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Throughout history great men and women have said and written many things about Death - some deep, some meaningful, some funny and some downright stupid.
- John Donne
There is nothing to fear from the gods.
There is only one way to be born and a thousand ways to die.
To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves
as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an
act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of
dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn
or lighthearted dramatic performance.
The increase in the world's population represents our victory against death...
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which
should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine
religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational
knowledge.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
[ Death scene of Cyrano ]
Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
Take Nothing but Pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time.
All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept
the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are
pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of
the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to
laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to.
"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds."
The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
... We are such stuff
We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force
experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the
shouts.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
All art is a revolt against man's fate.
The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
The report of my death was an exaggeration.
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Is there life before death?
It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
I hate life, I hate death and everything in between just doesn't interest me.
Biography lends to death a new terror.
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever.
Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.
Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
It's not that I'm afraid to die- I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.
When one by one our ties are torn,
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may swell.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.
Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
The fear of death is worse than death.
If life must not be taken too seriously - then so neither must death.
I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.
I am ready to meet my maker, but whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat.
Death is a Dialogue between,The Spirit and the Dust.
Life is a series of diminishments. Each cessation of an activity either from choice or some other variety of infirmity is a death, a putting to final rest. Each loss, of friend or precious enemy, can be equated with the closing off of a room containing blocks of nerves. . . and soon after the closing off the nerves atrophy and that part of oneself, in essence, drops away. The self is lightened, is held on earth by a gram less of mass and will.
I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.
Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.
Death is the last enemy: once we've got past that I think everything will be alright.
It is not death, but dying, which is terrible.
Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.
To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.
Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead. When Death claims the light of my brow No flowers of life will cheer me: instead You may give me my roses now!
How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
The difficulty about all this dying, is that you can't tell a fellow anything about it, so where does the fun come in?
I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.
When I have fears that I may cease to be, before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain.
It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.
We are all dead men on leave.
The world is the mirror of myself dying.
IF you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.
As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity. . . of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.
Dying is an art, like everything else.
Thank Heaven! the crisis
Good God! how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.
We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it. . . from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real. . . what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finis, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.
When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.
I have a rendezvous with Death, at some disputed barricade.
The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.
Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing --a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
A fiction about soft or easy deaths. . . is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.
For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.
If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.
When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at least, if not divine.
Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.
Though lovers be lost love shall not, And death shall have no dominion.
A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.
Tis after death that we measure men.
The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure
life.
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