Funerals are for the living. If we have not done for the dead while they were yet in flesh, it is too late; let the matter pass at the grave. Day by day we should live for those who are to die; and live so that we may die for those who are to live. Funerals are for the living.
One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don’t just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you most.
Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist- that is, I don’t make the mistake of thinking that the… cosmos… gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.
If you live each day as it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right
No drowning man can know which dropOf water his last breath did stop
We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents…Sometimes the ‘unfinisheds’ are among the most beautiful symphonies.
I was discovering that the most precious gift someone can give us is time, because what gives time its value is death.
Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
I’m going to get ‘I’M NOT FUCKING DEAD’ tattooed on my chest.That will become inaccurate at some point, Omar pointed out.
Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal’s shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched before one now stretched before him.
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
The body tries to stop the mind from killing itself, no matter the cost. It is only the lack of strength, the fatigue that lets the jumpers fall at last.
Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe.
… she’s worried more about mail being late than perceiving a death alarm.
Ahmed looked shocked, his hands digging into my arms. ‘But you love him,’ he said softly. ‘You love him, and you should save him. That’ what people do with those they love, Amani — they save them.’ No iT wasn’t. Sam had taught me that. Great love stories ended in death. All stories ended in death sooner or later. Ours was ending sooner.
For years I’d understood that publishing in paperback was the kiss of death.
You can’t have living without dying. So you can’t call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.
When you look at death, it makes you understand the importance of the moment when you have life and death in front of you, and you witness seeing someone deteriorating in front of you – it’s an overwhelming experience. If you don’t learn from that, I don’t know what else you’re gonna learn.
From looking at your neighbor and realizing his true significance, and that he will die, pity and compassion will arise in you for him and finally you will love him.
Death was not the scariest thing out there; no, the denial of it could be far worse.
It’s easier to die than to move … at least for the Other Side you don’t need trunks.
If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.
Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams. I’ve heard people talk about the sleep of the dead. Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that’s what it’s like, I wouldn’t mind. If that’s what dying is like, I wouldn’t mind that at all.
Warmblood now a bloodborne death,Will rob your body of it’s breathMark your skin and seal your fate The Underland becomes a plate
Erik, Erik! I saved your life! Remember? You were scentenced to death! But for me you would be dead by now.
The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.
Because you can only die once but you can suffer forever.
This was how an enemy should be dealt with: with a dagger, not a declaration.
Dying Speech of an Old PhilosopherI strove with none, for none was worth my strife.Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
…the longer I think about it the more it seems to me that we who are still alive are unreal in the eyes of the dead, that only occasionally, in certain lights and atmospheric conditions, do we appear in their field of vision.
You must know that I am made of death, from head to foot, and it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!
There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.
We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.
In the end, we all lose it. Remember that. In the end, we own nothing.
The kiss. Oh, the kiss. What a perfect, unnerving, luscious kiss. He made me feel unhinged . . . like he could take me apart and put me back together again and again.
Male privilege and entitlement are dying a very painful death; no one gives up power without a struggle.
Whilst the wolflets bayed, A grave was made, And then with the strokes of a silver spade, It was filled to make a mound. And for two cold days and three long nights, The father tended that holy plot; And stayed by where his wife was laid, In the grave within the ground.
The world is paralyzed, and humanity is in quarantine. It is a strange symmetry that I was born in one pandemic and will die during another.
YOU’RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said.That’s what being alive is all about.
One of the first signs of the beginnings of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate.
Somebody, said Jacques, your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour–and in the oddest places!–for the lack of it.
The South-wind bringsLife, sunshine and desire,And on every mount and meadowBreathes aromatic fire;But over the dead he has no power,The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;And, looking over the hills, I mournThe darling who shall not return.
A society that doesn’t know any longer how to observe every death with proper rituals, that does not know that death is not the end, but only part of the journey, has lost its way, has had the very heart of its humanity torn out.
Too pissed off to care, Aurelia interrupted him. No, I will not wait just one moment! Piercing him with her best scary stare, she said, It surprises me that no one has pointed out your glaringly obvious agenda, so let me be the first.
Conner hadn’t liked leaving the gravesite with his father still not buried. But he’d learned from his grandmother’s funeral that you have to go. It’s expected. Nobody hangs around the cemetary. Grief—a little or a lot—is tucked into your pocket and carried away.
Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, ‘I haven’t touched you yet.
You can’t drown yourself that simply. All good suicides involve speed and irreversibility, because the body will always move to protect itself against the sicko mind trying to do it in.
… we die, just as we were born, at the edge of a road not of our choosing.
I looked at him on the bed. He coughed once and a trail of brownish dead blood came out of his mouth and ran down the side of his chin. Then he stopped breathing. And I thought, I’ll make sure I never end up here, either.
For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.
Wait.” Stefan’s voice was hard suddenly. Bonnie and Elena turned back and froze, embracing each other, trembling. “What is your—your father—going to do to you when he finds out that you allowed this?”He will not kill me,” Sage said brusquely, the wild tone back in his voice. “He may even find it as amusant as I do, and we will be sharing a belly laugh tomorrow.
When he shall die,Take him and cut him out in little stars,And he will make the face of heaven so fineThat all the world will be in love with nightAnd pay no worship to the garish sun.
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.
There are five things we need to say to people we love before they die…: I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.
She surveyed the carnage behind him. Did you have fun?He showed her his teeth. Yes.
Happiness is the change that comes over mewhen I describe the worldIt comes over the worldHappiness is the change that comes over mewhen I’m afraidIt comes over the worldFor instance I can be afraid of and for the worldafraid because the world consists among other thingsof me so swiftly dying
At the end, one didn’t remember life as a whole but as just a string of moments.
Ethan was loyal and funny and protective. When we were little, he was the brother most likely to make me cry—and mostly likely to wipe away my tears.