John Masefield Quotes

I don't believe in the afterlife, so I do think when somebody passes, it's worthy of note.

After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now?

As soon as the dirt is hitting the casket, it'll all be forgotten.

The flower fades and dies; but he who wears the flower has not to mourn for it for ever.

Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!

In the end, the wind takes everything, doesn't it? And why not? Why other? If the sweetness of our lives did not depart, there would be no sweetness at all.

Nothing is stronger than the position of the dead among the living.

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.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?

Death is an absolute marvel.

I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.

I admit that death is not just about you, it's also about the people who love you.

I've dealt with losing close ones before, and I've been around friends that have lost friends at a young age. I think it's important to think about - not necessarily death, but about life and think about where you're going and how you want to be remembered and the legacy you want to leave.

We see death constantly on film.

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

The elegy does the work of mourning; it allows us to experience mortality. It turns loss into remembrance, and it delivers an inheritance.

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.

The paradox is, I can't miss the good things about my father while he is alive, but I will of course miss him... when he is dead.

I pressed my father's hand and told him I would protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and passed away to the spirit land.

Not lost, but gone before.

Perhaps grief is not about empty, but full. The full breath of life that includes death. The completeness, the cycles, the depth, the richness, the process, the continuity and the treasure of the moment that is gone the second you are aware of it.

The past is buried and I mourn it with greater pain than many among you, because no human power can awaken it when the Crown itself has scattered ashes upon the coffin.

I have never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.

Remember that life is short and death is long.