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The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

— Philip Larkin

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Death

More quotes by Philip Larkin

I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.

The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

I search myself for illusions like a monkey looking for fleas.

But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?

The Less Deceived (1955)

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

The Less Deceived (1955)

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die.

Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

The thunderstorm is a constant phenomenon, raging alternately over some part of the world or the other. Can a single man or creature escape death if all that charge of lightning strikes the earth?

Kalki Krishnamurthy Sivakozhundu of Tiruvazhundur (1939)

So what if a kid dies? God will take care of him.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Philip Larkin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.