He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn’t really much else to do. Make something, and die.
We fear death, we shudder at life’s instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.
Dark circles under my eyes sink deeper and deeper into my skull, in contrast to my pale skin there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse.
Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning.
A piece of me is gone, she told me once while we were bra shopping. I think we’re made up of all these different pieces and every time someone goes, you’re left with less of yourself.
If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband’s family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. . . But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn’t she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?
Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you’re free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.
Death comes for us all, Brother. You cannot hide from it forever. We will die one day, you and I. And that doesn’t frighten you? Rhy shrugged. Not nearly as much as the idea of wasting a perfectly good life in fear of it.
Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some final resolution, some clear meaning, which it perhaps never finds.
Maybe the only good thing about death is that you never have to relive it. You never have to remember the pain.
For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.
Too easy to lose the way.Too hard to keep from unraveling when there’s nothing to remind you of who youare and where you should be.Another eternity passes in the flick of an eyelash.
Now every mortal has painand sweat is constant,but if there is anything dearer than being alive,it’s dark to me.We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing(whatever it is) that glitters on the earth–we call it life. We know no other.The underworld’s a blankand all the rest just fantasy.
But now–it’s like God has it out for us. Why both of them? Wasn’t my dad enough? It’s like death came and punched us square in the face.
Nothing has changed. It’s still very simple. I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much. But how would it be if that feeling was gone? I would not want that to happen. I told the shrink: it would not make me happy at all not to miss him anymore.
You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist.
This is war, and people are going to die. Friends are going to die. I’ve come to accept the pain, to take the ugliness for granted. So it can be a little stunning when something good actually happens.
Death is alive, they whispered. Death lives inside life, as bones dance within the body. Yesterday is within today. Yesterday never dies.
Morrie,” Koppel said, “that was seventy years ago your mother died. The pain still goes on?”“You bet,” Morrie whispered.
Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you – it’s born with us the day that we are born.
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.
Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goalseems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attentionhas diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is nowgreater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing – and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like deaththrough freezing – a pleasant one.
I think it’s cool to wear roadkill. If I died and somebody wanted to wear my teeth around their neck to VMAs, I’d feel honored.
In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.
In the end, it wasn’t death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.
How easy to be a bird or an animal, living from day to day, unaware you’re alive, unaware that one day you will die.
Stay with me to-night; you must see me die. I have long had the taste of death on my tongue, I smell death, and who will stand by my Constanze, if you do not stay?
Now I gazed out of my office window. Slowly the world was changing from old-gold to the deep purple which, in the words of that dreamy song Mum was fond of humming, bathes garden walls under the twinkle of starlight.
What is of the nature of spirit and soul must be gleaned from facts belonging to the spirit and soul; we shall then know that in the living thinking which is liberated from the will, a life-germ has been discerned which passes through the gate of death, goes through the spiritual world after death, and afterwards returns again to earthly life.
If there is an after, I hope it’s not dark. And I hope you can remember. I’d hate to wander around in the dark forever, not knowing who I was or what I was doin’ here, or not even knowing that I’d ever had anything different.
He watched his feet, the only things that were keeping him from finding out if there really was a Kingdom of Heaven or not.
Death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept.
God grant you all your desires and accept my own hearty thanks for all your attention to me. Although indeed, those attentions have tried me more than death can now terrify me.
Had I truly thought I would not die when he kissed me? But I did. For a moment the breath and life went out of me and there was no time and no tomorrow but only my lips against his.
Psychologists have clinically observed that overly prolonged grief in the bereaved usually signifies a poor relationship with the one who died.
Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and we meet death with the same equanimity as life. No longer will children’s minds be twisted by evil gods whose fantastic origin is in those barbaric tribes who feared death and lightning, who feared life. That’s it: life is the villain to to those who preach reward in death, through grace and eternal bliss, or through dark revenge.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Horror on earth is real and it is everyday. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.
Not easy to state the change you made.If I’m alive now, I was dead,Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.
I’m going to die. And as if that weren’t bad enough, I’m going to die inside a cake.
What you know isn’t nearly as important as who you know. Who will miss you. Who you will miss.
My love, do you recall the object which we saw,That fair, sweet, summer morn!At a turn in the path a foul carcassOn a gravel strewn bed,Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,Burning and dripping with poisons,Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant wayIts belly, swollen with gases.- A Carcass
The fear of death never left me; I couldn’t get used to the thought; I would still sometimes shake and weep with terror. By contrast, the fact of existence here and now sometimes took on a glorious splendour.
Why would a living person worry about what happens after they die? I’ll just live freely for as long as possible.
You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life – that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true
Yes, I support the death penalty. It is an issue that cannot be fudged or hedged.
Love doesn’t die with death. Love is like liquid; when it pours out, it seeps into others’ lives. Love changes form and shape. Love gets into everything. Death doesn’t conquer all; love does. Love wins every single time. Love wins by lasting through death. Love wins by loving more, loving again, loving without fear.
When a country is defeated, there remain only mountains and rivers, and on a ruined castle in spring only grasses thrive. I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.A thicket of summer grassIs all that remainsOf the dreams and ambitionsOf ancient warriors.