Quotes about death
page 48

““We are penetrating the mysteries of the cosmos, and the secrets of life at its smaller levels.”
And it is wrong. You must grasp the purity of the whole, not tear from the Goddess the secrets of her heart.”
“Spinoza says that the more we understand individual objects, the more we understand God. I think that is a very profound statement. Why does your goddess fear what my God does not?
“The mechanistic path has led mankind to terror and suffering.”
“No, ignorance and hatred and intolerance have led mankind to terror and suffering. And not all of our discoveries lead to death.””

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 18 (p. 237)

Life, God, Secret, Fear

“It may be true that death is a large empty hole and that sorrow is knowing just how deep the hole is, but it is only true when one is sober. If one has snaps one can fill up the hole with all the beautiful thoughts one can think of, and all the fine words one can hit on. One can fill it right up to the brink, and then put a stone there.He loved her because she loved him, and if one is loved, one loves in return, otherwise one is a fool.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 30

Love, Beauty, Fools, Thinking

“In the midst of possible world war, of wholesale destruction, I find my only question this: are there enough people now who believe? Is there time enough left for the wise to act? It is a contest between ignorance and death, or wisdom and life. My faith in humanity stands firm.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

This I Believe (1951)

Life, Wisdom, War, People

“The United Nations is the best hope to spare humanity from the barbarity of war, from the senseless death, destruction and dislocation it brings about.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Rights expert urges the UN General Assembly to adopt a more decisive role in peace-making (For International Day of Peace, Saturday 21 September 2013) http://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/2013/09/26/rights-expert-urges-the-un-general-assembly-to-adopt-a-more-decisive-role-in-peace-making-for-international-day-of-peace-saturday-21-september-2013/. 2013, 2013 - International Peace Day

War, Hope

“Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.”

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) English poet

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross (1895)

Life, Beauty

“Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow — the shadow of law. So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master — so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil — so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 1.

Life, Law, Beauty, Dreams

“The subject [of Stalin's death] permitted a rare blend of invective and speculation—both Hearst papers, as I recall, ran cartoons of Stalin being rebuffed at the gates of Heaven, where Hearst had no correspondents—and I have seldom enjoyed a week of newspaper reading more.”

A. J. Liebling (1904–1963) American journalist

Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer, p. 23.

Reading

“Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of a martyr." "Not in passivity [the passive affects], but in activity, lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity"”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

IX. 16
The Philosophy of Antoninus

Life, Men, Lie, Religion

“So does he strive to rescue your shade from the pyre and wages a mighty contest with Death, wearying the efforts of artists and seeking to love you in every material. But beauty created by toil of cunning hand is mortal.”
Sic auferre rogis umbram conatur et ingens certamen cum Morte gerit, curasque fatigat artificum inque omni te quaerit amare metallo. Sed mortalis honos, agilis quem dextra laborat.

Statius Silvae

i, line 7
Silvae, Book V

Love, Beauty, Effort

“Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.”

Frances Moore Lappé (1944) activist against world hunger

O Magazine, May 2004

Fear

“The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we’re just gonna make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal-government level, young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people. So, the young healthy person is going to be made to buy health care, and they’re going to pay for the person, you know, gets breast cancer in her 40s or who gets heart disease in his 50s. […] The whole idea of Obamacare is … the people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It’s not working, and that’s why it’s in a death spiral.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Presentation for Capital Hill reporters, MSNBC "Paul Ryan flubs the basic idea behind insurance" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paul-ryan-flubs-the-basic-idea-behind-insurance 9 March 2017

People, Health, Disease, Idea

“A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I don't really like to say this because it never sounds sincere, but I would really have liked for my books to have been published after my death, so I wouldn't have to go through all this business of fame and being a great writer. In my case, the only advantage to fame is that I have been able to give it a political use. Otherwise, it is quite uncomfortable. The problem is that you're famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you can't say, "Okay, I won't be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I won't be famous here or now."”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 337

Books, Business, Problem, Sincerity

“You have seen the impetuosity of the Hindus and their indifference to death, whenever any calamity befalls them, as at this moment. If, therefore, you refuse to grant peace in the hope of obtaining plunder, tribute, elephants and prisoners, then there is no alternative for us but to mount the horse of stern determination, destroy our property, take out the eyes of our elephants, cast our children into the fire, and rush on each other with sword and spear, so that all that will be left to you, is stones and dirt, dead bodies, and scattered bones.”

Jayapala (964–1001) Ruler of the Kabal Shabi

Cited by Utbi, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Children, Peace, Hope, Horse

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Thoughts in Solitude (1956)

God, Fear, Hope, Idea

“Thirty years ago, we all focused intently on this city as the trauma of Dr. King's death first exploded, then sank into our lives. For so many of us who were trying hard to do what we thought was required of us in the process of integrating this society, the rush of hopelessness and isolation was immediate and overwhelming. It seemed that the whole world had gone mad.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

World, Madness

“Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he —
Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S. T. C!
That he, who many a year, with toil of breath,
Found death in life, may here find life in death.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"Epitaph", written for himself (1833)

Life

“The U. S. has enough problems without publicity seekers going out and openly mocking religion in order to provoke attacks and death. BE SMART.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Twitter - About the Muhammad Art Contest in Texas at 1st May, 2015 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/595406508378173440 (4 May 2015) 2010s, 2015

Religion, Problem

“The Sharon Plan is not a peace plan. It is a unilateral solution to be imposed by Israel…. A Palestinian leader who signs on to this surrender of land and rights would be signing his death warrant.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

Peace

“Jivanmukti is not something to be attained after death, nor is it to be experienced or bestowed upon you in another world. It is a state of perfect awareness and equanimity, which can be experienced here and now in this world, while living in the body. Having come to experience the highest truth of oneness with the Self, such blessed souls do not have to be born again. They merge with the infinite consciousness.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

The Timeless Path (2009)

Truth, World, Soul, Perfection

“How many of our virtues originate in the fear of Death — & that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian Sensibility over the sorrows of our human Brethren and Sisteren, we are in fact, tho' perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own End — for who sincerely pities Sea-sickness, Toothache, or a fit of the Gout in a lusty Good-liver of 50?”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)
Letters

Fear, Sincerity, Sea

“[Sultan Firoz Tughlaq] convened a meeting of the learned Ulama and renowned Mashaikh and suggested to them that an error had been committed: the Jiziyah had never been levied from Brahmans: they had been held excused, in former reigns. The Brahmans were the very keys of the chamber of idolatry, and the infidels were dependent on them (kalid-i-hujra-i-kufr und va kafiran bar ishan muataqid und). They ought therefore to be taxed first. The learned lawyers gave it as their opinion that the Brahmans ought to be taxed. The Brahmans then assembled and went to the Sultan and represented that they had never before been called upon to pay the Jiziyah, and they wanted to know why they were now subjected to the indignity of having to pay it. They were determined to collect wood and to burn themselves under the walls of the palace rather than pay the tax. When these pleasant words (kalimat-i-pur naghmat) were reported to the Sultan, he replied that they might burn and destroy themselves at once for they would not escape from the payment. The Brahmans remained fasting for several days at the palace until they were on the point of death. The Hindus of the city then assembled and told the Brahmans that it was not right to kill themselves on account of the Jiziyah, and that they would undertake to pay it for them. In Delhi, the Jiziyah was of three kinds: Ist class, forty tankahs; 2nd class, twenty tankahs; 3rd class, ten tankahs. When the Brahmans found their case was hopeless, they went to the Sultan and begged him in his mercy to reduce the amount they would have to pay, and he accordingly assessed it at ten tankahs and fifty jitals for each individual.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Shams Siraj Afif, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n381/mode/2up

Error, Learning, Dependency

“A cypress-bough, and a rose-wreath sweet,
A wedding-robe, and a winding-sheet,
A bridal bed and a bier.
Thine be the kisses, maid,
And smiling Love’s alarms;
And thou, pale youth, be laid
In the grave’s cold arms.
Each in his own charms,
Death and Hymen both are here;
So up with scythe and torch,
And to the old church porch,
While all the bells ring clear:
And rosy, rosy the bed shall bloom,
And earthy, earthy heap up the tomb.”

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849) English poet, dramatist and physician

A Cypress-Bough, and A Rose-Wreath Sweet, from The Poetical Works of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1890).

Love, Youth, Smile, Kiss

“One can choose life, or choose death. Having chosen life, I must live it as it is.”

Sheldon Kopp (1929–1999) American psychotherapist

Source: Even a stone can be a teacher (1985), p. 11

Life

“What have you got that a man could drink with just a minimum risk of blindness and death.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Drink

“It wasn't so long ago that Europeans were able to put aside their similarities and fight each other to the death over matters of religion or national honor. The same has always been true of the peoples of Asia and Africa and Central America.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

pg 15
Becoming A Barbarian (2016)

People, Religion, Fight

“No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death, but oh, thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation that impelled her to the crime!”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Anonymous essay signed "A" in The Revolution, August 8, 1869. Often attributed to Susan B. Anthony, who was the owner of the newspaper. http://www.prolifequakers.org/susanb.htm Ann Dexter Gordon, PhD, leader of a research project at Rutgers University which has examined 14,000 documents related to Anthony and Stanton, writes that "no data exists that Anthony ... ever used that shorthand for herself" http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/05/sarah_palin_is_no_susan_b_anthony.html, and that the essay presents material which clashes with Anthony's "known beliefs". http://www.womensenews.org/story/abortion/061006/susan-b-anthonys-abortion-position-spurs-scuffle Misattributed

Love, Life, Fate, Soul

“She supposed she ought to feel impressed that Genar-Hofoen was sticking to his principles in the face of imminent death—and she did feel a little admiration—but mostly she just thought he was being stupid.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 11 “Regarding Gravious” section VII (p. 369).

Stupidity, Feeling

“We were outside. The icy wind whipped my face. I was constantly biting my lips so that they wouldn't freeze. All around me, what appeared to be a dance of death. My head was reeling. I was walking through a cemetery. Among the stiffened corpses, there were logs of wood. Not a sound of distress, not a plaintive cry, nothing but mass agony and silence. Nobody asked anyone for help. One died because one had to. No point in making trouble.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Silence, Appearance, Help, Dance

“[O]n surviving film footage of Eisner’s funeral we see Hitler with a few men from his unit walking behind Eisner’s coffin in the funeral procession of the Bavarian leader. We clearly see Hitler wearing two armbands: one black band to mourn the death of Eisner and the other a red armband in the colour of the Socialists revolution. Similarly, Hitler appears on one of Heinrich Hoffman’s photographs of the funeral process for Eisner.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (2011), p. 251

Men, Appearance

“The machinery chugs on unabated, belching out its dehumanizing product. It is distressing. But I refuse to despair. I know, one day, the Supreme Court will outlaw the death penalty. Permanently.”

William J. Brennan (1906–1997) American judge

Writing in Reason and Passion: Justice Brennan's Enduring Influence (1997).

Penalty, Despair

“Herbert Casson was a highly prolific writer on management, with a career as a management guru spanning some four decades. A skilled writer who was also a successful entrepreneur, he used his own experiences and acute observations of the world around him to develop a philosophy of management based on the concept of ‘efficiency’. He published more than seventy books, which by the time of his death had sold more than half a million copies around the world. Something of a maverick, he was never really accepted by the business academic community in either Britain or America. His books were popular and populist, highly entertaining and full of penetrating insight.”

Herbert N. Casson (1869–1951) Canadian journalist and writer

Morgen Witzel (2003), Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 42

Books, World, Communication, Business

“For those who live inside a myth, it seems a self-evident fact. Human progress is a fact of this kind. If you accept it you have a place in the grand march of humanity. Humankind is, of course, not marching anywhere. ‘Humanity’ is a fiction composed from billions of individuals for each of whom life is singular and final. But the myth of progress is extremely potent. When it loses its power those who have lived by it are – as Conrad put it, describing Kayerts and Carlier – ‘like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedoms’. When faith in the future is taken from them, so is the image they have of themselves. If they then opt for death, it is because without that faith they can no longer make sense of living.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

An Old Chaos: The Call of Progress (pp. 6-7)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Life, Faith, Sense, Freedom

“Rarely do we hear that Iraq has never committed any aggression against the United States. No one in the media questions our aggression against Iraq for the past 12 years by continuous bombing and imposed sanctions responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. […] Only tyrants can take a nation to war without the consent of the people. The planned war against Iraq without a Declaration of War is illegal. It is unwise because of many unforeseen consequences that are likely to result. It is immoral and unjust, because it has nothing to do with US security and because Iraq has not initiated aggression against us. We must understand that the American people become less secure when we risk a major conflict driven by commercial interests and not constitutionally authorized by Congress. Victory under these circumstances is always elusive, and unintended consequences are inevitable”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Before We Bomb Iraq http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2002/cr022602.htm (February 26, 2002). 2000s, 2001-2005

War, Children, People, Understanding

“We have to face the future's offer of death as well as its offer of life, and it need not alarm us, for it is by constant death to our old names and forms that we shall live most vitally in greater and newer forms and names. Go on we must; for if we do not, Time itself will force us forward in spite of our fancied immobility. And this is the most pitiable and dangerous movement of all. For what can be more pitiable than to be borne helplessly forward clinging to the old that disintegrates in spite of our efforts and shrieking frantically to the dead ghosts and dissolving fragments of the past to save us alive? And what can be more dangerous than to impose immobility on that which is in its nature mobile? This means an increasing and horrible rottenness; it means an attempt to persist on as a putrid and stinking corpse instead of a living and self-renewing energetic creature. The greatest spirits are therefore those who have no fear of the future, who accept its challenge and its wager; they have that sublime trust in the God or Power that guides the world….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

May, 1916
India's Rebirth

Life, God, World, Fear

“It's tempting to wonder how many of the inventions of the past century we might have been better off without. Take the aeroplane for instance. It has transformed warfare from an event in which trained soldiers kill each other on distant battlefields to occasions when death is rained down indiscriminately on innocent civilians, while the professional fighters fly at a great height in comparative safety.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 28 : Inventions and the Decline of Language

Distant, Past, Flying, Training

“Animals whom we have made our slaves we do not like to consider our equals. — Do not slave holders wish to make the black man other kind? — animals with affections, imitation, fear of death, pain, sorrow for the dead.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

respect. " Notebook B http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/vanWyhe_notebooks.html" (1837-1838) page 231 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=233&itemID=CUL-DAR121.-&viewtype=side quoted in [2009, Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution, Adrian Desmond & James Moore, New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 9780547055268, 23042290M, 115, http://books.google.com/books?id=V9cGkBj_8iYC&pg=PA115&dq="Animals+whom+we+have+made+our+slaves"] Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements

Pain, Fear, Animals, Dead

“Do you know how fat you are, do you? No, you don't, 'CAUSE YOUR FACE IS AN ISLAND TRAPPED IN A SEA OF FLAB! I would stab you to death… but I can't afford to take the two weeks off work!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On relationships with fat people.
Like, Totally (2006)

Sea

“The cities in which we live in are schools of death, because they are dishuman. Each one of them has become a den of noise and of stench, for each of one has became a chaos of buildings, in which we ammass ourselves in millions, losing our life’s reasons. Unfortunates without escape, we feel to have put ourselves, willing or not, in the labyrinth of the absurd, from which we will leave only when we will die, for our destiny is to continue to multiply ourselves, only to die in great numbers. At every turn of the wheel, the cities in which we live in advance slowly one against the other, desiring only to confuse with each other: it’s a run towards the absolute chaos, in the noise and in the stench. At every turn of the wheel the price of the grounds go up, and in the labyrinth which devours the free space the revenue of the investiments builds up, day after day, hundreds of walls. It’s necessary that money give revenues and that the cities in which we live in advance, so it’s right that the houses double their height at every generation, even if the water is missing half of the days. The builders only desire to escape the destiny that they prepare for us, moving towards the countryside.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Translation from: Albert Carao (1919-1917) http://illusioncity.net/albert-caraco/ at illusioncity.net by Snake June 17, 2012 Ma confession (1975)

Life, Money, School, Feeling

“For really, when you think of all the life and death problems in the art of the Renaissance, who cares if a Chevalier is laughing or that a young girl has a red blouse on.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

The Renaissance and Order (1950) Trans/formation, vol. 1, no.2, 1951, pp. 85-87.
1950's

Life, Art, Girl, Problem

“Our Party [the Guomindang] takes the development of the weak and small and resistance to the strong and violent as our sole and most urgent task. This is even more true for those groups which are not of our kind [Ch. fei wo zulei zhe]. Now the peoples [minzu] of Mongolia and Tibet are closely related to us, and we have great affection for one another: our common existence and common honor already have a history of over a thousand years…. Mongolia and Tibet's life and death are China's life and death. China absolutely cannot cause Mongolia and Tibet to break away from China's territory, and Mongolia and Tibet cannot reject China to become independent. At this time, there is not a single nation on earth execept China that will sincerely develop Mongolia and Tibet.”

Ma Fuxiang (1876–1932) Chinese politician

Familiar strangers: a history of Muslims in Northwest China, Jonathan Neaman Lipman, 2004, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 167, 0-295-97644-6, 266, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=90CN0vtxdY0C&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=ma+fuxiang+our+party&source=bl&ots=gMwLItF3rt&sig=Y4eKstUC_TGgOelKv60xxJb-J2I&hl=en&ei=968WTL_0DYKBlAecxOCjDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Our%20Party%20%5Bthe%20Guomindang%5D%20takes%20the%20development%20of%20the%20weak%20and%20small%20and%20resistance%20to%20the%20strong%20and%20violent%20as%20our%20sole%20and%20most%20urgent%20task.&f=false,

Life, People, History, Strong

“Though a crucified life or an agonized death,
Though long, or quick and sharp,
I am firmly wrought in the endless thread
Of Destiny's woof and warp.
And I do not shrink, though a wave of pain
Sobs over me now and then,
As I think of those "saddest of all sad words,"
The pitiful "might have been."”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

And Thou Too (1888)

Life, Pain, Sadness, Thinking

“The richness of the world, all artificial pleasures, have the taste of sickness and give off a smell of death in the face of certain spiritual possessions.”

Georges Rouault (1871–1958) French painter

Quotes, 1940-1950, Stella Vespertina. (1947)

Pleasure, World

“Wilt thou pursue," she said, "or submit to aught that is shameful, when thou hast so many means of death and quick escape from a deed so wicked?”
<nowiki>'</nowiki>Tune sequeris' ait 'quidquam aut patiere pudendum cum tibi tot mortes scelerisque brevissima tanti effugia?

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 331–333

“It was a common characteristic among the warriors—no fear of death, and only pride for their scars, but little thought of all that could happen in between those two extremes.”

Karen Lord (1968) Barbadian novelist and sociologist of religion

Source: Redemption in Indigo (2010), Chapter 18 “A Spider in His Parlour and a Very Eager Fly” (p. 136)

Fear

“"The eyes of Kudiyattam has closed forever…the great lineage of Sanskrit theatre is adversely hit by the loss of this genious"
- K. P. Narayana Pisharoty (Kutiyattam scholar) in 1990, on the death of Guru Mani Madhava Chakiar.”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya
Source: Arya Madhavan, Kudiyattam Theatre and the Actor's Consciousness, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010, p. 79

Loss

“It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Source: Death: The Final Stage of Growth (1975), Ch. 2

Time

“The terrifying experience and obsession of death, when preserved in consciousness, becomes ruinous. If you talk about death, you save part of yourself. But at the same time, something of your real self dies, because objectified meanings lose the actuality they have in consciousness.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Time, Parting

“Death is the most certain and the most uncertain event there is.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

“…I feel nothing over the death of mercen[a]ries. They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.”

Markos Moulitsas (1971) American blogger

MSNBC rewriting history, Daily Kos http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/4/1/144156/3224#16,

War, People, Feeling, Help

“Wallace's emotions on discovering such marvels must surely be echoed by all of us who follow him. This is what he wrote:
"I thought of the long ages of the past during which the successive generations of these things of beauty had run their course. Year by year being born and living and dying amid these dark gloomy woods with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness, to all appearances such a wanton waste of beauty. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man, many of them have no relation to him, their happiness and enjoyment's, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation alone."”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines, quoting from The Malay Archipelago (1869) by Alfred Russel Wallace.
Attenborough in Paradise (1996)

Love, Life, Hate, Happiness

“The solidarity of all progressive forces of the world towards the people of Vietnam today is similar to the bitter irony of the plebeians coaxing on the gladiators in the Roman arena. It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

Fate, People, World, Success

“If it be granted that the Britons, generally speaking, were expert in hunting, it is still uncertain what animals were obnoxious to the chase; we know however, at least, that the hare was not anciently included; for Cæser tells us, "the Britons did not eat the flesh of hares, notwithstanding the island abounded with them." And this abstinence, he adds, arose from a principle of religion; which principle, no doubt, prevented them from being worried to death: a cruelty reserved for more enlightened ages.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 2
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Britons

Age, Religion, Animals

“His last hours alive. But he didn’t know!
None of us will know, of course. The weird grammar of death. You die, he or she dies, they die, but there is no genuine form for “I”. Not really. All know that, none know when.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, “The FTL Murders” Chapter 1, “The Mystery of the Hammered Handservant” (p. 101).
Jack Glass (2012)

“I say I'm an anti-theist because I think it would be rather awful if it was true. If there was a permanent, total, around-the-clock, divine supervision…an invigilation of everything you did…you would never have a waking or sleeping moment where you weren't being watched and controlled and supervised by some celestial entity, from the moment of conception til…well not even to your death, because it's only after death that the real fun begins, isn't it? It would be like living in North Korea.”

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

Hannity's America, May 13, 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWoHh4_rVdg http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Sean_Hannity_Christopher_Hitchens_Hannity%27s_America_May13%2C_2007?venotify=created
2000s, 2007

Thinking, Sleep

“When you have sweated, toiled, had mad dreams, hopeless nightmares, you find yourself in London's streets, cold and dank in the night air. Think — what have I got for Ireland? Something which she has wanted these past seven hundred years. Will anyone be satisfied at the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this; early this morning I signed my death warrant. I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous — a bullet may just as well have done the job five years ago.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

Liam, Cathal (2006). Blood on the Shamrock: A Novel of Ireland's Continued Struggle for Freedom 1921-1924. St. Padraic Press, p. 194.

Dreams, Thinking, Time, Past

“Since ev’ry man who lives is born to die,
And none can boast sincere felicity,
With equal mind, what happens, let us bear,
Nor joy nor grieve too much for things beyond our care.
Like pilgrims, to th' appointed place we tend;
The world's an inn, and death the journey's end.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Palamon and Arcite.
Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)

World, Joy, Sincerity

“William now directed his archers to shoot high into the air, so that the arrows would fall behind the shield-wall, and one of these pierced Harold in the right-eye, inflicting a mortal wound. He fell at the foot of the royal standard, unconquerable except by death, which does not count in honour. The hard-fought battle was now decided.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On the death of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066; Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

“There various news I heard of love and strife,
Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,
Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,
Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,
Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,
Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,
Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,
The fall of favourites, projects of the great,
Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:
All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Source: The Temple of Fame (1711), Lines 449-458.

Love, Life, War, Health

“"If you believe in a God, miss, pray now." "You don't?" "I believe in the Baker rifle and in the 1796 Pattern heavy cavalry sword, so long as you grind down the back blade so that the point don't slide off a Frog's ribs. If you you don't grind down the back blade, miss, then you might as well just beat the bastards to death with it."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Richard Sharpe and Miss Sarah Fry, p. 205
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

God

“When he comes around. Do not tell him nothing. Do not make a sound. Cos if he knows we're there he might tear his heart out. And beat us to death with it.”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

All At Once
Song lyrics

Tear, Heart

“The entire world has been upset. The entire world, it's a different place. During Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's term, she's done a horrible job.
She has caused death. She has caused tremendous death with incompetent decisions. I was against the war in Iraq. I wasn't a politician, but I was against the war in Iraq. She voted for the war in Iraq.
Look at Libya. That was her baby. Look. I mean, I'm not even talking about the ambassador and the people with the ambassador. Young, wonderful people. With messages coming in by the hundreds, and she's not even responding. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about all of the death that's been caused and not only our side.
There was nothing saved. If we would have never done anything in the Middle East, we would have a much safer world right now. … All of this has led to the migration. All of this has led to tremendous death and destruction. And she for the most part was in charge of it along with Obama.
She's constantly playing the woman card. It's the only way she may get elected. I mean frankly… Personally, I'm not sure that anybody else other than me is going to beat her. And I think she's a flawed candidate. And you see what's happened recently. And it hasn't been a very pretty picture for her or for Bill. Because I'm the only one that's willing to talk about his problems. I mean, what he did and what he has gone through I think is frankly terrible, especially if she wants to play the woman card.
I have more respect for women by far than Hillary Clinton has. And I will do more for women than Hillary Clinton will. I will do far more including the protection of our country. She caused a lot of the problems that we have right now.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

CBS interview with John Dickerson (taped 1 January 2016) for Face the Nation — as quoted in "Trump: Clinton has ruined the world" http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/trump-hillary-clinton-donald-217294 by Nick Gass, Politico (3 January 2016) 2010s, 2016, January

Women, War, People, World

“With this recognition of the finality of death, no one should willingly withhold acts that would bring benefits, joy or happiness to others.”

Joseph Lewis (1889–1968) American activist

An Atheist Manifesto

Happiness, Joy

“This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction and weakness.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)

“Sören Kierkegaard has another answer: human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy; it is possible as existence in faith… Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

The Ecological Vision: Reflections on the American Condition (1993)
1990s and later

Life, God, Faith, Time

“Death to the killers, bringing light to life.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Not Palaces" (l. 32)

Life, Light

“So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!”

Joseph Masclet

Que tes ennemis expirants Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire! Verses of La Marseillaise written by Masclet https://books.google.fr/books?id=tAtItyiK9ywC&pg=PA17&dq=%22Que+tes+ennemis+expirants%22%2B%22Voient+ton+triomphe+et+notre+gloire+!%22&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6sKvNu_vOAhWCthoKHY12BFQQ6AEIHDAC#v=onepage&q=%22Que%20tes%20ennemis%20expirants%22%2B%22Voient%20ton%20triomphe%20et%20notre%20gloire%20!%22&f=false (in French). English translation by Iain Patterson ( marseillaise.org http://www.marseillaise.org/english/english.html).

“There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death”

Bret Harte (1836–1902) American author and poet

East and West Poems, Part I, The Copperhead.

Peace

“There was never a moment during the investment of Bud Dajo when the Moros, including women, on the top of the mountain would not have fought to the death had they been given the opportunity. They had gone there to make a last stand on this, their sacred mountain, and they were determined to die fighting. Their former experience on Bud Dago did not deter them from taking this step, and it would not have deterred them from fighting to the death had an effort that their solid determination to fight it out could be broken. The fact is that they were completely surprised at the prompt and decisive action of the troops in cutting of suplies and preventing escape, and they were chagrined and disappointed in that they were not encouraged to die the death of Muhammadan fanatics.”

John J. Pershing (1860–1948) United States Army general in World War I

My Life Before the World War, 1860--1917: A Memoir, p. 451 https://books.google.com/books?id=a74_JIbehzsC&pg=PA451

Women, Disappointment, Mountain, Decision

“Remember, [in the Bible] it's adultery only if the woman is already married. It doesn't matter if the man is married. If he is, she may just become another one of his wives, and a man can have sex with other women who aren't his wives, and that's not cheating either, as long as they live with him, because a man is also allowed to have concubines, and a concubine is a sort of sexual servant who serves no other purpose and has no claim to your estate. Your wife may not have a claim to your estate either, because when you die your wife may become your brother's sexual property. That's how the Bible defines marriage! The Bible does not prohibit multiple wives or incest either. In fact, both are promoted. However, when your father dies, your mother does not become your wife, and you can't inherit any of his other wives either, and the reason that the Bible gives for that is because that would be like looking up your father's skirt… So, a man can have multiple wives and a collection of personal harlots, but he can also have sex with his slaves, and that's not cheating either. You've heard of friends with benefits? You can call this your property rights. That's the only way that makes sense, because according to the Bible all women are property, and property doesn't have rights. Now, some people equate having sex with slaves to rape, because the slave doesn't have any choice. But, according to the Bible, women don't have any choice anyway, and rape can be a prelude to matrimony; if you're a Bronze Age Israelite and you see some young cutie walking unescorted, if you like her, you want her, you can have her, even if she doesn't want you. Now, if you rape a married woman, that's a death sentence for both of you (because the Bible is stupid like that). But if she's not promised to someone else, and you rape her and you get caught, you have to pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she's yours. He may not want her back after that, even his own child, because an unmarried woman who wasn't a virgin was considered damaged goods back then, so they had this rule that "if you pop it, you buy it." So your victim becomes your bride and you're stuck together forever, and can never get divorced (so be careful who you rape). There's actually a cheaper [and] easier way to get a bride; if a man takes a wife and decides he doesn't like her, if he can prove she wasn't a virgin (or if he can convince other people that was probably not a virgin), she she will be murdered on her father's doorstep because, according to the god of infinite mercy, that's the moral thing to do. But if she can prove that she was a virgin, then she must remain married forever to the man who hates her, because that's divine wisdom too. That unpleasant arrangement for both of you will also cost you a hundred shekels, whereas you can marry your rape victim for half the price. So, if you're a complete loser, and you can't get any woman who appeals to you by the normal way, just rape whoever you like and she's yours forever.”

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)

Wisdom, Women, God, Hate

“Then King Edward ordered his horsemen to charge,
Thirty thousand in number, it was very large;
They thought to o'erwhelm them ere they could rise from their knees,
But they met a different destiny, which did them displease;
For the horsemen fell into the spik'd pits in the way,
And, with broken ranks and confusion, they all fled away,
But few of them escap'd death from the spik'd pits,
For the Scots with their swords hack'd them to bits.”

William McGonagall (1825–1902) weaver, actor, poet

Poetry, The Battle of Bannockburn

Way

“The brahman Kasibhāradvāja addressed the Blessed One with a verse.
'You say you are a ploughman, but we do not see your ploughing. Being asked, tell us about your ploughing, so that we may know your ploughing.'
'Faith is the seed, penance is the rain, wisdom is my yoke and plough; modesty is the pole, mind is the yoke-tie, mindfulness is my ploughshare and goad….
Thus is this ploughing of mine ploughed. It has the death-free as its fruit. Having ploughed this ploughing one is freed from all misery.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

§ 75-80
Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), Sutta Nipata (Suttas falling down)

Wisdom, Faith

“Do you believe that the dead can influence the living?… Could you conceive of a superhuman mentality influencing someone from the other side of death?… There is such a one…. Someone, something that reaches out from beyond the grave and fills me with horrible impulses.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Dracula's Daughter, trying to explain her situation to Dr. Garth
Dracula's Daughter (1936)

Dead

“You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Eve to Cain, in Pt. I, Act II
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Life, Lie, Feeling, Fight

“Persons convicted of the forcible violation of any female prisoner shall be put to death.”

John Brown (abolitionist) (1800–1859) American abolitionist

Article XLI.
Provisional Constitution and Ordinances (1858)

Personality

“I know not whether, in the eyes of the world, a brilliant death is not preferred to an obscure life of rectitude. Most men are remembered as they died, and not as they lived. We gaze with admiration upon the glories of the setting sun, yet scarcely bestow a passing glance upon its noonday splendor.”

Davy Crockett (1786–1836) American politician

As quoted in David Crockett : His Life and Adventures (1875) by John Stevens Cabot Abbott, Ch. 11

Life, Men, World, Sun

“The inhuman character of Stalinism was demonstrated by the repressions of prisoners of war who survived fascist camps and then were thrown into Stalinist camps, the anti-worker "decrees," the criminal exile of entire peoples condemned to slow death, the unenlightened zoological kind of anti-Semitism that was characteristic of Stalin bureaucracy and the NKVD (and Stalin personally), the Ukrainophobia characteristic of Stalin, and the draconian laws for the protection of socialist property (five years' imprisonment for stealing some grain from the fields and so forth) that served mainly as a means of fulfilling the demands of the "slave market."”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships

War, People, Law, Personality

“There is no end to the war and death caused by man or to the tears shed by all the innocent victims of such tragedies. What were all these for? Only for conquering, establishing superiority and satisfying our greed for money and fame. Mankind has taken upon itself countless curses. In order to attain freedom from these curses, at least a hundred generations to come should wipe the tears of the suffering, striving to console them and alleviate their pain. At least now, as an atonement, shouldn’t we try to introspect?”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Compassion: The Only Way to Peace (2007)

Money, Pain, War, Tear

“Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death….. As a matter of doctrine, the Muslim conception of tolerance is one in which non-Muslims have been politically and economically subdued, converted, or put to sword….. Yes, the Bible contains its own sadistic lunacy—but the above [Qur'an] quotations [taken from The End of Faith, pp. 117-123] can be fairly said to convey the central message of the Qur’an—and of Islam at nearly every moment in its history. The Qur’an does not contain anything like a Sermon on the Mount. Nor is it a vast and self-contradictory book like the Old Testament, in which whole sections (like Leviticus and Deuteronomy) can be easily ignored and forgotten. The result is a unified message of triumphalism, otherworldliness, and religious hatred that has become a problem for the entire world. And the world still waits for moderate Muslims to speak honestly about it.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/honesty-the-muslim-worlds-scarcest-resource 2012-03-01 Honesty: The Muslim World’s Scarcest Resource? - SamHarris.com, accessed March 1, 2012 2010s

Books, World, Faith, Religion

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”

Edward Said book Orientalism

"Preface (2003)"
Orientalism (1978)

Democracy

“And in the name of this gospel of freedom, she had imprisoned herself; in the name of "living life honestly," she would go to her death. It was, he supposed, the only way she could make herself feel special.”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

(XIV.4) Del Rey, p. 473
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

Life, Way, Feeling, Freedom

“The commercial prostitution of love is the last outcome of our whole social system, and its most clear condemnation. It flaunts in our streets, it hides itself in the garment of respectability under the name of matrimony, it eats in actual physical disease and death right through our midst; it is fed by the oppression and the ignorance of women, by their poverty and denied means of livelihood, and by the hypocritical Puritanism which forbids them by millions not only to gratify but even to speak of their natural desires; and it is encouraged by the callousness of an age which has accustomed men to buy and sell for money every most precious thing — even the life-long labor of their brothers, therefore why not also the very bodies of their sisters?”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Love's Coming of Age (1896)

Love, Life, Women, Men

““Which alternative is worse, I wonder?” she said. “To deny death and thus risk never being wholly alive, or to face oblivion squarely and risk paralysis by dread?”
“Nobody knows,” I said. “It’s ambiguous.”
“If I ever get to be God,” she said, unleashing the grin of the person who’d invented Largesse, “my first act will be to make ambiguity illegal.””

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 6 (pp. 134-135)

God, Personality

“The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.
I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy. The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond. In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors. And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.
And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.
This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.
So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html Aljazeera, (01 Nov 2004) 2000s, 2004

Women, Children, World, Way

“The people of Iran are very talented people. They're heirs to one of the world's great civilizations. But in 1979, they were hijacked by religious zealots; religious zealots who imposed on them immediately a dark and brutal dictatorship. That year, the zealots drafted a constitution, a new one for Iran. It directed the revolutionary guards not only to protect Iran's borders, but also to fulfill the ideological mission of jihad. The regime's founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, exhorted his followers to "export the revolution throughout the world." I'm standing here in Washington, D. C. and the difference is so stark. America's founding document promises life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Iran's founding document pledges death, tyranny, and the pursuit of jihad. And as states are collapsing across the Middle East, Iran is charging into the void to do just that.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

2010s, 2015, Address to the United States Congress (March 2015)

Life, Happiness, People, World

“There's nothing better than a party that turns into a death trap.”

Russell T. Davies (1963) Screenwriter, former executive producer of Doctor Who

Doctor Who Confidential Series 2, Episode 5, "Cybermen" http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/confidential/index5.shtml (Doctor Who documentary series, 2005)

“Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Peter Quince at the Clavier (1915)

Music, Memory

“What is most important to me is Jawaharlal Nehru's idea of India, India as a pluralist society and polity, an idea which is central to India’s survival, which has held now in the four decades after his death and which is all the more in need of defending.”

Shashi Tharoor (1956) Indian politician, diplomat, author

Edited transcript of remarks, 11/13/03 Books for Breakfast, "Nehru: The Invention of India" Available Online http://web.archive.org/web/20060927152610/http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/1075.html 2000s

Idea

“People try to define life. You know, all the 900 different things that people have wedged in there. But in reality, life is simply the time between birth and death. That's life. To us, it is a lifetime. But somewhere out in space, it may just be a blink of an eye, that's all. Because of the earth's gravitational pull, time is being slowed down and TA-DA, you have a lifetime. But somewhere out there, it's just this blink of an eye. And in this blink of an eye, you have created complexities that rival the complexities of the universe itself. In a sense, you have outdone the stars, you have outdone the motions of planets. You have outdone the whole principle of how light travels. In your little world, you have created absolutely amazing complexities. You have taken God and you have made God mysterious. But if you could just see the beauty around you and realize the goodness that it means to be able to breathe, to be able to exist, and for somebody to be able to facilitate that for you, then God is not mysterious, God is kind and beautiful.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Anaheim, California, USA, January 30, 1993
1990s

Life, God, People, World

“Young man, there is America — which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 115
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Men, World, Envy

“I could not do this, I realized, if I were immortal. This degree of love of life and of one another is granted, I saw for once and for ever, not to immortals, but to those who live briefly and always under the shadow of death and loss.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 32 (p. 665)

Love, Life, Loss

“I said that the oceans were sick but they're not going to die. There is no death possible in the oceans — there will always be life — but they're getting sicker every year.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Interview (March 1996)

Life

“My work has been essentially a dialogue with death, asking him, “Why? Why?” So only death can silence me. Only death can close my lips.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

The Paris Review interview (1984)

Silence

“He does not seem to have understood the gravity of the offence. India's elite lauded the amendments to the IPC, widening the definition of rape, little realizing that they did not apply simply to lower-class men, but could affect them too. While there has been much clamour for the death penalty in cases of rape involving the lower classes, would the elite now like to apply this to themselves?”

Flavia Agnes (1947) Indian activist and lawyer

On Tarun Tejpal's rape accusation and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, as quoted in " Tejpal's email apology strong documentary evidence http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Tejpals-email-apology-strong-documentary-evidence/articleshow/26224417.cms" The Times of India (23 November 2013)

Men, Penalty

“By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs.
The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers. Now he is scattered over a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections;
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: In Memory of W.B. Yeats (1939), Lines 10–23

Happiness, Feeling, Silence, Dead

“There,' I said to a friend, 'lies the best man I ever knew or ever expect to know; he was just to all men, and his heart was full to overflowing with kindness toward those who accomplished his death.' I have been satisfied that the persons who called at the Malvern were some of the assassins who would have killed him there if they could have got on board, and they could easily have escaped in the confusion by jumping overboard and swimming to the shore, which was not more than twenty yards distant. More-over, I do not think that the prime instigator of the deed was ever suspected, though I have my own opinion on the subject, as also had Senator Nye, that stanch old patriot who held, in the latter part of the war, a position somewhat analogous to that of a minister of police, or was in consultation, by the wish of President Lincoln, with the police authorities of our great cities. He picked up many interesting incidents in relation to the President's assassination which he talked about freely to me; but he was a prudent man, and a politician, and did not desire to raise questions which might affect his personal interests in the future.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), pp. 319–320

Men, War, Question, Thinking

“I was borne on an eagle's wing,
Till with the noon-sun perishing;
Then I stood in a world alone,
From which all other life was gone,
Whence warmth, and breath, and light were fled,
A world o'er which a curse was said:
The trees stood leafless all, and bare,
The sky spread, but no sun was there:
Night came, no stars were on her way,
Morn came without a look of day,—
As night and day shared one pale shroud,
Without a colour or a cloud.
And there were rivers, but they stood
Without a murmur on the flood,
Waveless and dark, their task was o'er,—
The sea lay silent on the shore,
Without a sign upon its breast
Save of interminable rest:
And there were palaces and halls,
But silence reign'd amid their walls,
Though crowds yet fill'd them; for no sound
Rose from the thousands gather'd round;
All wore the same white, bloodless hue,
All the same eyes of glassy blue,
Meaningless, cold, corpse-like as those
No gentle hand was near to close.
And all seem'd, as they look'd on me,
In wonder that I yet could be
A moving shape of warmth and breath
Alone amid a world of death.”

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

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Life, World, Way, Star

“Sadly, many Christians openly embrace big bang cosmology (that the universe essentially created itself) but argue that God is the one who started the process. But this means that God really didn’t do much and was distant from His creation, which is not the way the God of the Bible says He created (this idea also has many other problems as mentioned earlier). But what many of these Christians don’t realize is that the big bang is not just a story about the past—it’s also a story about the future. As this news article reminds us, when scientists start with the presupposition that nature is all that there is and time will eventually take its course on the universe, they are left with bleak predictions. And the prediction of those who believe in the big bang is that the universe will slowly run out of energy and, eventually, became “cold, dark, and desolate.” This does not match with the future described in God’s Word! So what do Christians who have accepted the big bang do? If they (as many do) embrace the secular scientists’ ideas about the past (i. e., the big bang cosmology), then will they also embrace the rest of the secularist belief concerning the heat death in the future? The Christians I’ve met who have compromised God’s Word with the big bang concerning origins don’t accept the rest of the big bang idea concerning the future. Frankly, they are so inconsistent! This highlights why Christians shouldn’t pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to accept and which ones we will reinterpret to fit fallible man’s ideas. If so, then man is really being an authority over God! This is back-to-front! We need to believe all of God’s Word from the very beginning.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

The Universe Is “Dying” and It’s Because of Sin https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2015/08/20/universe-dying-and-its-because-sin/, Around the World with Ken Ham (August 20, 2015) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

God, Way, Idea, Nature