Quotes about death
page 17
Source: Coin Locker Babies
“The birth of the mind is the death of the senses”
Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
“I am sustained by the certainty that life has meaning… as does death.”
Source: Oryx and Crake
Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances
Source: The God of Small Things
Source: The Darkest Passion
“I know the place.
It is true.
Everything we do
Corrects the space
Between death and me
And you.”
“Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.”
Paris Review interview (1958)
“The death of God left the angels in a strange position.”
Source: Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
Context: In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
“The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.”
Source: The Golden Apple
“If I can't joke about imminent death, then I might as well just resign.”
Source: The Search for the Red Dragon
1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
“All ends are temporary and all life is born from death.”
Source: Evil Thirst
“I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.”
March, 1933 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ps_DtS_PFb4C&q=%22I+postpone+death+by+living+by+suffering+by+error+by+risking+by+giving+by+losing%22&pg=PT203#v=onepage
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
VI, 28
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI
"Stairway to Heaven," Thinking in Pictures (1995), p. 202.
Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
Context: Most people don't realize that the slaughter plant is much gentler than nature. Animals in the wild die from starvation, predators, or exposure. If I had a choice, I would rather go through a slaughter system than have my guts ripped out by coyotes or lions while I was still conscious. Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.
Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)
Interviews
Context: 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 stonewritten. 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.
“Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.”
“After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.”
Source: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Source: The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio
“Next time you wish to feed me poison, warn me first," Loor demanded. (The Merchant of Death)”
“An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely.”
Source: Revolution
“True courage, in the face of almost certain death, is the rarest quality on earth.”
Source: Black Blood
Source: Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good
“I could have fixed almost everything else, but death defeated me every time.”
Source: Magic Burns
“The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”
“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.”
Source: War and Peace
Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
“people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.”
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell
Source: The Boy Detective Fails
Source: Every You, Every Me
“What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.”
Stanza 6
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale
Source: Complete Poems and Selected Letters
Source: Big Breasts and Wide Hips (1996)
Source: The Last Temptation of Christ
Source: White Oleander
“Love without risk is an impossibility, like war without death.”
Source: In Praise of Love
“The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.”
Depuis le jour de ma naissance, ma mort s'est mise en marche. Elle marche à ma rencontre, sans se presser.
"Postambule" in La Fin du Potomac (1939); later published in Collected Works Vol. 2 (1947)
“Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.”
Source: Experiencing the Heart of Jesus: Knowing His Heart, Feeling His Love
“He who has rejected his demons badgers us to death with his angels”
“Nobody's death is impending."
…"Well technically everyone's death is impending.”
Source: The Last Guardian
“Say no to death pies. Another good motto.”
Source: A World Without Heroes
“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?… All will end in death, all!”
Source: War and Peace
“Having made the decision to love, had I chosen life instead of death?”
Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story