Quotes & Sayings About Dancing And Death

Selfish little flower dancing beneath flames do you dare drift in this wind alongside me? Take my hand and let us see skies untouched by night. You are not alone. Never have, and never will be. Death is only the beginning, but our breath shall reign forever. — H.S. Crow

Chained inside the carriage is a sinful woman. When we set the carriage afire, her flesh will be roasted, her bones will be charred: she will die an agonizing death. Never again will you have such a perfect model for the screen. Do not fail to watch as her snow-white flesh erupts in flames. See and remember her long black hair dancing in a whirl of sparks! — Ryunosuke Akutagawa

This Stone

He went looking for a road
that doesn't lead to death.
He went looking for that road
and found it.
It was a stone road.
He walked that road
that doesn't lead to death.
He walked on it awhile
before he stopped,
having turned to stone.
Now he stands there on that road
that doesn't lead to death
not going anywhere.
He can't dance.
from his eyes stones fall.
The rainbow people pass him
crossing that road, long-legged, light-stepping,
going from the Four Houses
to the dancing in the Five Houses.
They pick up his tears.
This stone is a tear
from his eye, this stone
given me on the mountain
by one who died before my birth,
this stone, this stone. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I walked out of the classroom and felt like dancing and singing. It all gave me hope. It gave me a little bit of joy. And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That's the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change — Sherman Alexie

Susannah continued. If and when I go off slow dancing in the ever after, I don't want to look like I've been stuck in a hospital room my whole life. I at least want to be tan. — Jenny Han

Back at home, after some prodding from Tereza, he admitted that he had been jealous watching her dance with a colleague of his. "You mean you were really jealous?" she asked him ten times or more, incredulously, as though someone had just informed her she had been awarded a Nobel Peace prize. Then she put her arm around his waist and began dancing across the room. The step she used was not the one she had shown off in the bar. It was more like a village polka, a wild romp that sent her legs flying in the air and her torso bounding all over the room, with Tomas in tow. Before long, unfortunately, she bagan to be jealous herself, and Tomas saw her jealously not as a Nobel Prize, but as a burden, a burden he would be saddled with until not long before his death. — Milan Kundera

I'm so happy dancing while the grim reaper
cuts, cuts, cuts, but he can't get me.
I'm as clever as can be, and I'm very quick but don't forget;
we've only got so many tricks.
no one lives forever. — Danny Elfman

He spoke of both dancing and death with equal nonchalance, as though one carried as little significance as the other. It calmed her, hearing him talk that way. — Clive Barker

Babcock knew no Southerners personally but he had seen them in court often enough ... and Ed's manner and appearance said Dixie to him. He imagined Ed at home with his family, a big one, from old geezers to toddlers. He saw them eating their yams and pralines and playing their fiddles and dancing their jigs and guffawing over coarse jokes and beating one another to death with agricultural implements. — Charles Portis

Here's one night when I control the chaos. I participate with the doom I can't control. I'm dancing with the inevitable, and I survive ... My regular little dress rehearsal ... the day I finally meet Death, the two of us will be old, long-lost friends. Me and Death, separated at birth. — Chuck Palahniuk

I wasn't like, boo hoo, Bin Laden's dead, but I wasn't jumping. America's a very nationalistic country, and in episodes like that of his death, it becomes jingoism. People are drinking, dancing in the street, chanting USA like they're at the World Cup, like they won it ... It's sick that we turned it into a sporting event. — Jeremy Scahill

When the Root and Branch were young, when the Rose still grew unplucked upon the tree; when all our lands were new and green and we danced without care, then, we were immortal... We left those lands for the world where time dwells, dancing, that we might see the passage of the sun and the growing of the world. Here we may die, and where we can fall, and here King _ has stopped his dancing. — Seanan McGuire

Well ... yeah. It just goes to show. (Peabody)
Show what (Dallas)
You should get dressed up, go dancing, drink grown-up cocktails, and have sex as much as you can before you're dead. (Peabody) — J.D. Robb

She must express life, death, happiness, sorrow, love and anger, but above all she must have dignity. — Taheyya Kariokka

She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do.
And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find
herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella. — Terry Pratchett

Once I saw torches with dancing flames of scarlet and radiant gold held by solemn apes. A man with the horns and muzzled face of a bull bent over me, a constellation sprung to life. I spoke to him and found myself telling him that I was unsure of the precise date of my birth, that if his benign spirit of meadow and unfeigning force had governed my life I thanked him for it; then remembered that I knew the date, that my father had given a ball for me each year until his death, that it fell under the Swan. He listened intently, turning his head to watch me from one brown eye. — Gene Wolfe

Hey whatever puts you in a good mood is fine by me. For all I care, monkeys could have danced around your classroom all hour if it made you happy."
"Don't be so dramatic Jackson. I would much rather it is zebras," I replied with a chuckle.
Jackson and Noel, Dancing with Death — Andrea Heltsley

Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song---the joy that makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, the joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over the wide world, the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and waking all life with laughter, the joy that sits still with its tears on the open red lotus of pain, and the joy that throws everything it has upon the dust, and knows not a word. — Rabindranath Tagore

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

- Anne Hathaway — Carol Ann Duffy

I'm not ashamed of heroic ambitions. If man and woman can only dance upon this earth for a few countable turns of the sun ... let each of us be an Artemis, Odysseus, or Zeus ... Aphrodite to the extent of the will of each one. — Roman Payne

At the moment of death, the soul's impressions are similar to those of initiates in the ways of the Great Mysteries.
First they rush along blindly, twisting and turning, on an endless, anxious journey through the shadows.
Then, just before the end, their fear reaches its height. Bathed in cold sweat, they shiver and tremble, utterly terrified.
This phase is almost immediately followed by a return to the light, a sudden illumination.
They are surrounded by a marvelous glow and move through pure places and meadows ringing with voices and dancing.
Sacred words inspire religious respect. The perfect initiate is free to celebrate the Mysteries. — Bernard Werber

Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones - dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. — Thomas Hardy

On that golden summer day, the young woman had just finished her morning run. She had sprinted the last half mile, then stopped abruptly to catch her breath. She was bent at the waist, hands on her knees, eyes on the ground, her mind a world away, perhaps in Barcelona or Tuscany or Rome, exulting in the enchanting sights she would soon see, the splendid life she would have.

It was then that the train hit her.

Unaware, unthinking, oblivious to everything but the beguiling visions in her head, she had ended her run on the railroad tracks that wound through the center of her small Oregon town, one moment in the fullest expectancy of her glorious youth, adrenaline and endorphins coursing through her body, sugarplum visions dancing in her head, the next moment gone, the transition instantaneous, irrevocable, complete.

If I'd had to die young, hers is the death I would have chosen. — Lionel Fisher

Loss, be it the death of a loved one, deteriorating health, lost dreams, or some kind of divine interruption . . . will usually include a measure of pain. Your positive attitude, perspective change, and faith are what will turn your wailing into praise and joyful dancing. — Cheryl Zelenka

Blue Squills
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue!
And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you. — Sara Teasdale

My battered friends and I had just had a brush with death, dancing with this evil. — Richelle Mead

You don't understand the true awesomeness of nature until you watch the sun rise on water that stretches across half the world. Or until you lay back on the board in the pitch black of night and listen to the world sleep. Until you feel the tug of water and know that you are dancing with a partner that could dip you into death should it feel the need. It is intoxicating, the heartbeat of the ocean. It flows through my blood, it sucks at my heart and pumps breath through my lungs — Alessandra Torre

The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive. — Jackie French

Accounts from Europe indicate that the danse macabre took another form, inspired by the Black Death, rather like our children's rhyme 'Ring o' Ring o' Roses', which refers to the Great Plague. In 1374, a fanatical sect of dancers appeared in the Rhine, convinced that they could put an end to the epidemic by dancing for days and allowing other people to trample on their bodies. It is not recorded whether they recovered but, incredibly, they began to raise money from bystanders. By the time they reached Cologne they were 500 strong, dancing like demons, half-naked with flowers in their hair. Regarded as a menace by the authorities, these dancers macabre were threatened with excommunication. — Catharine Arnold

They were rocking back and forth, dancing to the tune of death. They were not shadows he realised, they were large animals. — Stephen Craig

It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life. — Virginia Woolf

You should celebrate the end of a love affair as they celebrate death in New Orleans, with songs, laughter, dancing and a lot of wine. — Francoise Sagan

Where wildness and disorder are visible in the dance, there Satan, death and all kinds of mischief are likewise upon the floor. For this reason I could wish that the dance of death were painted on the walls of all ball-rooms in order to warn the dancers, not by the levity of their deportment, to provoke the God of righteousness to visit them with a sudden judgment. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it'll look on your next resume."
On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You going to cover my funeral expenses, son?"
Splendidly. Banners, dancing girls, and enough beer to float your coffin to Valhalla."
- Miles coaxing Ky Tung to agree to an almost suicidal mission — Lois McMaster Bujold

We are not from here, my dear. So:

Let the flames take over our bodies,
'cause I wanna merely burn with you.
And we can dance until we become ashes,
but don't you dare leave me when we
become pointless dust.

Because this is when we can
finally blow away with the wind,
back to that place where love
was once real... — Michael Biondi

Cold Mountain Buddhas Han Shan Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness be dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth. — T. S. Eliot

Worst fears: That God was not good. That the earth you stood upon shifted, and chasms yawned; that people, falling, clutched one another for help and none was forthcoming. That the basis of all things was evil. That the beauty of the evening, now settling in a yellow glow on the stone of The Cottage barns, the swallows dipping and soaring, a sudden host of butterflies in the long grasses in the foreground, was a lie; a deceitful sheen on which hopeful visions flitted momentarily, and that long, long ago evil had won against good, death over life... in the glow of the sun against the stone walls, as well as in the dancing of butterflies- that in this she had been mocked. — Fay Weldon

Anne Hathaway
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed. — Carol Ann Duffy

She was tired in her bones, but she rallied her energy one last time and told him of they years in Rifthold, of stealing Asterion horses and racing across the desert, of dancing until dawn with the courtesans and thieves and all the beautiful, wicked creatures in the world. And then she told him about losing Sam, and of that first whipping in Endovier, when she'd spat blood in the Chief Overseer's face, and what she had seen and endured in the following year. She spoke of the day she had snapped and sprinted for her own death. Her heart grew heavy when at last she got to the evening when the Captain of the Royal Guard prowled into her life, and a tyrant's son had offered her a shot at freedom. She told him what she could about the competition and how she'd won it, until her words slurred and her eyelids drooped. — Sarah J. Maas

He'd tried fishing, dancing, gambling and drink, allegedly four of life's greatest pleasures, and wasn't sure that he saw the point. Food he was happy with - Death liked a good meal as much as anyone else. — Anonymous

Should you see the light of your future, within the shadows of your present,
The resilience of life dancing over vast deserts of death,
Witness if you so shall, the majesty of Creation.
The connectedness of All was and always will be.
Entanglement? No. We call it Love." ~ Sargon of Akkad 2345 B.C.
Excerpt from Andulairah's upcoming book "The Erunisis Medallion — Andulairah

The hour has come to leave for the meeting place where I show him my face. He shall see the dark fire of my eyes and hear the wild wind in my voice. He will feel my presence full of stars, scanning his soul, and he shall know my raw power in his bones. I go to the meeting place where he will surrender to my fierce energy. The dancing, brooding passion goes in the cloak of night to where the human dares not go, but must. I am his destiny and his death, and he knows not my name. — Robert Lloyd

She watched as the dancing lights of madness swirled and flickered in his eyes like the fires of hell, and she knew that there would never be anything that could quench those fires except death. Vanessa knew that Jango had become his own Grim Reaper. — Cedric Nye

I'll tell you what it's time to do right now. It's time to set your schedule in order so that you don't look back on the day of your death and wonder why you never really lived. It's time to ignore the opinions of those who think your life should be all about their cause, their rules, their agenda, and not your soul's desire. It's time to stop flagellating and start dancing. — Martha Beck

I remembered those frantic seconds when I'd thought all I loved and knew, all that was Sydney Sage, would be lost from this world. My battered friends and I had just had a brush with death, dancing with this evil. We'd destroyed it, but it was terrifying how touch and go it all had been. At any moment, the Strigoi could have gained the advantage and killed one or all of us. Life and death were inextricably bound together, and we wavered between them. But we'd triumphed over death tonight. We were alive, and the world was beautiful. Life was beautiful, and I refused to waste mine. — Richelle Mead

And I'll look back at him because I shan't be able to help it, remembering about being young, and about being made love to and making love, about pain and dancing and not being afraid of death, about all music I've ever loved, and every time I've been happy. — Jean Rhys

Are there moments when I see unrequited crushes or ex-boyfriends slow dancing with their dates and kind of want to stab myself in the spleen with a salad fork? Yeah, sure. — Sloane Crosley

I watch my loved ones weep with sorrow,
death's silent torment of no tomorrow.
I feel their hearts breaking, I sense their despair,
United in misery, the grief that they share.
How do I show that, I am not gone ...
but the essence of life's everlasting song
Why do they wee? Why do they cry?
I'm alive in the wind and I am soaring high.
I am sparkling light dancing on streams,
a moment of warmth in the fays of sunbeams.
The coolness of rain as it falls on your face,
the whisper of leaves as wind rushes with haste.
Eternal Song, a requiem by Avian of Celieria
from Crown of Crystal Flame by C.L. Wilson — C.L. Wilson

How many million Aprils came
before I ever knew
how white a cherry bough could be,
a bed of squills, how blue
And many a dancing April
when life is done with me,
will lift the blue flame of the flower
and the white flame of the tree
Oh burn me with your beauty then,
oh hurt me tree and flower,
lest in the end death try to take
even this glistening hour ... — Sara Teasdale

The air was cool and soft. The desert looked empty from our great height, enough to believe the geographers and travel writers who tell of the terrible desert life, the stillness, harshness, and death. I lay against the cold sand, tiny grains dancing fast and furious across my skin. I saw insects and scorpions, the line of a snake. Mohammed said the dunes moved millimeters a day. They inched across the desert floor toward the ocean. I smiled. The geographers were blind. — C. Lynn Murphy

The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It's as if someone has dumped rubies from heaven. Soon they will land on the plants in search of bollworm eggs. But right now they are magic-red ribbons flying over our heads, weaving against the pink sky, dancing up there with Mozart. — Kimberly Willis Holt

No harm," he said as he danced on, cutting the air. Only now, the snowflakes began to bleed as he cut them. Battle of white and scarlet...
"Oto-san, what can I do?" I wept in the dream, my tears freezing to my cheeks.
"Dance," he said, his face still and calm, his blade whistling through the air. Blood flew from the tip of the sword, painting characters of death and disaster across the white ground.
Dancing. — David Kudler

This is the story of the curse and the kiss, the demon and the girl. It's a love story with dancing and death in it, and singing and souls and shadows reeled out on kite strings. — Laini Taylor

They went Indian file. First came the scouts, clever, graceful, quiet. They had rifles. Next came the antitank gunner, clumsy and dense, warning Germans away with a Colt .45 automatic in one hand and a trench knife in the other.
Last came Billy Pilgrim, empty-handed, bleakly ready for death. Billy was preposterous - six feet and three inches tall, with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches. He had no helmet, no overcoat, no weapon, and no boots. On his feet were cheap, low-cut civilian shoes which he had bought for his father's funeral. Billy had lost a heel, which made him bob up-and-down, up-and-down. The involuntary dancing, up-and-down, up-and-down, made his hip joints sore. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I like Dancing of Indian girls more than my parents' prayers . Because they dance with love and passion . But my parents just say their prayers because they got used to it . — Ali Shariati