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.
Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. Of all life’s pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.
Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn’t survive.
Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.
We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die.
Art-making is not about telling the truth but making the truth felt
And often the worst thing wasn’t the victims–they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River)
In the middle of life, death comesto take your measurements. The visitis forgotten and life goes on. But the suitis being sewn on the sly.
If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.
The fish is my friend too… I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky; he thought
The man now retrieved a linen cloth and stuffed it deep into Katherine’s mouth. “Death,” hewhispered to her, “should be a quiet thing.
We are graced with a godlike ability to transcend time and space in our minds but are chained to death.
In every person, there is a doer and a devil. With every passing days, the doer dies and a devil has to rise.
But hey, if there’s one bright side to your dying, it’s that you aren’t around to tell me things I don’t like hearing. I’m sorry. That was a dickhead thing to say. I need a condom for my mouth.
Well, I always did want to go out in a Braveheart kind of way. I’ll just have to think of something cool to yell before they cut my head off.
But death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.
The Cross is the approbation of our existence, not in words, but in an act so completely radical that it caused God to become flesh and pierced this flesh to the quick; that, to God, it was worth the death of his incarnate Son.
Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.
Scarlet watched a leaf fall to the ground, lying dead amoung the other leaves on the forest floor. A brief life seems pointless.Tristan thought for a moment. Isn’t that what life is, though? A brief opportunity to exist? A short gift?
On the Death of his ChildDew Evaporates And all our world is dew…so dear, So fresh, so fleeting
There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I’m so angry and bitter. But it doesn’t last too long. Then I get up and say, ‘I want to live..’ ‘So far, I’ve been able to do it. Will I be able to continue? I don’t know. But I’m betting on myself I will.’ Koppel seemed extremely taken with Morrie. He asked about the humility that death induced.
Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death — this infantile fixation of mine — was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry — with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, ‘Here is a painting; take it, please.
Most of the time, I do not want to die. But I would like to have the means of death within my grasp. I want to feel the luxury of choice, to know the answer to “How do I bear this?” need not always be “Endure.
I wonder how it takes you, that moment when everything turns to shadows. – Somerled.
The campaign against the death penalty has been – while a powerful campaign, its participants have been those who attend all of the vigils, a relatively small number of people.
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!
In the end, everyone is aware of this:nobody keeps any of what he has,and life is only a borrowing of bones.
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
An act of Congress could abolish the federal death penalty once and for all, and my sister in service, Representative Ayanna Pressley, has introduced a bill that would do just that.
But to mourn, that’s different. To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for the person.
No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
Can I just say that dying sucks? All that bullshit about seeing the light and having this inner peace, blah, blah, blah. It’s crap.
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no death the way we understood it. The body dies, but not the soul.
I’d never seen anything like it. First a trial, then a few murders, then dancing. Life goes on. Or, in this case, death continues.
Of all the things I’ve ever done, perhaps none was more difficult than turning away from my beautiful girl and walking away, leaving her there, never to look back. But my friend Tom, my ever-faithful good friend Tom said, pointing down the hall away from Cec’s room, ‘Life’s that way. Let’s go home.’And so we did.
He told himself a story. Not at first. At first, there wasn’t time for thoughts that came in the shape of words. His head was blessedly empty of stories then. War was coming. It was upon him. Arin had been born in the year of the god of death, and he was finally glad of it. He surrendered himself to his god, who smiled and came close. Stories will get you killed, he murmured in Arin’s ear. Now, you just listen. Listen to me.
You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is. . . . This is our destiny. Not yours.
I think ‘Historian’ is ultimately a positive record, but I was a little bit worried about taking people into a dark world. I tried to do it with as much care as possible, but it’s not easy to ask people to think about death or loss or confusion.