30 Iconic Shakespeare Quotes About Death

Never has there lived a writer who has been better at capturing the complexities of the human condition like William Shakespeare. His characters confront death in ways that reveal universal truths about courage, love, grief, and the meaning of life. Study up on some of his best with these 30 iconic Shakespeare quotes about death.

Want more Shakespeare? Check out these 50 quotes about love and 30 quotes about life.

Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3

If I must die
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms.
Measure for Measure,  Act 3, Scene 1

To be, or not to be—that is the question
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1

Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay;
The worst is death, and death will have his day.
Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o' the great;
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan;
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownéd be thy grave!
Cymbeline, Act 4, Scene 2

O gentlemen, the time of life is short!
To spend that shortness basely were too long,
If life did ride upon a dial's point,
Still ending at the arrival of an hour.
Henry IV, Act 5, Scene 2

My sick heart shows
That I must yield my body to the earth,
And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe.
Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge,
Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle;
Under whose shade the ramping lion slept:
Whose top-branch overpeer'd Jove's spreading tree,
And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind.
Henry VI, Part III, Act 5, Scene 2

Out of the jaws of death.
Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
the valiant never taste of death but once.
Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2

Let life be short: else shame will be too long.
Henry V, Act 4, Scene 5

So wise so young, they say,
never do live long.
Richard III, Act 3, Scene 1

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow.
A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
and then is heard no more:
It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

There where my fortune lives, there my life dies.
King John, Act 3, Scene 1

The sands are number'd that make up my life;
Here must I stay, and here my life must end.
Henry VI, Act 1, Scene 4

I were better to be eaten to death with a rust
than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
King Henry IV, Part II, Act 1, Scene 2

It is silliness to live when to live is torment;
and then have we a prescription to die
when death is our physician.
Othello, Act 1, Scene 3

You cannot, sir, take from me anything
that I will not more willingly part withal -
except my life, except my life, except my life
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

Death, a necessary end,
will come when it will come.
Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2

I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1

This day I breathed first: time is come round,
And where I did begin there shall I end;
My life is run his compass.
Julius Caesar, Act 5, Scene 3

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1

Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 4

When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Julius Caesar,​ Act 2, Scene 2

And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe.
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 3

This passion, and the death of a dear friend,
would go near to make a man look sad.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, Scene 1

They are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time:
after your death, you were better have a bad epitaph
than their ill report while you live.
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

By medicine life may be prolonged,
yet death will seize the doctor too.
Cymbeline, Act 5, Scene 5

If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have waken'd death!
Othello, Act 2, Scene 1

A man can die but once.
Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 2