“He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.”
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
“Hurrying to die,
It’s difficult to find a last word.
If I spoke the wordless word,
I wouldn’t speak at all!”
Richard Bryan McDaniel. Zen Masters of Japan. The Second Step East. Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle Publishing, 2014. p. 122.
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It’s difficult to find a last word.
If I spoke the wordless word,
I wouldn’t speak at all!" by Dokyo Etan?
Dokyo Etan3
Son of Sanada Nobuyuki 1642–1721Related quotes
“Yes, time can be buoyed by wordlessness, but it needs to be anchored in words.”
David Levithan (1972) American author and editor
Source: Two Boys Kissing
“I don’t want to die,” A. J. says after a bit. “I just find it difficult to be here all the time.”
Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer
Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
As quoted in "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'" by Ian Sample, in The Guardian (15 May 2011) http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven <br class="br">Context: I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first... I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
“It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.”
E.M. Forster book A Room with a View
Source: A Room with a View (1908), Ch.1
“It is easier not to speak a word at all than to speak more words than we should.”
Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ
Book I, ch. 20.
The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418)
Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist
Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 17, “Dead Voices” (p. 171)