Quotes about death
page 29

“I might be better able to help parents of dying children, but for quite a while I felt less able, too emotionally involved. And from that time on, I could rarely discuss the death of a child without tears welling up into my eyes.”

C. Everett Koop (1916–2013) American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator

Koop: The Memoirs of America's Family Doctor (1993), p. 126.

Children, Parent, Tear, Time

“If you only knew…. how much I want to work… I have some new ideas that I would like to try out. [a few days before Monrandi's death in 1964]”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

a remark to Roberto Longhi, in 1964; as quoted in 'Morandi 1894 – 1964', published by Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco - 2008; p. 338
1945 - 1964

Idea

“The Prosecution holds me responsible for the concentration camps, for the destruction of Jewish life, for Einsatzgruppen and other things. All of this is neither in accord with the evidence nor with the truth. The accusers as well as the accused are exposed to the dangers of a summary proceeding. It is correct that I had to take over the Reich Security Main Office. There was no guilt in that in itself. Such offices exist in governments of other nations too. However, the task and activity assigned to me in 1943 consisted almost exclusively in the reorganization of the German political and military intelligence service, though not as Heydrich's successor. Almost a year after his death I had to accept this post under orders and as an officer at a time when suspicion fell on Admiral Canaris of having collaborated with the enemy for years. In a short time I ascertained the treason of Canaris and his accomplices to the most frightful extent.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

8/31/46. Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Nuremberg, Germany - 1947

Life, Truth, Intelligence, Time

“In fact, there may be a day in the near future when you find yourself in a conversation about this book, and someone will ask you what the story is really about, beyond the rudimentary narrative of a cross-country death trip based on a magazine article. And it's very likely you will say, "well, the larger thesis is somewhat underdeveloped, but there is this point early in the story where he takes a woman to Ithaca for no real reason, and it initially seems innocuous, but - as you keep reading - you sort of see how this behaviour is a self-perpetuating problem that keeps reappearing over and over again." In all probability, you will also complain about the author's reliance on self-indulgent, postmodern self-awareness, which will prompt the person you're conversing with to criticize the influence of Dave Eggers on the memoir-writing genre. Then your cell phone will ring, and you will agree to meet someone for brunch.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005)

Books, Problem, Reading, Future

“How great is your sin in rejecting Jesus Christ! You slight the glorious Person for whose coming God made such great preparation in such a series of wonderful providences from the beginning of the world, bringing to pass a thing before unknown, the union of the Divine nature with the human in one person. You have been guilty of slighting that great Saviour, who, after such preparation, actually accomplished the purchase of redemption, and who, after He had spent three or four and thirty years in poverty, labor, and contempt, in purchasing redemption, at last finished the purchase by closing His life under such extreme sufferings; and so by His death, and continuing for a time under the power of death, completed the whole. This is the Saviour you reject and despise. You make light of all the glory of His person, and of all the love of God the Father in sending Him into the world, and all His wonderful love appearing in the whole of His work.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 492.

Love, Life, God, World

“That was indeed to live—
At one bold swoop to wrest
From darkling death the best
That Death to Life can give!”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

Shaw. Memorial Ode; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life

“The stark truth, of course, is that they have not abolished the death penalty at all. They have merely transferred it from the guilty to the innocent - and incidentally ensured that many more violent deaths occur.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

Crime and Punishment. p. 146.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Truth, Penalty

“He said that both views were one view and that while men may meet with death in strange and obscure places which they might well have avoided it was more correct to say that no matter how hidden or crooked the path to their destruction yet they would seek it out. He smiled. He spoke as one who seemed to understand that death was the condition of existence and life but an emanation thereof.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

The Crossing (1994)

Life, Men, Smile, Understanding

“The danger is not only that politicians and private institutions with axes to grind will find tame or corruptible social scientists to support their positions. The greater danger which recent experiences both here and abroad, e. g., Lysenkoism in Russia, have revealed is that partisans primarily political in interest and intention either accidentally or deliberately infiltrate the ranks of science. In the case of the Lysenko episode, and comparable events in Nazi Germany, the disturbing realization to scientists was that the exile or death of those ejected from their academic positions followed what seemed initially to be severe technical criticism by fellow scientists, but was actually politically staged.”

Raymond Cattell (1905–1998) British-American psychologist

Cattell (1972). A New Morality from Science: Beyondism, p. 38.

Support, Science

“The Industrial Revolution was well under way and people were looking for some way to justify the cruelty that accompanied this revolution. (Child labor, sweat houses, etc. ) Darwin’s book was just what the world needed to justify the cruel ruthless tactics of the industrial revolution. Darwin had a theology degree. He became a deist, and later, very proudly an atheist. There are many stories of him repenting on his death bed, but there still is much confusion on the issue.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

People, Books, World, Way

“Right now, at this very moment, on American highways, there are no less than 5,000 concentration camp trucks. Trucks that we have constructed. Inside these trucks, there are living, terrified innocent beings. Cows and pigs and chickens. These trucks are being driven to concentration camp's slaughterhouses that we carefully constructed all across America. When the trucks arrive, the animals are so frightened that they won't even get off the truck. They're not stupid, they know what's next. So people go on the trucks with electric prods and force them to walk down the chutes to their own deaths. Or if the animals are small enough to man handle, like chickens, we'll just grab them off the trucks and toss them inside. Inside, these innocent, living beings are hanged upside down, fully conscious. In other words, they go in alive, against their will, and come out chopped up, into hundreds of pieces.”

Gary Yourofsky (1970) animal rights activist

Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Summer 2010)

People, Stupidity, Animals

“Our people say "Death to America," and this is like saying "I seek God's refuge from the accursed Satan," which is recited before any chapter of the Koran, even before "In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful." Why is this? So the believer will never forget, even for a moment, the presence of Satan. So he will never forget, even for a moment, that Satan is ready to attack him and to destroy his spiritual shield and is faith… The saying "Death to America" is for this purpose.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

March 14, 2005 speech http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/606.htm <br class="br">2005

God, People, Faith, Forgetting

“Wallace Hartley: “I’ve always felt that, when men are called to face death suddenly, music is are more effective in cheering them on than all the firearms in creation.””

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 194

Men, Music

“Who rules you, nomads? Do you answer to someone's will besides your own? Are you free to choose your own path, or will the Volturi decide how you will live?
"I came to witness. I stay to fight. The Volturi care nothing for the death of a child. They seek the death of our free will.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Garrett, p. 719
Twilight series, Breaking Dawn (2008)

Fight

“Somewhere In Time is the story of a love which transcends time, What Dreams May Come is the story of a love which transcends death. … I feel that they represent the best writing I have done in the novel form.”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

Introduction to an Omnibus edition of his work, as quoted in Somewhere in Time (1998), p. 318 - 319

Love, Dreams, Feeling, Time

“I contemplate the sort of friend, the sort of man I am now without. He completed his sixty-seventh year, a reasonable age for the sturdiest of us; I acknowledge that. He escaped from an interminable illness; I acknowledge that. He died with his dear ones surviving him, and at a time of prosperity for the state, which was dearer to him than all else; that too I acknowledge. Yet I lament his death as though he were young and in glowing health. I lament it—you can consider me a weakling in this—on my own account, for I have lost the witness, guardian and teacher of my life.”

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 12, 11–13; on the death of his friend Cornelius Rufus.
Letters, Book I

Life, Health, Age, Teachers

“Realism was the death of art.”

Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) painter from the United States

Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, Boston (1899)

Art

“Gabriel scowled through his glasses. Why were ghosts such imbeciles? Who could be blamed for striving, at any cost, to avoid forever the decay-of-self that death was?”

Tim Powers (1952) American writer

Part 1, Chapter 4 (p. 71)
Hide Me Among the Graves (2012)

“America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world and we stand together to win the war against terrorism. Tonight I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, A Great People Has Been Moved to Defend a Great Nation (September 2001)

War, Children, Age, World

“"You hear your fate," said the Sphere to me, while the Council was passing for the third time the formal resolution. "Death or imprisonment awaits the Apostle of the Gospel of Three Dimensions." "Not so," replied I, "the matter is now so clear to me, the nature of real space so palpable, that methinks I could make a child understand it. Permit me but to descend at this moment and enlighten them." "Not yet," said my Guide, "the time will come for that. Meantime I must perform my mission. Stay thou there in thy place." Saying these words, he leaped with great dexterity into the sea (if I may so call it) of Flatland, right in the midst of the ring of Counsellors. "I come," cried he, "to proclaim that there is a land of Three Dimensions."”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 18. How I came to Spaceland, and What I Saw There

Fate, Understanding, Nature, Time

“Death only closes a Man's Reputation, and determines it as good or bad.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 349 (10 April 1712)
Famously seen on the brothel wall in the film Easy Rider.
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“I'm glad to say I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"Technical Details" (p. 70)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

“Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike — no bail, no demurrer.”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) Irish-British politician, playwright and writer

St. Patrick's Day (1775), Act II, sc. iv.

“I have very strongly of late the wish that others may be as sensitive as myself and the fear that they will not be. Colleague Sir Frank Adcock stumped by the sunset-portent unheeding. And I can't arge that I gain, or that others would gain, anything for humanity by observing and recording what went on for a few moments in the sky on Boar Race evening. I sometimes pretend to myself that I am public-spirited. I am not. I am an hedonist who wants pleasant sensations. On the other hand I am not the usual type of hedonist, for I want sensations to be had”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

if not by myself, then by someone else. The show shouldn't end with my death, which becomes a minor boo-hoo.

p. 211 (1959)
Commonplace Book (1985)

Fear

“Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 8
(1819)

Horse

“The battle raged with great fury: victory was long doubtful, till two Indian princes, Brahman Dew and Dabishleem, with other reinforcements, joined their countrymen during the action, and inspired them with fresh courage. Mahmood at this moment perceiving his troops to waver, leaped from his horse, and, prostrating himself before God implored his assistance' At the same time he cheered his troops with such energy, that, ashamed to abandon their king, with whom they had so often fought and bled, they, with one accord, gave a loud shout and rushed forwards. In this charge the Moslems broke through the enemy's line, and laid 5,000 Hindus dead at their feet' On approaching the temple, he saw a superb edifice built of hewn stone. Its lofty roof was supported by fifty-six pillars curiously carved and set with precious stones. In the centre of the hall was Somnat, a stone idol five yards in height, two of which were sunk in the ground. The King, approaching the image, raised his mace and struck off its nose. He ordered two pieces of the idol to be broken off and sent to Ghizny, that one might be thrown at the threshold of the public mosque, and the other at the court door of his own palace. These identical fragments are to this day (now 600 years ago) to be seen at Ghizny. Two more fragments were reserved to be sent to Mecca and Medina. It is a well authenticated fact, that when Mahmood was thus employed in destroying this idol, a crowd of Brahmins petitioned his attendants and offered a quantity of gold if the King would desist from further mutilation. His officers endeavoured to persuade him to accept of the money; for they said that breaking one idol would not do away with idolatry altogether; that, therefore, it could serve no purpose to destroy the image entirely; but that such a sum of money given in charity among true believers would be a meritorious act. The King acknowledged that there might be reason in what they said, but replied, that if he should consent to such a measure, his name would be handed down to posterity as 'Mahmood the idol-seller', whereas he was desirous of being known as 'Mahmood the destroyer': he therefore directed the troops to proceed in their work'…'The Caliph of Bagdad, being informed of the expedition of the King of Ghizny, wrote him a congratulatory letter, in which he styled him 'The Guardian of the State, and of the Faith'; to his son, the Prince Ameer Musaood, he gave the title of 'The Lustre of Empire, and the Ornament of Religion'; and to his second son, the Ameer Yoosoof, the appellation of 'The Strength of the Arm of Fortune, and Establisher of Empires.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

He at the same time assured Mahmood, that to whomsoever he should bequeath the throne at his death, he himself would confirm and support the same.'
Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated into English by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, 4 Volumes, New Delhi Reprint, 1981. p. 38-49 (Alternative translation: "but the champion of Islam replied with disdain that he did not want his name to go down to posterity as Mahmud the idol-seller (but farosh) instead of Mahmud the breaker-of-idols (but shikan)." in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3)
Sack of Somnath (1025 CE)

Money, God, Faith, Religion

“All things being at God’s disposal, and the decision of salvation or death belonging to him, he orders all things by his counsel and decree in such a manner, that some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that his name may be glorified in their destruction.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

In John Allen, ed., Institutes of the Christian Religion. Ioannis Calvini Institutio Christianae religionis http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC06656346&id=ONsOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=calvin+%22devoted+from+the+womb%22&as_brr=1#PRA1-PA169,M1 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1841), p.169.

Men, God, Decision

“Even when the Earth phases out, sun the diminishes, and everything goes wherever it goes to, the experience of your Knowledge cannot diminish. It is from where even, you might say, eternity starts. It is the source of all sources. It is. It is the experience which is beyond death, beyond creation, beyond anything in this world.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Denver, Colorado, February 25, 1979
1970s

World, Knowledge, Sun

“More: I am faint when I think of the worst that they may do to me. But worse than that would be to go without you not understanding why I go.
Alice: I don't!
More: Alice, if you can tell me that you understand, I think I can make a good death, if I have to.
Alice: Your death's no "good" to me!
More: Alice, you must tell me that you understand!
Alice: I don't! I don't believe this had to happen.
More: If you say that, Alice, I don't know how I'm to face it.
Alice: It's the truth!
More: You're an honest woman.
Alice: Much good it may do me! I'll tell you what I'm afraid of: that when you're gone, I shall hate you for it.”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Act II
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

Hate, Truth, Understanding, Thinking

“We had spoken about death without being morbid about it and I had told Antonio what I thought about it which is worthless since none of us knows anything about it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 9

“[He] looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.”

Orson Scott Card Songmaster

Songmaster (1979)

Disappointment

“The Second came to my mind with contrition; Freely desiring that sickness so hard as to death, that I might in that sickness receive all my rites of Holy Church, myself thinking that I should die, and that all creatures might suppose the same that saw me: for I would have no manner of comfort of earthly life. In this sickness I desired to have all manner of pains bodily and ghostly that I should have if I should die, (with all the dreads and tempests of the fiends) except the outpassing of the soul. And this I meant for I would be purged, by the mercy of God, and afterward live more to the worship of God because of that sickness. And that for the more furthering in my death: for I desired to be soon with my God.”

Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love

Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Chapter 2

Life, God, Pain, Soul

“Bearing bravely the evils that beset us, doing cheerfully the duties that are near, trusting in God, guided by Christ, fear shall not confound us in the way, and death shall find us ready.”

Henry Giles (1809–1882) Irish minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 118.

God, Fear, Way, Evil

“The only death I fear is dying ignorant.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 4 (p. 125)

Fear

“Ah, by what Fates
Hath he been toss'd? what Battles he relates!
Were I not fix'd, did not my changeless Vow
All thoughts of second Marriage dis-allow,
Since my first Love by Death deceiv'd me…
I had perhaps with this one Crime comply'd.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Love, Fate, Marriage

“Death takes the mean man with the proud;
The fatal urn has room for all.”
Aequa lege Necessitas Sortitur insignes et imos; Omne capax movet urna nomen.

Horace book Odes

Book III, ode i, line 14 (trans. John Conington)
Odes (c. 23 BC and 13 BC)

“Death rides on my shoulder, death walks in my footsteps. I am death.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lews Therin Telamon
(15 October 1994)

“The Apostles were put to death; they were hunted from nation to nation; they wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins in the dens and caves of the earth, of whom the world was unworthy. Their followers were put to death by hundreds, by thousands, by tens of thousands; and after a while there sprang up a people that pretended to be Christians--followers of the meek and lowly Jesus, having no apostles, no inspired men, no revelation, no ministration of angels, none of the characteristics, except a few forms, of the Christian Church as it existed in the first century of the Christian era. This class of men, calling themselves Christian, uniting with the various forms of the pagan religion, adopting many of their ceremonies and institutions, became very popular, and finally some of the pagans embraced Christianity and were placed, as it were, upon the throne, and what they termed Christianity became very popular indeed.”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 14:346 (March 10, 1872).
Apostacy

Men, People, World, Religion

“Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday

Men, Money, Memory

“The single idea that resounds on every page of this book is the idea of the infinity of the human spirit, in the individual as well as in humanity. It is a view of the wonderful and terrible disproportion of that spirit to everything that would contain and diminish it, of its awakening to its own nature through its confrontation with the reality of constraint and the prospect of death, of its terror before the indifference and vastness of the nature around it, of its discovery that what it most shares with the whole of the universe is its ruination by time, of its subsequent recognition that time is the core of reality if anything is, of its enslavement to orders of society and culture that belittle it, of its need to create a world, a human world, in which it can be and become itself even if to do so it must nevertheless rebel against every dogma, every custom, and every empire, and of its power to realize this seemingly impossible and paradoxical program by identifying, in each intellectual and political situation, the next steps.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 26-7

Books, World, Idea, Nature

“There are hundreds of millions who believe the Messiah has come. If he did, then it is unfortunately the case that his heroic sacrifice and death have had no effect whatsoever on the very problem his coming might have been expected to address, for history demonstrates, beyond question, that we Christians have been just as dangerous, singly and en masse, as non-Christians.”

Steve Allen (1921–2000) American comedian, actor, musician and writer

Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality (1990)

History, Question, Problem

“It was perfectly clear to me that this order spelled the death of millions of people. I said to Eichmann, 'God grant that our enemies never have the opportunity of doing the same to the German people', in reply to which Eichmann told me not to be sentimental; it was an order of the Fuhrer's and would have to be carried out.”

Dieter Wisliceny (1911–1948) SS-Hauptsturmführer

Quoted in "Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny" - Page 241 - by Edward Crankshaw - History - 1956

God, People

“The Social Security Act 1986 was one of the most aggressive pieces of legislation in the past seven years. It has helped to destroy the foundations of the welfare state, which was envisaged to provide decency and security through birth, life and death for all people, irrespective of their ability to pay. Now we see means testing writ large throughout the welfare state.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/feb/05/social-fund-maternity-and-funeral in the House of Commons (5 February 1987). <br class="br">1980s

Life, People, Birth, Past

“People, give thanks to the gods! Your most redoubtable enemy has fallen beneath the scythe of Fate. Riquetti [Mirabeau] is no more; he dies victim of his numerous treasons, victim of his too tardy scruples, victim of the barbarous foresight of his atrocious accomplices. Adroit rogues who are to be found in all circles have sought to play upon your pity, and already duped by their false discourse, you mourn this traitor as the most zealous of your defenders; they have represented his death as a public calamity, and you bewail him as a hero, as the saviour of your country, who has sacrificed himself for you. Will you always be deaf to the voice of prudence; will you always sacrifice public affairs to your blindness?”

Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) politician and journalist during the French Revolution

L'Ami du peuple, vol. 5 (1791-04-04), pp. 2649-50

God, Fate, People, Falseness

“If those who support aggressive war had seen a fraction of what I've seen, if they'd watched children fry to death from Napalm and bleed to death from a cluster bomb, they might not utter the claptrap they do.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, This much i know http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/nov/13/pressandpublishing.observermagazine, The Observer, 13 November 2005

War, Children, Support

“Tis only Man, mischievous Man, that can make Death a Sport. Nature taught your Stomach to crave nothing but Vegetables; but your violent Fondness to change, and greater Eagerness after Novelties, have prompted you to the Destruction of Animals without Justice or Necessity, perverted your Nature and warp'd your Appetites which way soever your Pride or Luxury have call'd them.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark P, pp. 193-4
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Justice, Way, Nature, Sport

“Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief—that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

Men, World, Thinking, Time

“From that point, my universe went on crumbling; new cracks appeared all the time. I could see that the pleasant securities of childhood, all of those warm little human emotions, all of those trivial aims and purposes that we allow to rule our lives, were an illusion. We were like sheep munching grass, unaware that the butcher's lorry is already on its way. I got used to living with a deep, underlying feeling of uncertainty that no one around me seemed to share. It was rather like living on death row.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Alien Dawn (1998), pp. 12-13

Way, Feeling, Grass, Universe

“Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.”

Saki The Chronicles of Clovis

"Sredni Vashtar"
The Chronicles of Clovis (1911)

Peace, Beauty

“The crossbows twanged like harps of death.”

Harry Harrison (1925–2012) American science fiction author

Source: Deathworld (1960), p. 154

“Traditionally, every Chinese was Confucian in ethics and public life, Taoist in private life and hygiene, and Buddhist at the time of death, with a healthy dash of shamanistic folk religion thrown in along the way. As someone has put the point: Every Chinese wears a Confucian hat, Taoist robes, and Buddhist sandals. In Japan Shinto was added to the mix.”

Huston Smith book The World's Religions

The World's Religions (1991)

Life, Religion, Way, Time

“Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

2000s, The End of Faith (2004)

Christ, Cheating

“Let us be honest. Suppose a man came into this city and should meet a funeral procession, and say, “Who is dead?” and they should reply, “The son of a widow; her only support.” Suppose he should say to the procession, “Halt!” and to the undertaker, “Take out that coffin, unscrew that lid. Young man, I say unto thee, arise!” and the dead should step from the coffin and in a moment afterward hold his mother in his arms. Suppose this stranger should go to your cemetery and find some woman holding a little child in each hand, while the tears fell upon a new-made grave, and he should say to her, “Who lies buried here?” and she should reply, “My husband;” and he should cry, “I say unto thee, oh grave, give up thy dead!” and the husband should rise, and in a moment after have his lips upon his wife’s, and the little children with their arms around his neck; do you think that the people of this city would kill him? Do you think any one would wish to crucify him? Do you not rather believe that every one who had a loved one out in that cemetery would go to him, even upon their knees, and beg him to give back their dead? Do you believe that any man was ever crucified who was the master of death?”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Orthodoxy (1884)

Love, Children, People, Support

“Even to have come forth is something, since I see that being able to conquer is placed in the hands of fate. However, there was in me, whatever I was able to do, that which no future century will deny to be mine, that which a victor could have for his own: Not to have feared to die, not to have yielded to any equal in firmness of nature, and to have preferred a courageous death to a noncombatant life.”

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

On the Monad, Number, and Figure (1591)

Life, Fate, Fear, Courage

“You may think life is sweet now, but when death is a heartbeat away then life becomes unbearably desirable. And when you survive, everything you do will be enhanced and filled with greater joy: the sunlight, the breeze, a good wine, a woman's lips, a child's laughter.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 18

Life, Thinking, Laughter, Wine

“Topography is one of my chief themes in my poetry…about the country, the suburbs and the seaside…then there comes love…and increasingly, the fear of death.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

Radio Talk. BBC Third Programme (1949)

Love, Fear, Country

“If I can rejoice for a moment,
Death at an early age would still be a long life.”

Yuan Mei

"Miscellaneous Poems" III, quoted in Albert Davis (ed.), The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse (1962), p. 67

Life, Age

“At the conclusion of Hollywood disaster movies and epics, time moves backward, piecing together like a jigsaw the elements that had come apart. The Titanic resumes its journey; Russell Crowe is reunited with his murdered wife and son. It's not a happy ending; it's a convention created for the purposes of an impossible sense of uplift at the end of death and tragedy: the happy beginning. Technology makes Hades unnecessary.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Happiness, Sense, Time

“Yes, death, — the hourly possibility of it, — death is the sublimity of life.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 177.

Life

“She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her to death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they’d press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil.”

Philipp Meyer (1974) American writer

Source: The Son (2013), p. 82

People, Food, Travel, Home

“Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

A Book of Burlesques (1916)
1910s

“Even the existence of this corporeal element, low as it in reality is, because it is the source of death and all evils, is likewise good for the permanence of the Universe and the continuation of the order of things, so that one thing departs and the other succeeds.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.10

Reality, Universe, Evil

“The death of the wildebeest herd didn’t change the bloody savagery she’d witnessed in the Roman Circus, but it put life and death in much clearer perspective. Nature wasn’t any nobler or gentler than human beings. It was just as deadly and just as cruel and just as savagely “unfair” to the weak…
Maybe more so.”

Robert Lynn Asprin (1946–2008) American science fiction and fantasy author

Source: Time Scout (1995), Chapter 17 (p. 370; ellipsis in the original)

Life, Nature, Change

“Attacks by poisoning are possibly even more common in Russia than assassinations by gunfire. Most famously, Alexander Litvinenko, a secret-police whistle-blower, was killed by polonium in London, in 2006. Last week, British newspapers reported that a Russian businessman who dropped dead while jogging in a London suburb in 2012 had been killed by a rare plant poison. He had been a key witness in a money-laundering case that had originally been exposed by the Moscow accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured to death, in 2009, in a Russian jail.”

Masha Gessen (1967) Russian-American journalist and activist

"Putin's Russia: Don't Walk, Don't Eat, and Don't Drink" http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/putins-russia-dont-walk-dont-eat-and-dont-drink?intcid=mod-yml (28 May 2015), The New Yorker.

Money, Secret, Dead

“Some years ago I found myself in discussion with a friend who entertained the notion that the general tendency of things in this world is towards equilibrium, the result of which would be peace and blessedness to the human race. My notion, was that equilibrium meant… death. No motive power is to be got from heat, save during its fall from a higher to a lower temperature, as no power is to be got from water save during its descent from a higher to a lower level. Thus also life consists, not in equilibrium, but in the passage towards equilibrium. In man it is the leap from the potential through the actual to repose.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

p, 125
New Fragments (1892)

Life, World, Peace, Motivation

“I support the protection of life from conception to natural death. But a natural death for a murderer is a death on the gallows.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Blog of author, 9 IX 2007 AD http://korwin-mikke.blog.onet.pl/Naturalna-smierc,2,ID258154142,n

Life, Support, Nature

“I don't believe in marriage, myself. It's an arbitrary human concept with no reality beyond that. It isn't always necessarily romantic; it is often political. Even if you believe in God, and swear to love one another for better or worse, till death do you part, none of that is assured. In fact, evangelicals are statistically more likely to get divorced than people with no religion.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

Love, God, Marriage, People

“By Christianity I do not mean charity, mercy, kindness, forgiveness. I mean no natural virtue, because all the natural virtues existed and had been practiced by hundreds and thousands of millions before Christ was born. There certainly were some good men even in the days of Christ in Jerusalem, before his death. By Christianity I mean the ideas of redemption, atonement, a good man dying for a bad man, and the bad man getting a receipt in full. By Christianity I mean that system that insists that in the next world a few will be forever happy, while the many will be eternally miserable. Christianity, as I have explained it, must be protected, guarded, and sustained by law. It was founded by the sword that is to say, by physical force,—and must be preserved by like means.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.

Men, Happiness, World, Law

“His death is a revelation of the nature of God, and a pledge that God will stand by me until I am made one with him... It was a revelation of God’s reaction to human sin. To be hurt and hindered by it, but to go on loving, and go on loving, and go on loving, without reprisal or answering violence until men see what sin is and what sin does, and turn with loathing from that which has so grievously hurt the greatest Lover of the human soul... It is not what God once was, or Christ once did, that can save us, but what Christ once did is the sacrament and visible pledge to us of what He is and does for ever... He committed himself to the task of recovering all humanity to God, however long it might take, however arduous the way, however unrewarding the toil.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.120-123 [ellipsis added]

Love, Men, God, Way

“Harry Dresden: Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner's negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, White Night (2007)

Books, Sex, Parent, Appearance

“A brush with death always helps us to live our lives better.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir (2005), p. 220.

Help

“He caught a glimpse of that extraordinary faculty in man, that strange, altruistic, rare, and obstinate decency which will make writers or scientists maintain their truths at the risk of death. Eppur si muove, Galileo was to say; it moves all the same. They were to be in a position to burn him if he would go on with it, with his preposterous nonsense about the earth moving round the sun, but he was to continue with the sublime assertion because there was something which he valued more than himself. The Truth. To recognize and to acknowledge What Is. That was the thing which man could do, which his English could do, his beloved, his sleeping, his now defenceless English. They might be stupid, ferocious, unpolitical, almost hopeless. But here and there, oh so seldome, oh so rare, oh so glorious, there were those all the same who would face the rack, the executioner, and even utter extinction, in the cause of something greater than themselves. Truth, that strange thing, the jest of Pilate's. Many stupid young men had thought they were dying for it, and many would continue to die for it, perhaps for a thousand years. They did not have to be right about their truth, as Galileo was to be. It was enough that they, the few and martyred, should establish a greatness, a thing above the sum of all they ignorantly had.”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

Men, Truth, Stupidity, Sleep

“Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest know set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 60

Law, Time, Help, Animals

“Most religions, and certainly the Abrahamic ones, have three features that are foreign to science. The most important is religion’s linkage to moral codes that define and enforce proper behavior, behavior supposedly reflecting God’s will. The second is the widespread belief in eternal reward and punishment: the notion that after death not just your fate but everyone else’s depends on adherence to conduct mandated by your religion. And the third is the notion of absolute truth: that the nature of your god, and what it wants, is unchanging. While some believers see their ability to fathom God’s nature as limited, and don’t accept the notion of a heaven or hell, the certainty of religious dogma is ar more absolute and far less provisional than the pronouncements of science.
This combination of certainty, morality, and universal punishment is toxic. It is what leads many believers not only to accept unenlightened views, like the disenfranchisement of women and gays, opposition to birth control, and intrusions into people’s private sex lives, but also to force those views on others, including their own children and society at large, and sometimes even to kill those who disagree.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 219-220

Women, God, Fate, Children

“Jones, Howard (2003). Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195052862.”

Madame Nhu (1924–2011) First lady of South Vietnam

Sources

War, Universe

“Plants will react quite sharply to an abortion. The fetus, however, will also react to the death of an animal in the family, and will be acquainted with the unconscious psychic relationships within the family long before it reaches the sixth month. The plants in a house are also quite aware of the growing fetus; the plants will also pick up the fact that a member of the family is ill, often in advance of physical symptoms. They are that sensitive to the consciousness within cellular structure. Plants will also know whether a fetus is male or female.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 318

Family, Animals, Housing

“You are not traditionally beautiful; and you know it. We women do. But what most people mean by beauty is really a kind of aesthetic acceptability, not so much character as a lack of it, a set of features and lineaments that hide their history, that suggest history itself does not exist. But the template by which we recognize the features and forms in the human body that cause the heart to halt, threatening to spill us over into the silence of death—that is drawn on another part of the soul entirely…But all sing, chant, hymn the history of the body, if only because we all know how people regard bodies that deviate from the lauded and totally abnormal norm named beauty. Most of us would rather not recognize such desires in ourselves and thus avoid all contemplation of what the possession of such features means about the lives, the bodies, the histories of others, preferring instead to go on merely accepting the acceptable. But that is not who I am.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 5, “Of Matrons, Mornings, Motives, and Machinations” (p. 103; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Women, People, Beauty, Soul

“Before you get any kid vaccinated for any reason, you'd better study the subject before you make a decision on vaccines. […] Did you know autism has increased 75,000% in Illinois over a ten-year span? Autism is increasing everywhere. There are many folks like Mary Tocco, her web site is www. MaryTocco. com It is a good website. She studied this intently said, Look, these autism increases are because of vaccinations. That's what is causing it. America has the highest sudden infant death rate syndromes among industrialized nations. In 1970, Australia made vaccines non-mandatory. Fifty percent of the parents opted out of the program and SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) dropped by 50%.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Parent, Decision, Study

“Who will get rationed? Well, the very old and the very young, obviously, the most helpless and vulnerable among us. But it will also be those who don't live politically correct lives — those who have too many cigarettes or cocktails or cans of soda. "Death by Chocolate" won't just be a cute name on the dessert menu.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

[2011-02-22, A Simple Government: Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (and a Trillion That We Don't!), New York, Sentinel, 9781595230737, 24605119M, http://books.google.com/books?id=yAomHRz76-sC&pg=PT48]

“Death had to take him in his sleep, for if he was awake there'd have been a fight.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Upon hearing the death of President Teddy Roosevelt, as quoted in F.D.R. : 1905-1928‎ (1947) by Elliott Roosevelt, p. 449.

Sleep, Fight

“The people of China forged their own literature apart from letters. And today this is what lives, to be part of what is to come, and all the formal literature, which was called art, is dead. The plots of these novels are often incomplete, the love interest is often not brought to solution, heroines are often not beautiful and heroes often are not brave. Nor has the story always an end; sometimes it merely stops, in the way life does, in the middle of it when death is not expected.
In this tradition of the novel have I been born and reared as a writer.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

Love, Life, People, Beauty

“As for polling, when an anonymous caller reaches a Russian at home to ask his opinion of the man who controls every aspect of the Russian police state, it would take great courage to report anything less than enthusiastic support. It is a testament to the bravery of many of my countrymen that Putin does not yet receive the 99 percent approval scores that Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi enjoyed up until the minute they no longer had the power of life and death over their own citizens.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, The Truth About Putin (2018)

Life, Home, Courage, Support

“All the fairest things of earth,
Art's creations have their birth —
Still from love and death.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1836-2) (Vol.47) Subjects for Pictures. II. The Banquet of Aspasia and Pericles
The Monthly Magazine

Love, Art, Birth

“Man makes a death which Nature never made.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IV, Line 15.

Nature

“Possibly steel is so beautiful because of all the movement associated with it, its strength and functions... Yet it is also brutal: the rapist, the murderer and death-dealing giants are also its offspring.”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

quote, early 1950's
Source: 1950s, from 'Abstract Expressionism' (1990), p. 40

Beauty, Quotes

“It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that the breaking-up of his collection of books almost invariably follows; the building up of a good library, the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy and skill fruitless.”

Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (1870–1937) English clergyman, headmaster, author

The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. 136.

Books, Future

“Every time I write about the impossibility of effectively protecting digital files on a general-purpose computer, I get responses from people decrying the death of copyright. "How will authors and artists get paid for their work?" they ask me. Truth be told, I don't know. I feel rather like the physicist who just explained relativity to a group of would-be interstellar travelers, only to be asked: "How do you expect us to get to the stars, then?"”

Bruce Schneier (1963) American computer scientist

I'm sorry, but I don't know that, either. <br class="br"> Protecting Copyright in the Digital World, Schneier, Bruce, 2001-08-15, Cryptogram newsletter, 2016-05-02 https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2001/0815.html#7, <br class="br">Digital Rights Management

People, Truth, Travel, Feeling

“In a word, CLEANTHES, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps to assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from something like design: but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him. You justly give signs of horror, DEMEA, at these strange suppositions; but these, and a thousand more of the same kind, are CLEANTHES’s suppositions, not mine. From the moment the attributes of the Deity are supposed finite, all these have place. And I cannot, for my part, think that so wild and unsettled a system of theology is, in any respect, preferable to none at all.”

David Hume book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Philo to Demea, Part V
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Age, World, Thinking, Universe

“He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,—
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.”

George Gordon Byron The Giaour

Source: The Giaour (1813), Line 68.

Beauty, Dead

“Let the world slide, let the world go;
A fig for care, and a fig for woe!
If I can't pay, why I can owe,
And death makes equal the high and low.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Be Merry Friends; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

World

“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851), Ch. 29 : Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb

Life, Age

“Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul—nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was not fiercer than his hatred of that.”

Clive Staples Lewis book That Hideous Strength

Source: That Hideous Strength (1945), Ch. 16 : Banquet at Belbury, section 6

Hate, World, Soul, Knowledge

“I never got used to the way the house Trots fell into the jargon back in Grimsby — I mean, on any other subject, like the death of the novel, or the sex life of the editor's secretary, they spoke ordinary English, but as soon as they started trying to get me to join the strike it was as if their brains had been taken out and replaced by one of those little golf-ball things you get in electric typewriters… "Betrayal"… "Confrontation"… "Management"… My God, you'd need a more supple language than that to describe an argument between two amoebas.”

Tom Stoppard Night and Day

Milne, Act I
Night and Day (1978)

Life, God, Sex, Way

“…absolute precision from the Dark Invader…this one is a death-ray hit from Real Madrid's glamour boy…”

Ray Hudson (1955) English footballer

[Mandis, Steven G., The Real Madrid Way: How Values Created the Most Successful Sports Team on the Planet, 2016, BenBella Books, https://books.google.fi/books/about/The_Real_Madrid_Way.html?id=IEbQDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y, 978-1-942952-54-1]
After Cristiano Ronaldo converted the penalty into the right of the net for a record 17th goal in the tournament.
2014 UEFA Champions League Final

Boy