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Who really said it

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room

Written by Henry Scott Holland 1847–1918 · Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, later Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford
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Holland preached this in St Paul’s Cathedral on Sunday 15 May 1910, after the death of King Edward VII, in a sermon called The King of Terrors. Two things the funeral-card version hides: the original reads ‘Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away…’, and Holland is not speaking in his own voice — he is imagining what the dead person’s face says to the mourner, as one of two opposed views of death he goes on to refuse to choose between.

Last verified 14 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room.” Henry Scott Holland, “The King of Terrors,” sermon preached in St Paul’s Cathedral, 15 May 1910; printed in Facts of the Faith (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1919), 126. Holland gives these words to the dead, as one of two opposed views of death. Verified by Quotle.info.

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In context

Evoking the world of Henry Scott Holland — English priest, Christian socialist & Regius Professor of Divinity. Theme: "Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

A sermon with two halves

Source
‘The King of Terrors’, in Facts of the Faith
Published
Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1919 — sermon begins p. 124, passage on p. 126
Preached
St Paul’s Cathedral, London, Sunday 15 May 1910 (Whitsunday), after the death of King Edward VII
Text
1 John 3:2–3
Verdict
Verified — but routinely quoted without its context

But, then, there is another aspect altogether which death can wear for us. It is that which first comes to us, perhaps, as we look down upon the quiet face, so cold and white, of one who has been very near and dear to us. There it lies in possession of its own secret. It knows it all. So we seem to feel. And what the face says in its sweet silence to us as a last message from the one whom we loved is: "Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was." Facts of the Faith (1919), p. 126

The quotation marks are Holland’s own. The famous passage is what he imagines the dead face saying — a voice he introduces, not a creed he announces. The funeral reading begins at ‘Death is nothing at all’ and silently drops the sentence that follows it.

Facts of the Faith (1919) — full scan at the Internet Archive

How we verified this

  • The sermon is printed in Holland’s Facts of the Faith (1919), scanned in full at the Internet Archive ↗ — a posthumous collection ‘of sermons not hitherto published in book form’, edited by Christopher Cheshire. The passage sits on p. 126, inside the sermon the contents page lists as ‘The King of Terrors’.
  • Wikisource’s edition of the sermon ↗ dates and places it: ‘A sermon preached in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, Sunday 15th May 1910… following the death of King Edward VII, whose coffin lay in state in Westminster Hall from 17 to 19 May.’ The sermon’s own text agrees — Holland says ‘to-day the white light of Pentecost pours itself around us’, and speaks of the coffin ‘as it lies in Westminster Hall’.
  • That the passage misrepresents the sermon is not our inference. Wikipedia’s article on Holland ↗ records that ‘the frequent use of this passage has provoked some criticism that it fails to accurately reflect either Holland’s theology as a whole, or the focus of the sermon in particular’, citing John Heidt’s ‘The King of Terrors: The Theology of Henry Scott Holland’ in Contemporary Review (March 2000).
Public domain

The sermon was preached in 1910 and first printed in Facts of the Faith in 1919, well before 1931, and Holland died in 1918 — so the text is in the public domain in the United States and may be reproduced freely, including at a funeral.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Not a misattribution — a missing half

Nobody else is credited with these words; Holland really wrote them. What goes wrong is the framing, and it goes wrong in four repeatable ways.

‘It does not count’ Clipped

The sermon reads ‘Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room.’ The funeral reading drops the middle sentence, which is why the clipped form is the one people search for.

Henry Scott Holland, speaking for himself Context

He is not. Holland writes that this is ‘what the face says in its sweet silence to us as a last message from the one whom we loved’ — the words are given to the dead, in quotation marks, as a mourner’s imagining.

A sermon of consolation Context

It is a sermon about a contradiction. Holland opens ‘I suppose all of us hover between two ways of regarding death, which appear to be in hopeless contradiction with each other’, spends the first half on death as ‘the supreme and irrevocable disaster’, and concludes: ‘Our task is to deny neither judgment, but to combine both. The contrasted experiences are equally real, equally valid.’

‘Death Is Nothing At All’ Not the title

That is the opening line, not the sermon’s name. Facts of the Faith lists it as ‘The King of Terrors’; it is also widely cited as ‘Death the King of Terrors’. Either way the title names the terror, not the comfort.

The words are genuinely Holland’s, from p. 126 of Facts of the Faith ↗ — but they are one side of an argument he deliberately left unresolved, spoken in a voice that is not his own.

Context

Preached beside a king’s coffin

Whitsunday 1910 fell between the death of Edward VII and his lying-in-state, and Holland preached into that gap. ‘To-day the white light of Pentecost pours itself around us,’ he told the congregation, ‘yet the white light breaks itself against the blackness of a closed coffin… and its very pomp of state makes its silence more sinister yet.’ The consoling passage was never meant to stand alone; it was the second of two moods he set against each other in front of a nation in mourning.

Our task is to deny neither judgment, but to combine both.

How he tried to hold both at once

Holland does not withdraw the comfort. He calls the mood that produces it a ‘true experience’ that ‘gave us authentic intelligence’, and says it is ‘our reasonable act of faith to stand by our highest experience… even when its light has faded out of our lives’. But he is equally blunt that it will fade: ‘Alas! it will pass from us… Once again the old terror will come down upon us.’ His answer is not to pick a side but to reconcile them through the idea of growth — that we are ‘in a condition of process’ of which life on earth is only the preliminary stage. Read whole, it is a far stranger and more demanding sermon than the card it became.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Mortality Hope

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Internet Archive — Facts of the Faith (1919), full scanarchive.org

The primary source: Holland’s posthumous sermon collection, with ‘The King of Terrors’ from p. 124 and the passage on p. 126.
Wikisource — The King of Terrorsen.wikisource.org

A transcription of the sermon, with the date, venue and the Edward VII lying-in-state dates in its headnote.
Wikipedia — Henry Scott Hollanden.wikipedia.org

Life dates, his move from Oxford to St Paul’s in 1884, and the documented criticism of how this passage is used.
Wikipedia — Edward VIIen.wikipedia.org

The king whose death occasioned the sermon.
Internet Archive — A Bundle of Memories (1915)archive.org

Holland in his own voice on the people he knew — useful for hearing how differently he writes when he is not ventriloquising.

The preacher

About Henry Scott Holland

Henry Scott Holland

1847–1918 · English priest, Christian socialist & Regius Professor of Divinity

Henry Scott Holland (1847–1918) was born near Ledbury in Herefordshire, educated at Eton and Balliol, and elected a fellow of Christ Church, Oxford. In 1884 he left Oxford to become a canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, where he preached this sermon; he declined the bishopric of Norwich in 1893 and returned to Oxford as Regius Professor of Divinity. He founded the Christian Social Union, and was slow to publish — nine volumes of his sermons appeared in his lifetime, and this one only posthumously.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Holland, Henry Scott. “The King of Terrors.” In Facts of the Faith: Being a Collection of Sermons Not Hitherto Published in Book Form, edited by Christopher Cheshire, 124–34. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1919. Passage at 126. Preached in St Paul’s Cathedral, 15 May 1910.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room’?” Last verified 14 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/death-is-nothing-at-all-i-have-only-slipped-away-into-the/

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