A. E. Housman Quotes

When death comes, it's just like winter. We don't say, "There ought not to be winter." That the winter season, when the leaves fall and the snow comes, is some kind of defeat, something which we should hold out against. No. Winter is part of the natural course of events. No winter, no summer. No cold, no heat.

How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.

We're reaching for death on the end of a candle We're trying for something that's already found us

The meaning of life is that it stops.

Everything ultimately fails, for we die, and that is either the penultimate failure or our most enigmatical achievement.

Everything which has name and form must die. If there are heavens with forms, these heavens must vanish in course of time; they may last millions of years, but there must come a time when they will have to go.

Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light.

Surely 't is better, when summer is over To die when all fair things are fading away.

The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

There is not much difference between a mortal man and a dying man. The absurdity of making plans is only slightly more obvious in the second case.

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

He knows that after him everything will continue on much as before, except that there will be a minuscule absence, a barely detective gap in the so-called grand scheme, one unit fewer now. Or not even that, not even an empty space where he once was, for all will rush immediately to fill that vacuum. Pft. Gone. Recollections of him will remain in the minds of others for a while, but presently those others too will die and his few relics with them. And then all will be dark.

Life is a process of losing our illusions, until we finally lose the illusion that we're alive.

Whenever two particles come together, they are held by a certain attraction; and there will come a time when those particles will separate. This is the eternal law. So, wherever there is a body - either grosser or finer, either in heaven or on earth - death will overcome it.

Did he die well?" No, I thought. Nobody did. They just died.

Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all. I'm cold,' Snowden said. 'I'm cold.

Most of the things we spend our lives chasing will turn to dust in the end.

We brought nothing into this world and it's certain we can carry nothing out.

Someday you will die, and until you know that, you're useless to me.

Although we may trust God's promises for life after death and the certainty of a heavenly home, we must still face the reality of death.

Nothing is lasting but change; nothing perpetual but death.

This world is nothing. An illusion. Death is the release.