Quotes about death
page 27

“The essential parts of Christianity are the articles of faith by the denial or ignorance of which we cease to be Christians. The principal of these are: the spiritual deliverance through the suffering and death of Christ; Resurrection from death in confirmation of the sufficient suffering of Christ; and, the return of Christ for reward and punishment, as the fruit and consequence of the deliverance. He who grapples with or disproves these first principles attacks the substance (or essence) of the object.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 69

Faith, Suffering, Christ, Parting

“Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein.”

Martin Heidegger book Being and Time

Der Tod ist die Möglichkeit der schlechthinnigen Daseinsunmöglichkeit.
Macquarrie & Robinson translation
Being and Time (1927)

“It is said we go about the world waging war to promote peace, and yet the price paid is rarely weighed against the failed efforts to make the world a better place. Justifying conscription to promote the cause of liberty is one of the most bizarre notions ever conceived by man! Forced servitude, with the risk of death and serious injury as a price to live free, makes no sense. What right does anyone have to sacrifice the lives of others for some cause of questionable value? Even if well motivated it can’t justify using force on uninterested persons. It’s said that the 18 year old owes it to his country. Hogwash! It just as easily could be argued that a 50 year-old chickenhawk, who promotes war and places the danger on innocent young people, owes a heck of a lot more to the country than the 18 year-old being denied his liberty for a cause that has no justification.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Source: Conscription - The Terrible Price of War, November 21, 2003 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr112103.htm

War, People, World, Peace

“It’s important to understand how we got where we are today. In 1966, the unthinkable happened: a madman climbed the University of Texas clock tower and opened fire, killing more than a dozen people. It was the first mass shooting in the age of television, and it left a real impression on the country. It was the kind of terror we didn’t expect to ever see again. But around 30 years ago, we started to see an uptick in these types of shootings, and over the last decade they’ve become the new norm.
In July 2012, a gunman walked into a darkened theater in Aurora and shot 12 people to death, injuring 70 more. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. The sudden and utterly random violence was a terrifying sign of what was to come.
In December 2012, a young man entered an elementary school in Newtown and murdered six educators and 20 young children. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. Watching the aftermath of these young babies being gunned down was heartrending.
In June 2016, a gunman entered a nightclub in Orlando and sprayed revelers with gunfire. The shooter fired hundreds of rounds, many in close proximity, and killed 49. Many of the victims were shot in the head at close range. One of his weapons was an assault rifle.
Last month, a gunman opened fire on concertgoers in Las Vegas, turning an evening of music into a killing field. All told, the shooter used multiple assault rifles fitted with bump-fire stocks to kill 58 people. The concert venue looked like a warzone.
Over the weekend in Sutherland Springs, 26 were killed by a gunman with an assault rifle. The dead ranged from 17 months old to 77 years. No one is spared with these weapons of war. When so many rounds are fired so quickly, no one is spared. Another community devastated and dozens of families left to pick up the pieces.
These are just a few of the many communities we talk about in hushed tones—San Bernardino, Littleton, Aurora, towns and cities across the country that have been permanently scarred.”

Dianne Feinstein (1933) American politician

[Senators Introduce Assault Weapons Ban, November 8, 2017, w:Diane Feinstein, Diane, Feinstein, https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/11/senators-introduce-assault-weapons-ban]
On the introduction of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017

War, Children, People, Age

“The national Democratic Party and its southern affiliates labored mightily to re-subjugate the newly free blacks, eventually succeeding by implementing Jim Crow laws, motivating the birth of the Klan and then protecting it, establishing separate-but-equal schools and public facilities, and enacting codes of lawful segregation, all of which Democrats defended in a fight to the death until the 1960s. In U. S. history, from the ratification of the Constitution to the economic devastation wrought by Obama on contemporary black Americans, the men and women who run Democratic Party, from Jefferson and Jackson forward, have been the ferocious enemy of black Americans entering the mainstream of American life, to this day bending every tool of political power to keep them angry, unemployed, mired in poverty, and politically and economically dependent in a manner that approaches quite near to re-enslavement.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention https://archive.is/QBuxT (22 June 2015), by M. Scheuer. 2010s

Life, Women, Men, School

“In the run-up to World War II, they helped Hitler build the death camps to take the Jews and kill them. Take the gays and kill them. Take the socialists and kill them. Take the Polish partisans and kill them. Take the gypsies and kill them. The Bush Family is eye-ball deep in blood, blood, blood.”

Mike Malloy (1942) American radio broadcaster

http://server7.whiterosesociety.org/content/malloy/MalloyMemories/Red_Rum.mp3
presumably a reference to the financial support given to Hitler by Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather
On the Bush family and their associates

War, World, Family, Help

“I called Anna Freud in London to tell her what was about to happen. It was a strange, honest conversation.
"Miss Freud, I am sure you have heard that Dr. Eissler is going to fire me from the Archives."
"Yes. And I disagree with him. I did not like that second article in the New York Times. And I think you are wrong in your views. But I do not see why you should be so severely punished for holding them. On one point, however, I feel that I was deceived by Dr. Eissler. He never told me that you were going to live in my house. My understanding was that you were to be in charge of the library and of the research, but not actually live in the house." I never did find out why Eissler never explained this to Anna Freud. Perhaps he was being discreet, not wanting to bring up the matter of her death, or perhaps he knew she would not like the idea of my living in the house. Of course, as things turned out, I never did live in the Freud house.
"Did the idea of my living in your house upset you?"
"Frankly, yes it did."
"Why?"
"Because my father would not have wanted it."
"You mean he would not have liked me?"
"I am not saying that. But he would not have wanted somebody like you living in the house. He would have wanted somebody quiet, modest, unobtrusive. You would have been everywhere, searching for everything, going through boxes, drawers, closets, bringing people in, opening things up. My father would not have wanted this." She was right.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: Final Analysis (1990), pp. 196-197

People, Feeling, Search, Idea

“Your case no tame expedients will afford,
Resolve on death or conquest by the sword,
Which for no less a stake than life you draw,
And self-defence is Nature's eldest law.”

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel

Pt. I, lines 455–458.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Life, Law, Nature, Drawing

“Evil reports of a churlish wilderness, a pitiless climate, disease, misery, and death, had heralded the arrival of De Monts. The outlay had been great, the returns small; and when he reached Paris, he found his friends cold, his enemies active and keen.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. II, Ch. 4 Lescarbot and Champlain
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Disease, Evil

“Oswald Cabal: Rest enough for the individual man, too much and too soon, and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First, this little planet and its winds and ways. And then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and, at last, out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the depths of space, and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning…”

H. G. Wells book The Shape of Things to Come

Things to Come (1936)

Law, Way, Star, Time

“The large gray spiked form rising from the bottom of the picture is to me the symbol of death and ruin. And finally the black ovoid form is the symbol of fire, lava and destruction.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

in a letter to Alfred H. Barr, Jr. 6 November, 1955; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 34
Baziotes' quote is referring to his painting 'Pompeii', Baziotes painted in 1955
1950s

“If the vapid writings… did indeed emanate from him, I can only say that this implies a terrible post-mortem reduction of personal capacities. (Survival of death with such an appalling decay of personality makes it, at least to me, a rather unattractive prospect.)”

Ian Stevenson (1918–2007) Canadian parapsychologist, reincarnation researcher

Return to Life, p. 13 by Jim Tucker

Personality

“At which a diplomat from France replies: «The war? I can't find it too terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!»)”

Kurt Tucholský Französischer Witz

Darauf sagt ein Diplomat vom Quai d’Orsay: «Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!»
"Französischer Witz" (1932).

War

“Death by hanging…I deserved it and I expected it, as I've always told you. I am glad that I have had the chance to defend myself and to think things over in the last few months.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To Dr. G. M. Gilbert, after receiving the death sentence, quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995

Thinking, Chance

“In Part II I argue that the Prison is institutionalized by the "monolithic mode of production" which creates effective monopolies not for its brands but for its products … institutionalized medicine; the universal, compulsory school; compulsory heterosexuality; … In Part III … I propose a class analysis that sees us not as ruling-class, bourgeois or proletarian, but as life-, thing- or death-oriented. In Part IV … I suggest that the new worldview implies four "primary" New Age ethics – the self-development, ecology, self reliance-cooperation and nonviolence ethics. … In Part V I try to suggest what "New Age society" might be like. … It would foster "localization" – community and regional decentralization (to whatever extent the various communities wished). And it would foster "planetization"”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

planetary cooperation and sharing. ... In Pat VII ... I argue for a strategy that would involve ... (a) healing self, and (b) healing society.
Pages 7–8.
New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1978)

Life, Age, School, Communication

“She got up, grew her legs longer to get her body out of the water and shook herself dry. Then she wandered off, following a zigzag path along the border between Life and Death, her tail wagging so hard, the tip of it beat the river into a froth behind her.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Abhorsen (2003), p. 395.

Life, Water

“Darwin seems to lose out with the public primarily when his supporters force him into a mano-a-mano Thunderdome death match against the Almighty. Most people seem willing to accept Darwinism as long as they don't have to believe in nothing but Darwinism. Thus, the strident tub-thumping for absolute atheism by evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins, whom the new issue of Discover Magazine rightly criticizes as "Darwin's Rottweiler," is self-defeating.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

The Left Doesn’t Like Darwin Either https://archive.is/20130630132900/www.vdare.com/sailer/050807_darwin.htm, VDARE, August 7, 2005

People, Support

“When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Introductory Epistle
On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584)

Suffering, Universe, Change

“Well, if you take a roll of film and instead of making pictures on it, you process it by pickling it in vinegar and putting it in a jar and presenting it for people to look at that way, projected through the lens of the fluid around it, this is so distorted and such a monstrous disfigurement of the normal way in which you are 'supposed to use' film, that it is a kind of pathology; it’s a sickness in the sense of a virus being inserted in the system. I think wellness and change are measured by comparison to potential for extremes of illness or death. I was trying to kill film. I wanted to let it lay over and die.”

Tony Conrad (1940–2016) American filmmaker, violinist and composer

Tony Conrad cited in: Jean-Michel Maulpoix (2005) A Matter of Blue Vol 92-94. p. 35.

People, Way, Thinking, Sense

“I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water supply - I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Jace to Imogen, pg. 79
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Age, Education, Water, Evil

“In Muslim majority states in northern Nigeria, speaking out against Islam is blasphemy and it is punishable by death or imprisonment. Criticizing Islam is dangerous not just because the state could prosecute, execute or jail the critic, but one could be killed by Islamic mobs. In fact the chances are that one is more likely to die in the hands of the later than the former.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

An Interview with Dr. Leo Igwe — Founder, Nigerian Humanist Movement (2017)

Chance

“For how long is it a duty to study the Law? To the day of death.”

Maimónides book Mishneh Torah

Treatise 3: “The Study of the Torah,” Chapter 1, Section 9, H. Russell, trans. (1983), p. 52
Mishneh Torah (c. 1180)

Law, Study

“The votaries of Pythagoras of Samos have this story to tell of him, that he was not an Ionian at all, but that, once on a time in Troy, he had been Euphorbus, and that he had come to life after death, but had died as the songs of Homer relate. And they say that he declined to wear apparel made from dead animal products and, to guard his purity, abstained from all flesh diet, and from the offering of animals in sacrifice. For that he would not stain the altars with blood; nay, rather the honey-cake and frankincense and the hymn of praise, these they say were the offerings made to the Gods by this man, who realized that they welcome such tribute more than they do the hecatombs note and the knife laid upon the sacrificial basket.”

Philostratus book Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Book 1, § 1.
Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Life, God, Time, Animals

“When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes — disease and death and the rotting of flesh.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Down the River", p. 147
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Women, Disease, Tree

“Ambition is the death of thought.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

Ehrgeiz ist der Tod des Denkens.
J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 41
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

“When he died, he held fourteen baseball records, a little man with a bashful smile, a silken swing, baseball's legendary nice guy. His death was the worst that could have happened to baseball, but his playing career had been the best.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

On Mel Ott, from "Nice Guy," in Greatest Giants of Them All (1967), p. 232; reprinted in Mel Ott: The Little Giant of Baseball https://books.google.com/books?id=5JlCbMNiWr0C&pg=PA192&dq=%22Arnold+Hano+wrote+feelingly%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMI4Yfx7arUxwIViHA-Ch3J4wOi#v=onepage&q=%22Arnold%20Hano%20wrote%20feelingly%22&f=false (1999) by Fred Stein, p. 192 Sports-related

Smile, Guy

“I think we've turned into a society of craven cowards. I hope that doesn't offend. Actually, I hope it does offend … because, you see, I can still remember the shock of the Rushdie Affair 25 years ago. The very idea that anybody could be killed for writing a book was surreal and horrific. Now we take it for granted that if you say the wrong thing about the religion of peace you'll get death threats and you might actually be killed, so you keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. All for the sake of tolerance and diversity, of course.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"A society of cowards" (12 March 2014) https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Z38qqSZZEc · transcript http://dotsub.com/view/597bf8e5-fc95-48fc-b3c7-00ce75f30205/viewTranscript/eng 2014

Books, Peace, Religion, Hope

“Love and death are gritty subjects. Their appropriate handling by poets does not require myrtle petals and violets.”

Lindsey Davis book Last Act in Palmyra

Last Act in Palmyra

Love

“The life we have at this present is the gift of God, "in whom we live, move, and are:" and therefore is he called Jehovah. For the which life as we should be thankful, so we may not in any wise use it after our own fantasy, but to the end for the which it is given and lent us; that is, to the setting forth of God's praise and glory, by repentance, conversion, and obedience to his good will and holy laws: whereunto his long-suffering doth, as it were, even draw us, if our hearts by impenitency were not hardened. And there fore our life in the scripture is called a "walking:" for that as the body daily draweth more and more near his end, that is the earth, even so our soul draweth daily more and more near the death, that is salvation or damnation, heaven or hell.”

John Bradford (1510–1555) English Protestant Reformer and martyr

To the Christian Reader, John Bradford Wisheth the True Knowledge and Peace of Jesus Christ, Our Alone and Omnisufficient Saviour. http://www.godrules.net/library/bradford/07bradford5.htm Sermon on Repentence

Life, God, Law, Soul

“For the future I cease, Death approaches with little delay,
Since the dragons of Laune and Lane and Lee are destroyed;
I’ll follow the heroes far from the light of day,
The princes my ancestors followed before Christ died.”

Egan O'Rahilly (1670–1726) Irish poet

Closing lines of his last known poem (c.1729)
Translated from the Irish by Owen Dudley Edwards, as quoted in Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 626

Light, Future, Christ

“Blood: A red substance believed to be capable of supporting life but which in a theatrical drama invariably indicates death.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

Life, Support

“Taken as a whole, the Cross Correspondences and the Willet scripts are among the most convincing evidence that at present exists for life after death. For anyone who is prepared to devote weeks to studying them, they prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Myers, Gurney, and Sidgwick went on communicating after death.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: After Life (1999), p. 136

Life, Communication, Study

“These cats drink champagne and toast to death and pain,
Like slaves on a ship talking about who's got the flyest chain”

Talib Kweli (1975) American rapper

Africa Dream (track 8)
Albums, Reflection Eternal (2000)

Pain, Cats, Drink

“Ill as well, and I have not been brave. Then face to face with the suffering of these attacks I feel very frightened too.... All the same I know well that healing comes - if one is brave - from within through profound resignation to suffering and death, through the surrender of your own will and of your self-love. But that is no use to me, I love to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life - artificial - if you like.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, 10 Sept. 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 605), p. 26 1880s, 1889

Love, Life, People, Feeling

“It seems to me that any cult has to have the following characteristics: One, a dictatorial leader, often called charismatic, who has total and unlimited control over his group. Two, followers who have abdicated the right to say no, the right to pass judgment, the right to protest, who have sold their souls for the security of slavery. Three, possibly the most dangerous doctrine known to our civilization, that the end justifies the means; therefore, any thing from the Moonies' heavenly deception to the violence of Synanon to the theft of government documents by Scientology, to the brutality of the Children of God, all the way to the murder-suicide of Jonestown, all is permitted because the ends justify the means and there is no one there to tell them no. Four, unlimited funds. The Unification Church with its some $50 million brought in each year by its mobile fund raising teams is duplicated by the Hare Krishnas dressing as Santa Claus or the Children of God sending out their women as fishers of men. Five, the instilling of fear, hatred, and suspicion of everyone outside the camp, of the entire outside world in order to keep the victims in line. You put them all together gentlemen -- You have a prescription for violence, for death, for destruction. It is a formula that fits the Nazi Youth Movement as accurately as it describes the Unification Church. Or the People's Temple.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

Ibid., February 5, 1979.

Women, Men, God, Children

“IF YOU LOOK at life's totality you will notice that every living thing exists for something else. The failure to give and receive is followed first by unconsciousness and then death.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Life, Failure

“The ethical regime [of the Jews] was quite definitely Ptolemaic, revolving around the small group of Jews, not the larger Gentile group—and, accordingly, they learned to remain unimpressed by Gentile temporal power. Being unimpressed did not mean being unafraid—material power might beat or starve one to death; it did mean refusing to surrender moral hegemony to the majority merely because it had power.”

David Riesman (1909–2002) American Sociologist

“A Philosophy for ‘Minority’ Living,” p. 56
Individualism Reconsidered (1954)

Learning

“When age hath made me what I am not now,
And every wrinkle tells me where the plow
Of time hath furrowed; when an ice shall flow
Through every vein, and all my head wear snow;
When death displays his coldness in my cheek,
And I myself in my own picture seek,
Not finding what I am, but what I was,
In doubt which to believe, this, or my glass;
Yet though I alter, this remains the same
As it was drawn, retains the primitive frame
And first complexion; here will still be seen
Blood on the cheek and down upon the chin:
Here the smooth brow will stay, the lively eye,
The ruddy lip, and hair of youthful dye.
Behold what frailty we in man may see,
Whose shadow is less given to change than he.”

Thomas Randolph (poet) (1605–1635) English poet and dramatist

"Upon his Picture"
Poems (pub. 1638)

Youth, Age, Change, Time

“I long to live in a manifold of duty and individuals, to grasp things at their source, not taking them for granted as coming from an unknown and unchangeable origin. I long to experience things in depth and nearness, because through depth and nearness I realize the centre of reality. The whole of history shows me that this is possible. Formerly it would have been said that it was not possible, that we had to await death. Today I will die at every moment to rise again with God, at the centre of reality.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

God, History, Reality

“My mother, as much as I can remember from my early boyhood, and from what I heard of her after her death, was of a most lively temper, and possessed of a good and noble heart, but a little inclined to sensibility; her greatest pleasure was to see everyone happy about her. She loved me dearly and spoilt me. I adored her. Alas, I lost her when only a little boy, and never shall I efface from my memory the day of her death and funeral.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Love, Happiness, Pleasure, Boy

“A museum that really wants to promote modern art might give the artist a guaranty, on certain conditions, so that he can get on with his life and his creations. Or do you believe that the museum is more interested in the artist's death, in order to see the price of his paintings go up?”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), p. 45 : in a letter (11 November 1940) to Käthe Steinitz, sent from the internment camp on Isle of Man, England.

Life, Art, Painting

“Every big wave rider can tell you of his narrow escapes from death.”

Bob Pike (surfer) (1940–1999) Australian surfer

“With Your Whole Heart Jumping”

“The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire; it takes the most purely rational concept of which mankind is capable, mathematical order, and makes it a delight to the senses; and it takes the vague fears of the unknown and sweetens them by showing that the gods are like men and may be worshiped for their life-giving beauty rather than their death-dealing powers.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. I: The Naked and the Nude

Life, Men, God, Fear

“To complete a work is just like being present at the death of someone you love.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

On his opera Pelléas et Mélisande
The Life of the Creative Spirit

Love

“I do not want to suffer, I do not have a christian concept of suffering. They tell us that suffering elevates the spirit; no suffering is something that hurts and that's all, it elevates nothing. And therefore I fear suffering. Because with regards to death, I, who in everything believe to be moderate, am absolutely radical. If we have a right to life, we have also a right to death. It rests on us, and it must be regognized the right to choose the when and the how of our own death.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

cited in la Repubblica, 25 April 2002.
2000s - 2010s

Life, Fear, Suffering, Hurt

“No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision—men who believed falsities as well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death.”

George Eliot book Romola

Volume II, Chapter XVI
Romola (1863)

Life, Men, Truth, Angels

“In Ted's world, we want the death penalty to be imposed at the scene of the crime.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

1994 interview in Westword http://www.westword.com/1994-07-27/music/ted-s-world/full/

World, Penalty

“He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VIII, 58
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

Life, Fear, Feeling, Reality

“Every time I've done something in the community, each of the people that I've met, they're an inspiration to me. Their spirits are so high. What I'm going through on the field is nothing compared to what they're going through. Their issue is a matter of life and death. Just being able to put one moment of happiness in their life, that's something that I really cherish doing.”

Javon Ringer (1987) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back

Quoted here http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/092108acj.html

Life, Happiness, People, Communication

“I have, perhaps, too professional a point of view where deaths are concerned. They are divided, in my mind, into two classes — deaths which are my affair and deaths which are not my affair — and though the latter class is infinitely more numerous — nevertheless whenever I come in contact with death I am like the dog who lifts his head and sniffs the scent.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds (1935)

Dogs

“I am too old for adventure," the Judge said, putting his clippers away, "but I hope I am not too old to do what I feel is right. There is an old woman out there someplace who has probably gone to a miserable death because she felt it was right. Prompted by religious mania, I have no doubt. But people who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand (1978), p. 810

People, Hope, Feeling, Madness

“I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Aceldama : A Place To Bury Strangers In (1898) Preface.

God, Soul

“Death itself seems not to make a great difference. Certainly man’s eternal destiny is not determined by the act—often the accident—of dying. Spiritually, and apparently mentally, he goes on where he left off...”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.266 [ellipsis added]

“Accordingly, death is a harbor of peace for the just, but is believed a shipwreck for the wicked.”

Ambrose book De bono mortis

De bono mortis, 8, 31.

Peace

“Before him, numberless lovers smiled and talked.
And death was observed with sudden cries,
And birth with laughter and pain.
And the trees grew taller and blacker against the skies
And night came down again.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Pain, Smile, Lovers, Birth

“There's no redder rag for our modern, progressive Catholics than a certain religious approach to sex and Eros ranging from suspicion to open condemnation and branded accordingly as Manichean, neo-Platonic, Puritan, etc. Quite unacceptable. And yet in these quite obviously heretical speculations there's a barb which, even at first encounter, penetrated to the depths of my mind as the startling confirmation of something always known, and this ferment keeps on working - all the time…the idea which one finds in so many apocryphal trends of thought, i. e. that there's definitely something wrong with sex in its present form, that is, during this terrestrial aeon - something that is not sex in itself, as a whole, but some trait or quality.. Something which does not belong to original human nature, but which owes its actual existence to The Fall; in the same sense unnatural as death is unnatural and yet taken for granted, an inevitable, undeniable factor - in this fallen world.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights p15-16 Diaries 1951.

World, Sex, Idea, Nature

“War is not horrible all the time, as pacifists seem to believe. There are compensations for everything, and there is compensation in comradeship, intimacy, freedom from economic anxiety, the knowledge that once one's mind is adjusted to the worst that can happen – and that is a pretty bad and bloody wound or swift and sudden death – one settled down to existence as an Infantryman. Man is an adaptable animal – I acknowledge that myself. I adapted myself more easily to the environment of the trenches with its lice, filth, heat, stench, flies, dysentery, danger – I adapted myself to these more successfully, I repeat, than I have been able to adapt myself to this life as a shopkeeper.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 239

Life, War, Knowledge, Freedom

“The Sultan advanced to the fortifications of Kanauj, which consisted of seven distinct forts, washed by the Ganges which flowed under them like the ocean. In Kanauj there were nearly ten thousand temples, which the idolaters falsely and absurdly represented to have been founded by their ancestors two or three hundred thousand years ago. They worshipped and offered their vows and supplications to them in consequence of their great antiquity. Many of the inhabitants of the place fled and were scattered abroad like so many wretched widows and orphans, from the fear which oppressed them, in consequence of witnessing the fate of their deaf and dumb idols. Many of them thus effected their escape, and those who did not fly were put to death. The Sultan took all seven forts in one day, and gave his soldiers leave to plunder them and take prisoners.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the conquest of Kanauj (Uttar Pradesh). Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 44-46 Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Fate, Fear, Falseness, Flying

“In the dark ages before the invention of the electronic vacuum tube there were many legends of living statues and magic pictures. One of the commonest devices of sorcerers and witches was the model of an enemy which somehow embodied his soul, so that injury to the model would be reflected by suffering or death of the original… Idolatry, witchcraft and other superstitions are so deeply rooted and widespread that it is possible that even the most detached scientific activity may be psychologically equivalent to them; such activity may help to satisfy the desire for power, to assuage the fear of the unknown or to compensate for the flatness of everyday existence.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 42.

Age, Fear, Soul, Suffering

“In a war the normal codes of civilized behavior are suspended. It would be unthinkable in so-called normal life to go into someone's home where a family is grieving over the death of a loved one and spend long moments photographing them. It simply wouldn't be done. Those picture could not have been made unless I was accepted by the people I'm photographing. It's simply impossible to photograph moments such as those…without the complicity of the people I'm photographing…without the fact that the welcomed me, that they accepted me, that they wanted me to be there. They understand that a stranger who's come there with a camera to show the rest of the world what is happening to them…gives them a voice in the outside world that they otherwise wouldn't have. I try my best to approach people with respect. I want them to see that I have respect for them and the situation they're in. I want to be very open in my approach…feel open in my own heart towards them. I want them to be aware of that. People do sense it…with very few words…sometimes with no words at all.”

James Nachtwey (1948) American photographer

War Photographer, documentary, 2001

Love, Life, War, People

“The death toll is not nearly high enough… too many [jihadists] have escaped.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Referring to the Fallujah offensive on November 2004 Speech at Kenyon College, Ohio http://collegian.kenyon.edu/article.php?id=2400, (2004-11-15): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq 2000s, 2004

“There is an inborn tendency to be Free. Every being is struggling to be Free. No one wants bondage. No one wants misery. The very idea of disease and death is appalling to all. Still, a being thinks that it will be happy by sense-pleasures. Can these sense-pleasures make one happy? No. Any amount of sense-pleasures will not make one really happy. Sense-pleasures will bring momentary satisfaction and then make one unhappy. Then comes the question: Where does this real happiness lie? It lies in knowing the True Nature. To know your True Nature, you have to control your mind. In order to control your mind, you have to live a true life. You must be a man of good character. That is why all the Scriptures ask their followers to be good, kind, gentle, noble, charitable, truthful, etc. In fact, moral and ethical codes of good conduct are the starting points of all Religions. They start with moral and ethical codes and end with God-realization or Self-realization.”

Swami Narayanananda (1902–1988) Indian guru

The Essence of Life (1980), also in Minor Works II (2001), p. 131f

Life, God, Happiness, Pleasure

“Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

IX, 3
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IX

Nature, Thinking

“The following pages were written in the Concentration Camp in Dachau, in the midst of all kinds of cruelties. They were furtively scrawled in a hospital barrack where I stayed during my illness, in a time when Death grasped day by day after us, when we lost twelve thousand within four and a half months … “You asked me why I do not eat meat and you are wondering at the reasons of my behavior … I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the sufferings and by the death of other creatures. I refuse to do so, because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pains of others by recalling my own sufferings … I am not preaching … I am writing this letter to you, to an already awakened individual who rationally controls his impulses, who feels responsible, internally and externally, for his acts, who knows that our supreme court is sitting in our conscience … I have not the intention to point out with my finger … I think it is much more my duty to stir up my own conscience … That is the point: I want to grow up into a better world where a higher law grants more happiness, in a new world where God's commandment reigns: You shall love each other.””

Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz (1906–1991) German journalist, poet and prisoner in Dachau concentration camp

“Animals, My Brethren,” in The Dachau Diaries; as quoted in John Robbins, Diet for a New America, H J Kramer, 2011, chapter 5 https://books.google.it/books?id=h-9ARz2YAlgC&pg=PT83.

Love, God, Pain, Happiness

“The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.”

James Shirley The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses

sc. iii.
The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses

Fate

“It was like a quilt, a handmade, patterned quilt laid out for this man to take his final steps across and then lie down and die on: a quilted deathbed. It struck me that the world, or chance, or maybe death itself if you can speak of such a thing, must have loved this man in some way to prepare for him such a richly textured fabric to gather and wrap him up in.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 12.

Love, Lie, World, Way

“Life continued, the wheel turned, the earth moved, and even death—that delightful biological necessity—was an aspect of life.”

Avram Davidson book Masters of the Maze

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 4 (p. 57)

Life

“Balls, the lot of it. It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.”

John le Carré book Smiley's People

Smiley's People (1979)

Suffering

“52. To separate the body from the soul is the privilege of only of the One who has joined them together. But to separate the soul from the body lies as well in the power of the man who pursues virtue. For our Fathers gave to the meditation of death and to the flight from the body a spiritual name: anachoresis”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

withdrawal
The Praktikos

Soul

“In the very first year of his reign, he [Jahangir] tortured Guru Arjun Dev to death. His contempt for Hindus comes out clearly in his Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri: “A Hindu named Arjun lived in Govindwal on the bank of river Beas in the garb of a saint and in ostentation. From all sides cowboys and idiots became his fast followers. The business had flourished for three or four generations. For a long time it had been in my mind to put a stop to this dukan-e-batil (mart of falsehood) or to bring him into the fold of Islam.” According to other accounts, he asked the Guru to include some surahs of the Quran in the adi Grantha, which the Guru refused to do. In the eighth year of his reign, he destroyed the temple of Bhagwat at Ajmer. He persecuted the Jains in Gujarat, and ordered that Jain monks should not be seen in his kingdom on pain of death. Finally, he sent Murtaza Khan to Kangra for reducing that city of temples. The siege lasted for 20 months at the end of which he himself went to Kangra for slaughtering cows in that sacred place of Hindus, and building a mosque where none had existed before.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Goel, S. R. (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India.

Pain, Business, Time

“What’s inside the box?
Doubt is there.
What’s another name for doubt?
Death is another name for doubt. Death is what inflects the immortal certainty of the universe’s process with uncertainty.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 1, “In the Box” (p. 90).
Jack Glass (2012)

Universe, Box

“The death rate is the same for us as for anybody … one person, one death, sooner or later.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Tunnel in the Sky

Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Captain Helen Walker, Ch. 2

Personality

“Reputation hidden in death.”
Titulique in morte latentes.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book X, Line 712

“To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Time to Stand Up"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

People, World

“I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm… in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs—at all costs—our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost—because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”

Daniel Berrigan (1921–2016) American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet

No Bars to Manhood (1971), p. 49.

Love, Life, Men, War

“Indeed I am ill-starred, for even if he dies I have no hope of happiness; with Jason dead, I should taste real misery. Away with modesty, farewell to my good name! Saved from all harm by me, let him go where he pleases, and let me die. On the very day of his success I could hang myself from a rafter or take a deadly poison. Yet even so my death would never save me from their wicked tongues. My fate would be the talk of every city in the world; and here the Colchian women would bandy my name about and drag it in mud – the girl who fancied a foreigner enough to die for him, disgraced her parents and her home, went off her head for love. What infamy would not be mine? Ah, how I grieve now for the folly of my passion! Better to die here in my room this very night, passing from life unnoticed, unreproached, than to carry through this horrible, this despicable scheme.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 783–801

Love, Life, Women, Fate

“I have always — at least, ever since I can remember — had a kind of longing for death.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Psyche
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956)

“Jesus let the infidels and Jews aside, he appeared only to the chosen apostles, he was concerned only with the faithful believers. To these he taught, rebuked, and sanctified, in order to perfect them to perfect the saints. This not only made sin and death be taken away from us, but by the resurrection of the Son of God grace was also obtained.”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Excerpt from a sermon on Easter delivered by Mendel, found in Folia Mendeliana (1966), Volume 6, Moravian Museum in Brünn.
Sermon on Easter
Original: Jesus ließ die Ungläubigen und Juden beiseite, er erschien nur den auserwählten Aposteln, er befaßte sich nur mit den treuen Gläubigen. Diese belehrte er, tadelte er und heiligte er, um sie zu vervollkommnen zu vollendeten Heiligen. i Nicht bloss Sünde und Tod ist von uns genommen, sondern durch die Auferstehung des Gottessohnes ist auch seine Gnade gewonnen.

God, Faith, Appearance, Perfection

“But no matter what safety steps we take or what security precautions we adopt, our risk of death is not approximately – but exactly – 100 percent. There is no margin of error on the statistic.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 40

Error

“Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night III, Line 104.

Love

“Death hangs over thee: whilst yet thou livest, whilst thou mayest, be good.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

IV, 14 (trans. Meric Casaubon)
τὸ χρεὼν ἐπήρτηται· ἕως ζῇς, ἕως ἔξεστιν, ἀγαθὸς γενοῦ.
IV, 17 (trans.George Long)
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV
Variant: Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

“When we soar up above ourselves, And become, in our upward striving towards God, So simple, that the naked Love in the Heights can lay hold on us, There where Love cherishes Love, above all activity and all virtue (That is to say, in our Origin, wherefrom we are spiritually born)— Then we cease, and we and all that is our own die into God. And in this death we become hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves a new life, And that is Eternal Life. And of these Sons, St. Paul says: ‘Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ In our approach to God we must bear with us ourselves and all that we do, As a perpetual sacrifice to God; And in the Presence of God we must leave ourselves and all our works, And, dying in love, soar up above all created things into the Superessential Kingdom of God.
And of this the Spirit of God speaks in the Book of Hidden Things, saying: ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

From Evelyn Underhill Ruysbroeck (1915), p171
The Sparkling Stone (c. 1340)

Love, Life, God, Books

“He will not do death the honor of taking it into account.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

Er erweist dem Tod nicht die Ehre.
J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 150
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

“… what is built today has as Saint Paul declared, all the earmarks of a homosexual culture. That is, a culture at war with God and God’s reality, and is therefore under the judgment of God, who, knowing the judgement of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Homosexuality (n. d.)

God, War, Pleasure, Reality

“For the average North Korean over the last two decades, the times of Kim Il Sung have often been seen as a lost era of order and stability, in which everyone could be sure that twice a month they would receive food rations sufficient for survival, and essentially free of charge. This was also a time when corruption was kept under control and was largely invisible, material inequality was also almost unnoticeable. Objectively speaking, it was Kim Il Sung’s policies that made the disaster of the 1990s unavoidable. But this had little impact on public perception, and he continues to be held in high esteem by many. Remarkably, such sentiments toward the late Generalissimo are even expressed by refugees – not usually known for their sympathies for the North Korean system and its embodiment, the Kim family. Thus, it is that Kim Il Sung remains venerated, and due to the luck of dying in time, has a remarkably good reputation in death. The opposite is very much the case with his unfortunate son, Kim Jong Il, who inherited power in 1994 and reigned for 17 turbulent years, till 2011.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

Kim Jong Un's Popularity, Explained (September 2015)

Family, Food, Time

“You have no lease of your lives, and death is not bound to give you warning before it gives you that deadly blow that will send you to everlasting misery or everlasting felicity.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

The Hypocrite Detected, Anatomized

“Love and grief our hearts dividing,
With our tears His feet we bathe;
Constant still, in faith abiding,
Life deriving from His death.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 371

Love, Life, Faith, Tear

“Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. Captain, that is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Speaking to Captain John D. Imboden (24 July 1861), as quoted in Stonewall Jackson As Military Commander (2000) by John Selby, p. 25; sometimes quoted as "My religious beliefs teach me..."

Men, God, Way, Feeling

“I know what they think they seek. But I know it to be a lie. Listen to me, Arren. You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose…. That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the light of sunrise and sunset, to buy safety for yourself—safety forever? That is what they seek to do on Wathort and Lorbanery and elsewhere. That is the message that those who know how to hear have heard: By denying life you may deny death and live forever!—And this message I do not hear, Arren, for I will not hear it. I will not take the counsel of despair.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 8, "The Children of the Open Sea" (Ged)

Life, Lie, Thinking, Light

“The difference between a great soul and an ordinary man is this: the latter weeps while leaving this body, whereas the former laughs. Death seems to him a mere play.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 253]

Soul

“How dismal the necessity of birth! how miserable the necessity of living! how hard the necessity of death!”
O neccessitas abiecta nascendi, vivendi misera dura moriendi.

Sidonius Apollinaris (430–489) Gaulish poet, aristocrat and bishop

Lib. 8, Ep. 11, sect. 4; vol. 2, p. 463.
Epistularum

Birth

“A Bedouin came and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Judge between us according to Allah's Laws." His opponent got up and said, "He is right. Judge between us according to Allah's Laws." The Bedouin said, "My son was a laborer working for this man, and he committed illegal sexual intercourse with his wife. The people told me that my son should be stoned to death; so, in lieu of that, I paid a ransom of one hundred sheep and a slave girl to save my son. Then I asked the learned scholars who said, "Your son has to be lashed one-hundred lashes and has to be exiled for one year." The Prophet said, "No doubt I will judge between you according to Allah's Laws. The slave-girl and the sheep are to go back to you, and your son will get a hundred lashes and one year exile."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

He then addressed somebody, "O Unais! go to the wife of this (man) and stone her to death" So, Unais went and stoned her to death.
Narrated Abu Huraira and Zaid bin Khalid Al-Juhani [3, 49, 860]
Sunni Hadith

People, Law, Girl, Learning