Berglund

97. “(ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I've used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then fear for someone else, a husband or a child. How can I bend this woman to my will?(ghost of)POLYXENA: I think I will not bend.IPHIGENIA: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead.” - Sheri S. Tepper

98. “Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.” - Margaret Atwood