Virginia Woolf Quotes

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.

Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.

The utilitarian behaves sensibly in all that is required for preservation but never takes account of the fact that he must die... His whole life is absorbed in avoiding death, which is inevitable, and therefore he might be thought to be the most irrational of men, if rationality has anything to do with understanding ends or comprehending the human situation as such.

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

The prospect of an early death sits differently upon each person. In some it gifts maturity far outweighing their age and experience: calm acceptance blossoms into a beautiful nature and soft countenance. In others, however, it leads to the formation of a tiny ice flint in their heart. Ice that, though at times concealed, never properly melts. Rose, though she would have liked to be one of the former, knew herself deep down to be one of the latter.

I definitely think about death. And every day your relationship with death changes. And every day I sort of feel like I know it more. I've always thought about it.

Do you think that people ever really do believe they will die, that the world will just go along as always without them? I wonder if we aren't all a little surprised at the moment of crossover, if we don't look back over our shoulders saying, Now hold on.

How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back?

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

We are so afraid of the idea of having to die... that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn.

We are wrong in looking forward to death: in great measure it's past already.

It doesn't take that many years for a kid to realise that they're going to die. It's always there in the back of their mind the rest of their lives.

I've always been slightly preoccupied with death or whatever those kind of silly big questions people will tell you to not spend your time worrying about.

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.

In our Western culture, although death has come out of the closet, it is still not openly experienced or discussed. Allowing dying to be so intensely present enriches both the preciousness of each moment and our detachment from it.

As a culture, we are not comfortable with mortality. We do not accept it the way other cultures do. We cling to youth, and we don't want to die. It's like, 'Well, too bad, we do.'

Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed.

The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual's way of being in the world.

Of all living things, only humans consciously anticipate death; the consequent need to choose how to behave in its face - to worry about how to die - distinguishes us from other animals. The need to manage death is the particular lot of humanity.

We keep making the same mistakes as a species, and you can usually draw it back to the fact that we are all terrified of dying. We also all think that we are going to escape it until we get to 65!

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn't believe that we were mortal.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

Once a child is confronted with the concept of death there's a certain innocence that goes.

I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.