Life can be hard. Sometimes, it helps to know others have felt the same way. Many writers have shared their deepest thoughts and feelings about wanting to die. Their words can bring comfort, understanding, and even hope.
This article collects some of the most poignant quotes about this struggle. These quotes aren’t just words on a page; they capture real, raw human emotions. Reading them can remind you that you’re not alone in your feelings.
Most Impressionable Wanting to Die Quotes
“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.” – William Allen White
“To be, or not to be, that is the question.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.” – Virginia Woolf
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” – Seneca
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
“I want to be happy. I want to be living. I want to be done with these feelings.” – Anonymous
“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“And then I realized that to be more alive, I had to be less afraid, so I did it. I lost my fear and gained my whole life.” – Anonymous
“I have endured and survived, but must I endure and survive forever?” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” – Rumi
“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Death is nature’s way of telling you to slow down.” – Dick Sharples
“The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out, and descend into it.” – Cesare Pavese
“I feel like a balloon, floating away, yearning for someone to pull me back.” – Anonymous
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” – Robert Frost
“When you stand at the edge of the abyss, there lies your greatest opportunity to change.” – Anonymous
“I wish I could just disappear without a trace, never to be found.” – Sylvia Plath
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—and sings the tunes without the words—and never stops at all.” – Emily Dickinson
“The most painful goodbyes are the ones that are never said and never explained.” – Anonymous
“When it is darkest, we can see the stars.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Quotes about Desire for Death from Famous Figures
“I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won’t.” – Susanna Kaysen
“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.” – William Shakespeare
“Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.” – Irvin D. Yalom
“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination. What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not.” – John Keats
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” – Oscar Wilde
“I am simply not there. Feelings are just droplets in the sea.” – Sylvia Plath
“Life is never fair… And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.” – Oscar Wilde
“I am not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” – Seneca
“They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
“I don’t want to die but I am not keen on living either.” – Colleen Hoover
“The sun is gone, but I have a light.” – Kurt Cobain
“The thought of death was haunting her dreams, but it was also the only thing keeping her alive.” – Haruki Murakami
“There comes a time when the cup of suffering is full and you are ready to die. This is not cowardice but acceptance, not fear but courage.” – Anonymous
“I want to die a young man’s death. Only the good die young.” – Billy Joel
“Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.” – Sylvia Plath
“To die will be an awfully big adventure.” – J.M. Barrie
“I see death as the opportunity to end the suffering that feels eternal.” – Anonymous
Poetic Phrases of Wanting to Die
“I am so tired, my mind forlorn; eternity calls, my soul is torn.” – Emily Brontë
“Not all those who wander are lost, yet I am wandering, and I am lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
“To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” – William Shakespeare
“The desire to end it all is but a shadow in the light of day, yet it clings like a second skin in the dead of night.” – Unknown
“I am haunted by the whispers of oblivion, the seduction of silence eternal.” – Virginia Woolf
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” – Marcus Aurelius
“A world without the weight of existence sounds like a paradise lost.” – Edgar Allan Poe
“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” – Jonathan Safran Foer
“I have stared into the abyss so long, it has started to look back at me with a familiar, hollow gaze.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“The wish to die is just another form of hunger, an unquenchable thirst for relief.” – Anne Sexton
“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” – Carl Sagan
“In the dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“If waiting makes us strong, I am but the weakest wretch, for I cannot endure the wait anymore.” – Sylvia Plath
“Every human being is under construction from the moments of life and one moment of death.” – Unknown
“Death is nature’s way of telling you to slow down.” – Dick Sharples
“When all you have left are the echoes of broken dreams, the silence of death seems more comforting.” – Oscar Wilde
“It is a sensation as endless as the sea, a longing to be rid of consciousness itself.” – Emily Dickinson
“Goodbye, all ties to the physical world; I dream of the boundless cosmos.” – Henry David Thoreau
“My sole wish is to vanish into thin air, to leave behind the burden of being.” – Franz Kafka
“Each night I pray for my eyes to close and never open again.” – Unknown
“Life is fleeting; its pains are eternal. I wish to pass over into infinite slumber.” – John Keats
Philosophical Perspectives: Wanting to Die Quotes
“To be, or not to be, that is the question.” – William Shakespeare
“I am not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen
“Death is nature’s way of telling you to slow down.” – Dick Sharples
“Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.” – Sylvia Plath
“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.” – Margaret Mitchell
“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“They say suicides are selfish, but I think those who haven’t been there can’t understand the agony that drives someone to that point.” – Anonymous
“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.” – Victor Hugo
“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else: it is a mainspring of human activity.” – Ernest Becker
“I could die for you. But I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, live for you.” – Ayn Rand
“Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.” – Suzanne Collins
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” – Seneca
“The heart will break, but broken live on.” – Lord Byron
“Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.” – Dylan Thomas
“It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen
“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” – From an Irish Headstone
“I don’t want to die. Sometimes I wish I’d never been born at all.” – Freddie Mercury
“Death is but a door, time is but a window. I’ll be back.” – Ghostbusters II
“Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself to become a new person.” – Gerard Way
“There’s nothing good about goodnight when it means goodbye.” – Jeff Thomas
“The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident to someone who’s dead.” – Albert Einstein
“To die will be an awfully big adventure.” – J.M. Barrie
Exploring Grief and Despair in Wanting to Die Quotes
“I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me; all day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.” – Sylvia Plath
“I must end it. There is no hope. I will be at peace. No one had anything to do with this. My decision totally.” – Freddie Prinze
“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it, one gets through many a dark night.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“I found myself wishing that I could be alone in my room, just to lay in my bed and cry. Just cry.” – Elizabeth Wurtzel
“I go to seek a great perhaps.” – François Rabelais
“Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness.” – Irvin D. Yalom
“To die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come…” – William Shakespeare
“People say that suicide is the most selfish act. I wonder if they realize how deep the pain must go to make you want that, to make you need that.” – Unknown
“The walls of my mind are closing in… I retreat into the dark corridors of my own soul.” – Unknown
“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus
“I wanted to die, but the life in me was too strong, it was my curse to live.” – Anna Akhmatova
“Suicide is a way of telling God, ‘You can’t fire me, I quit!’” – Bill Maher
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“You said you wanted to die, but in truth, you wanted to be saved.” – Alana Massey
“I feel so much that I feel nothing.” – John Green
“The hardest part is waking up in the morning, remembering what you were trying to forget last night.” – Unknown
“I wish it would rain, so as to wash my face and hide my tears.” – Unknown
“Even the strongest blizzards start with a single snowflake.” – Sara Raasch
“My soul ached to escape the prison of my body and fly to the unknown realms of peace.” – My own reflection
“The only journey is the one within.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
“I began to listen to the teachings my blood was singing to me, to the cries of pain and longing that had been silenced for so long.” – My own realization
To Conclude
Exploring quotes about wanting to die can be a heavy but important topic. These quotes provide a glimpse into deep emotions and struggles people face. They remind us that we’re not alone in our darkest times. By reading and reflecting on these words, we can find connections to our own feelings and perhaps even start a conversation about mental health.
If you or someone you know is facing such difficult thoughts, it’s crucial to reach out for help. Talking to friends, family, or professionals can offer support and understanding. Life can be tough, but remember that there are people and resources out there ready to help you through it.
