Quotes about death (5968 quotes, page 50)

“Of the nature of Death and the Dead we may enumerate twelve kinds. First there are those who become new gods, for whom new universes are born. Second those who praise. Third those who fight as soldiers in the unending war with evil. Fourth those who amuse themselves among flowers and sweet springs with sports. Fifth those who dwell in gardens of bliss, or are tortured. Sixth those who continue as in life. Seventh those who turn the wheel of the universe. Eighth those who find in their graves their mothers' wombs and in one life circle forever. Ninth ghosts. Tenth those born again as men in their grandsons' time. Eleventh those who return as beasts or trees. And last those who sleep.”

Gene Wolfe book Gene Wolfe's Book of Days

"Forlesen", Orbit 14 (1974), ed. Damon Knight, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe's Book of Days (1981), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Life , Men , God , War

“Andrew Holland was prosecuted in the UK for possessing "extreme pornography", a term which appears to mean porn that judges and prosecutors consider shocking. He had received a video showing a tiger having sex with a woman, or at least apparently so.
He was found innocent because the video he received was a joke. I am glad he was not punished, but this law is nonetheless a threat to other people. If Mr Holland had had a serious video depicting a tiger having sex with a woman, he still would not deserve to go to prison. … I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
But this law is not concerned with protecting animals, since it does not care whether the animal really had sex, or really existed at all. It only panders to the prejudice of censors.
A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?
Perhaps I am spared because this photo isn't "disgusting", but "disgusting" is a subjective matter; we must not imprison people merely because someone feels disgusted. I find the sight of wounds disgusting; fortunately surgeons do not. Maybe there is someone who considers it disgusting for a parrot to have sex with a human. Or for a dolphin or tiger to have sex with a human. So what? Others feel that all sex is disgusting. There are prejudiced people that want to ban all depiction of sex, and force all women to cover their faces. This law and the laws they want are the same in spirit.
Threatening people with death or injury is a very bad thing, but violence is no less bad for being nonsexual. Is it worse to shoot someone while stroking that person's genitals than to shoot someone from a few feet away? If I were going to be the victim, and I were invited to choose one or the other, I would choose whichever one gave me the best chance to escape.
Images of violence can be painful to see, but they are no better for being nonsexual. I saw images of gruesome bodily harm in the movie Pulp Fiction. I do not want to see anything like that again, sex or no sex. That is no reason to censor these works, and would still not be a reason even if most people reacted to them as I do.
Since the law doesn't care whether a real human was really threatened with harm, it is not really concerned about our safety from violence, any more than it is concerned with avoiding suffering for corpses or animals. It is only prejudice, taking a form that can ruin people's lives.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Extreme Pornography Law in the UK" (2010) http://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html
2010s

Women , Pain , People , Pleasure

“Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.”

Euripidés Alcestis

Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 669

Life , Men , Age , Lying

“Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Whispers of Immortality"
Poems (1920)

“If we can't or won't define the enemy, the cost to fight such a war will be endless. How many American troops are we prepared to lose? How much money are we prepared to spend? How many innocent civilians, in our nation and others, are we willing to see killed? How many American civilians will we jeopardize? How much of our civil liberties are we prepared to give up? How much prosperity will we sacrifice? […] I support President Bush and voted for the authority and the money to carry out his responsibility to defend this country, but the degree of death and destruction and chances of escalation must be carefully taken into consideration.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

U.S. House of Representatives, September 25, 2001 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2001/cr092501.htm
2000s, 2001-2005

Money , War , Support , Chance

“At heart, the issues raised in a work of fantasy are those we face in real life. In whatever guise—our own daily nightmares of war, intolerance, inhumanity; or the struggles of an Assistant Pig-Keeper against the Lord of Death—the problems are agonizingly familiar. And an openness to compassion, love and mercy, is as essential to us here and now as it is to any inhabitant of an imaginary kingdom.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Newbery Award acceptance speech (1969)

Love , Life , War , Problem

“To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 196

Men

“if you pass amnesty, that's it. It's over. Then we organize the death squads for the people who wrecked America.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

to Republicans who support immigration reform * 2014-03-08
2014 Conservative Political Action Conference
CSPAN
TV
http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/05/27/immigrants-are-more-dangerous-than-isis-and-10/203769
2014

People

“People who say: 'Ah, this Beuys will go back to the middle ages, or to the stone dwellers, cliff dwellers.' No, there is a misunderstanding. I have nothing against the materialistic methodology of analytics, but I think we have to enlarge this thing, not to get caught in a very restricted one-sidedness in our way of looking towards life. Because the problems of life, soul, humankind's spirit, the problems of intuition, imagination, and inspiration, the problems of birth and death, the problems of survival in a bigger shape, and to bring in the image of the meaning of man.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Source: 1970's, Interview with Louwrien Wijers, 1979, p. 249; Also cited in: Louwrien Wijers (1996). Writing as Sculpture: 1978 - 1987. p. 40

Life , People , Age , Way

“In one word, one should desire of God desirelessness. For desire alone is at the root of all suffering. It is the cause of repeated births and deaths. It is the obstacle in the way of liberation.”

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

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 369]

God , Way , Birth , Suffering

“There are basically only two subject matters in all Western culture: sex and death. We do have some ability to manipulate sex nowadays. We have no ability, and never will have, to manipulate death.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in Cineaste, 1991
Interviews

Sex

“[These are] not paintings in the usual sense, they are life and death merging in fearful union.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Clyfford Still (ca. 1950) as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 138: About his own work
1950s

Life , Fear , Sense , Painting

“Death's law brings change to all created things;
Lands cease to know themselves as years roll on.
As centuries pass, e'en nations change their form,
Yet safe the world remains, with all it holds.”
Omnia mortali mutantur lege creata, Nec se cognoscunt terræ vertentibus annis, Et mutant variam faciem per sæcula gentes, At manet incolumis mundus suaque omnia servat.

Marcus Manilius Astronomica

Book I, line 515, as reported in Dictionary of Quotations (classical) (1897) by T. B. Harbottle, p. 197.
G. P. Goold's translation: Everything born to a mortal existence is subject to change, nor does the earth notice that, despoiled by the passing years, it bears an appearance which varies through the ages.
Variant translation (disputed): Everything that is created is changed by the laws of man; the earth does not know itself in the revolution of years; even the races of man assume various forms in the course of ages.
Astronomica

World , Law , Change

“Draw Dyrnwyn, only thou of noble worth, to rule with justice, to strike down evil. Who wields it in good cause shall slay even the Lord of Death.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

The runic inscription upon the scabbard of Dyrnwyn, correctly read by the bard Taliesin, in Chapter 19
The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968)

Justice , Evil , Drawing

“In the eight years since his father’s death, Patrick’s youth had slipped away without being replaced by any signs of maturity, unless the tendency for sadness and exhaustion to eclipse hatred and insanity could be called ‘mature’.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

Some Hope, Chapter 1

Youth , Sadness

“I find that people who believe in immortality—or at least those who say they do—are just as afraid of death as anybody else. I find that the most devout Christian weeps as bitterly above his dead, as the man who says that death ends all. You see the promises are so far away, and the dead are so near. Still, I do not say that man is not immortal; but I do say that there is nothing in the Bible to show that he is. The Old Testament has not a word upon the subject—except to show us how we lost immortality.”

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

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

People , Dead

“Until socialism—like Nazism or fascism confronted by the death camps and the slaughter of innocents—is confronted with its lived reality, the greatest atrocities of all recorded human life, we will not live "after socialism."”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Life , Reality

“Death was the ultimate power and I his eager, willing apprentice.”

Susan Kay Phantom

Erik (p. 129)
Phantom (1990)

“Debate is the death of conversation.”

Emil Ludwig (1881–1948) German writer

In Lilless McPherson Shilling, Linda K. Fuller, Dictionary of Quotations in Communications (1997), p. 13. Most likely a variation of "Argument, again, is the death of conversation, if carried on in a spirit of hostility", William Hazlitt, Table Talk: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things (1846), p. 126
Misattributed

“The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in few hours' time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if just ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope that for our sake God will not destroy Germany. No one among us can complain about his death, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus. A man's moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defense of his convictions.”

Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944) German general

July 21, 1944. Joachim Fest, Plotting Hitler's Death, p. 289-290.

Life , Men , God , World

“Survivors of the plague, finding themselves neither destroyed nor improved, could discover no Divine purpose in the pain they had suffered. God’s purposes were usually mysterious, but this scourge had been too terrible to be accepted without questioning. If a disaster of such magnitude, the most lethal ever known, was a mere wanton act of God or perhaps not God’s work at all, then the absolutes of a fixed order were loosed from their moorings. Minds that opened to admit these questions could never again be shut. Once people envisioned the possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submission came in sight; the turn to individual conscience lay ahead. To that extent the Black Death may have been the unrecognized beginning of modern man.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 123

God , Pain , People , Age

“Perfect freedom, spiritual as well as political or social, … is accomplished in us by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. … But it is strictly intolerable in the fullness of its implications. It is psychologically unbearable. It carries frightening social risks and is politically insulting to every form of power. It was not possible. On every social level and in every culture, people have found it impossible to take up this freedom and accept its implications. This is the basic impossibility, the unanimous refusal of all people, which has resulted in the rejection of Christian freedom.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 43

People , Freedom , Christ , Perfection

“b>The love which demands nothing but beauty itself and lives in selfless worship... is the love that no disappointment can ever conquer, perhaps not even death itself”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

if that existed
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

Love , Beauty , Disappointment

“It is impossible to experience one's own death objectively and still carry a tune.”

Woody Allen book Getting Even

Getting Even (1971), My Philosophy

“Abu 'Abdu'r-Rahman 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar ibn al-Khattab said that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Allah the Mighty and Majestic accepts the repentance of His servant as long as his death-rattle has not begun."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 18
Sunni Hadith

Peace

“Tis come, our fated day of death.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book II, p. 53

Fate

“[Paris, as modern city] is beautiful in its perfection, but perfection means death and decay. Thus interfering with the process of dying is a crime against perfection: it stands in the way of a higher perfection.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian in 'Natuurlijke en abstracte realiteit', Piet Mondriaan, in 'De Stijl' III, 1920, p. 75
1920's

Beauty , Way , Perfection

“They have not enjoyed the educational and political privileges of the Han chinese, and they are in many respects primitive. But they know the meaning of fidelity, and if I say 'do this, although it means death,' they cheerfully obey.”

Ma Fuxiang (1876–1932) Chinese politician

In the Land of the Laughing Buddha – The Adventures of an American Barbarian in China, Upton Close, 2007, READ BOOKS, 271, 1-4067-1675-8, 440, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=DpQa22PJutwC&dq=arab+mercenaries+china&q=They+have+not+enjoyed+the+educational+and+political+privileges+of+the+Han+chinese%2C+and+they+are+in+many+respects+primitive#v=snippet&q=They%20have%20not%20enjoyed%20the%20educational%20and%20political%20privileges%20of%20the%20Han%20chinese%2C%20and%20they%20are%20in%20many%20respects%20primitive&f=false,

Education

“Death is like a colonoscopy, the problem is that life is like the prep day.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQqYu37GjTg

Life , Problem

“But so long as human nature is what it is, so long as we are by essence prepossessed in favour of our freedom and yearn for a life that may put death itself beneath our feet, and with death imperfection and wrong, so long will our nature reluctate, so long will it even revolt, at the prospect of having to accept the doctrine of pantheism; so long shall we instinctively draw back from that vast and shadowy Being which, be it conscious or unconscious or simply the Unknowable, must for us and our highest hopes be verily the Shadow of Death”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.77-8

Life , Hope , Nature , Freedom

“Here you stand, after conquering mighty nations and subduing the world. I therefore think it foolish for me to goad you with words, as though you were men who had not been proved in action. Let a new leader or an untried army resort to that. It is not right for me to say anything common, nor ought you to listen. For what is war but your usual custom? Or what is sweeter for a brave man than to seek revenge with his own hand? It is a right of nature to glut the soul with vengeance. Let us then attack the foe eagerly; for they are ever the bolder who make the attack. Despise this union of discordant races! To defend oneself by alliance is proof of cowardice. See, even before our attack they are smitten with terror. They seek the heights, they seize the hills and, repenting too late, clamor for protection against battle in the open fields. You know how slight a matter the Roman attack is. While they are still gathering in order and forming in one line with locked shields, they are checked, I will not say by the first wound, but even by the dust of battle. Then on to the fray with stout hearts, as is your wont. Despise their battle line. Attack the Alani, smite the Visigoths! Seek swift victory in that spot where the battle rages. For when the sinews are cut the limbs soon relax, nor can a body stand when you have taken away the bones. Let your courage rise and your own fury burst forth! Now show your cunning, Huns, now your deeds of arms! Let the wounded exact in return the death of his foe; let the unwounded revel in slaughter of the enemy. No spear shall harm those who are sure to live; and those who are sure to die Fate overtakes even in peace. And finally, why should Fortune have made the Huns victorious over so many nations, unless it were to prepare them for the joy of this conflict. Who was it revealed to our sires the path through the Maeotian swamp, for so many ages a closed secret? Who, moreover, made armed men yield to you, when you were as yet unarmed? Even a mass of federated nations could not endure the sight of the Huns. I am not deceived in the issue;--here is the field so many victories have promised us. I shall hurl the first spear at the foe. If any can stand at rest while Attila fights, he is a dead man.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

As quoted by Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths http://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html#attila, translated by Charles C. Mierow

Men , Fate , War , Secret

“…I’m sure lots of people would love to ridicule me when I say this, but it is true: many people die from cold related deaths every winter, and here are studies that say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals.”

Dana Perino (1972) Former White House Press Secretary

Press Briefing, October 26, 2007 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071024-8.html

Love , People , World , Study

“He hadn’t been religious. He’d believed that death was it. When you died you were dead, like a squished bug or drowned rat, and your immortality was in the minds of those you left behind.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 11 (p. 264)

Dead

“Science leads to great achievements, which, quite rightly, fill of joy those who seek the truth, but if pursued, teaches us that we must seek other sources of ultimate truth and find answers to existential questions about the meaning of life and the mystery of death.”

Franco Bassani (1929–2008) Italian physicist

La scienza conduce a grandi conquiste, che, giustamente, colmano di gioia chi cerca la verità, ma, se approfondita, ci insegna che in altre fonti occorre cercare la verità ultima e trovare le risposte alle domande esistenziali sul senso della vita e sul mistero della morte.
Knowing the universe. For whom? at the XXVII edition of the “Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples”, Rimini meeting 2006, August 23, 2006.

Life , Truth , Question , Science

“Death never excites such sympathy as it does when it assumes the shape of murder.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

“Death stares at me/ Death pushes me forward/ Attracts me onwards/ And carries me on/ And that is my life!”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Death: Live It! p. 57
Death: Live It! (2005)

Life

“The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

As quoted in "interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/CBC Radio program Q," http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2012/06/07/david-cronenberg-on-cosmopolis/ (7 June 2012)

Love , Art

“It was like a dream of hell, when a man finds his own name staring at him from the Devil's ledger; like a dream of death, when he who comes as mourner finds himself in the coffin, or as witness to a hanging, the condemned upon the scaffold.”

Thomas Wolfe book Look Homeward, Angel

Source: Look Homeward, Angel (1929), p. 62

Dreams , Hell

“We were picking apart a problem in linguistic history and, as it were, examining close up the peak period of glory in the history of a language; in minutes we had traced the path which had taken it several centuries. And I was powerfully gripped by the vision of transitoriness: the way before our eyes such a complex, ancient, venerable organism, slowly built up over many generations, reaches its highest point, which already contains the germ of decay, and the whole intelligently articulated structure begins to droop, to degenerate, to totter toward its doom. And at the same time the thought abruptly shot through me, with a joyful, startled amazement, that despite the decay and death of that language it had not been lost, that its youth, maturity, and downfall were preserved in our memory, in our knowledge of it and its history, and would survive and could at any time be reconstructed in the symbols and formulas of scholarship as well as in the recondite formulations of the Glass Bead Game. I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Youth , World , Way , History

“The raw materials of story are the raw materials of all human cultures. Story deals with the same questions as theology, philosophy, psychology. It is concerned with polarities: love and hate, birth and death, joy and sorrow, loss and recovery.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

"The Grammar of Story", in Celebrating Children's Books (1981), pp. 10–11

Love , Hate , Birth , Question

“This swirl of stars,' Draconus suddenly said, 'marks the plunge of light into darkness. These stars, they are distant suns, shihing their light down upon distant, unknown worlds. Worlds, perhaps, little different from this one. Or vastly different. It hardly matters. Each star swirls its path towards the centre, and at that centre is death - the death of light, the death of time itself.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

World , Star , Light , Distant

“(Sylvia to character in book she is reading, Death by) Get out of that tub! Get in your car and get out of there! (Character) Suddenly I felt compelled to get out of that tub and out of that motel. I dressed and hopped in my car. Later I stopped for gas, and met a great guy. We got married and raise cocker spaniels.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 119

Books , Cars , Guy , Reading

“…what has become my frequent prayer since I have had to face death -"Thy holy will, O Lord, not mine be done!"”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

“And he said grow some funk of your own amigo,
Grow some funk of your own.
We no like to with the gringo fight,
But there might be a death in Mexico tonight
If you can't grow some funk of your own amigo.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Grow Some Funk of Your Own, written by Elton John, Bernie Taupin, and Davey Johnstone
Song lyrics, Rock of the Westies (1975)

Fight

“Let us strive then, while Life is ours, to secure that Death may find we have left little or nothing he can destroy.”
Proinde, dum suppetit vita, enitamur ut mors quam paucissima quae abolere possit inveniat.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 5, 8.
Letters, Book V

Life

“See, they say, how they love one another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death.”
Vide, inquiunt, ut invicem se diligant; ipsi enim invicem oderunt: et ut pro alterutro mori sint parati; ipsi enim ad occidendum alterutrum paratiores erunt.

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Source: Apologeticus pro Christianis, Chapter 39, describing how Christianity is mocked by its enemies.

Love , Animals

“For little differs death and heavy sleep.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Dal sonno alla morte è un picciol varco.
Canto IX, stanza 18 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Sleep

“T is not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

The Issues of Life and Death.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life

“I guess it was the big plane crash picture [why Warhol started his 'Death'-series], the front page of a newspaper: '129 DIED'. I was also painting the Marilyns [the Marylin Monroe portraits, Warhol started after her tragic death in 1962] I realized that everything I was doing must have been death. It was Christmas or Labor Day - a holiday - and very time that you turned on the radio they said something like '4 millions are going to die'. That started it. But when you see I gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have any effect.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1963 - 1967, What Is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight Painters, Part 1 (1963), pp. 116-19

Time , Holiday , Christmas , Painting

“[Conservative talk radio hosts] have conned the American people into thinking there is such a thing as a pro-life, pro-war, pro-gun, pro-death penalty Christian.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

Left of the Dial (2005)
Documentaries

Life , War , People , Penalty

“Another workingman named Bóndaref, was also of immense practical help to Tolstoy, chiefly through his remarkable book "Industry and Idleness.".. Bóndaref insists that the "chief, primary, and most immutable" law for humanity is that every man must earn his own bread with his own hands. "Bread labor," as thus understood, includes all heavy rough work necessary to save man from death by hunger and cold and this bread includes, of course, food, drink, clothes, shelter, and fuel…. As the world has rarely heard such teachings since the days of the Apostles and the early Christian Fathers, Tolstoy seemed to consider Bóndaref as the discoverer of a new truth which he eagerly accepted as fundamental to a just life…. he emphasized the point that children must he taught above all things to do hard productive labor. They must be taught to be ashamed from the very beginning to use, and profit by, the labor of others.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 24-25

Life , Hunger , Children , Truth

“Life is too full of death for death to be able to add anything to it.”

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

Tears and Saints (1937)

Life

“"Well, wouldn't that be the ultimate cure?" Aira concluded cheerfully. "The cure for death?"”

Vanna Bonta book Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel

Source: Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel (1995), Ch. 32

“The fact that I got to be the CEO of a publicly traded company in the marijuana space, that was something that was completely unexpected. But very quickly, marijuana products medicinally compete with legal prescription drugs that statistically kill 100,000 people a year. There's not been one documented death due to marijuana. Then on the recreational side, I've always maintained that legalizing marijuana will lead to less overall substance abuse because people will find it as such a safer alternative than everything else that's out there, starting with alcohol.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

2016, Interview with CNBC's John Harwood (August 22, 2016)

People , Alcohol , Marijuana

“How shocking must thy summons be, O Death!
To him that is at ease in his possessions!
Who, counting on long years of pleasure here,
Is quite unfurnished for the world to come.
In that dread moment, how the frantic soul
Raves round the walls of her clay tenement;
Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help;
But shrieks in vain.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 175.

Pleasure , World , Soul , Help

“… because man has been created in God’s image, sin is not natural. Sin is the deformation of man, it is a cancer, it is a sickness unto death which has infected man.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Creationism and Psychology (n. d.)

God , Nature

“In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech at the Convention of Colored Men, Louisville, Kentucky (24 September 1883).
1880s, Speech at the Convention of Colored Men (1883)

Life , Color

“This culling poem is a blessing. Why do you think it was created in the first place? It will save millions of people from the slow terrible death we're headed for from disease, from famine, drought, from solar radiation, from war, from all the places we're headed.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

War , People , Disease , Thinking

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 15: The Slimy Mallows (p. 122-123)

Truth , Hope , Way , Silence

“Next morning the sun revealed a horrid spectacle on the vast plain south of PAnipat. On the actual field of the combat thirty-one distinct heaps of the slain were counted, the number of bodies in each ranging from 500 upwards to 1000 and in four up to 1500 a rough total of 28,000. In addition to these, the ditch round the Maratha camp was full of dead bodies, partly the victims of disease and famine during the long siege and partly wounded men who had crawled out of the fighting to die there. West and south of PAnipat city, the jungle and the road in the line of MarAtha retreat were littered with the remains of those who had fallen unresisting in the relentless DurrAni pursuit or from hunger and exhaustion. Their number - probably three-fourths non-combatants and one-fourth soldiers - could not have been far short of the vast total of those slain in the battlefield. 'The hundreds who lay down wounded, perished from the severity of the cold.'….
'After the havoc of combat followed massacre in cold blood. Several hundreds of MarAthas had hidden themselves in the hostile city of PAnipat through folly or helplessness; and these were hunted out next day and put to the sword. According to one plausible account, the sons of Abdus Samad Khan and Mian Qutb received the DurrAni king's permission to avenge their father's death by an indiscriminate massacre of the MarAthas for one day, and in this way nearly nine thousand men perished; these were evidently non-combatants. The eyewitness Kashiraj Pandit thus describes the scene: 'Every Durrani soldier brought away a hundred or two of prisoners and slew them in the outskirts of their camp, crying out, When I started from our country, my mother, father, sister and wife told me to slay so may kafirs for their sake after we had gained the victory in this holy war, so that the religious merit of this act [of infidel slaying] might accrue to them. In this way, thousands of soldiers and other persons were massacred. In the Shah's camp, except the quarters of himself and his nobles, every tent had a heap of severed heads before it. One may say that it was verily doomsday for the MarAtha people.'….
The booty captured within the entrenchment was beyond calculation and the regiments of Khans [i. e. 8000 troopers of AbdAli clansmen] did not, as far as possible, allow other troops like the IrAnis and the TurAnis to share in the plunder; they took possession of everything themselves, but sold to the Indian soldiers handsome Brahman women for one tuman and good horses for two tumans each.' The Deccani prisoners, male and female reduced to slavery by the victorious army numbered 22,000, many of them being the sons and other relatives of the sardArs or middle class men. Among them 'rose-limbed slave girls' are mentioned.' Besides these 22,000 unhappy captives, some four hundred officers and 6000 men fled for refuge to ShujA-ud-daulah's camp, and were sent back to the Deccan with monetary help by that nawab, at the request of his Hindu officers. The total loss of the MarAthas after the battle is put at 50,000 horses, captured either by the AfghAn army or the villagers along the route of flight, two hundred thousand draught cattle, some thousands of camels, five hundred elephants, besides cash and jewellery. 'Every trooper of the Shah brought away ten, and sometimes twenty camels laden with money. The captured horses were beyond count but none of them was of value; they came like droves of sheep in their thousands.”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.210-11

Women , Men , Money , Hunger

“I went to the Rayburn Building the other day on trifling business. It was an appalling experience. I had forgotten how preposterous the thing is with its pretentious megatonnage of rock and steel spreading acre after acre down the slope of Capitol Hill in sullen defiance to eternity and man.
It dwarfs the forum of the Caesars. Mussolini would have wept in envy.
Inside, one is compelled to dwell upon the insignificance of humanity. Not a single tiny wisp of beauty, nothing that is graceful, or charming, or eccentric, or human presents itself to the senses. Trying to imagine Clay and Webster in this celebration to the death of the spirit, erected to the glory that was Congress, is an exercise in comic despair.
What do we have? Banks of stainless-steel elevators. Miracles of plumbing. Corridors of cemetery marble stretching to far horizons under the most artificial light millions of dollars can create, a light that abides no shadow, grants no privacy, tolerates nothing that is interesting in the slightest degree.
Occasionally a small figure appeared in the distance, grew larger, then larger, then assumed human proportion, then passed and became smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Two ants had passed in a pyramid.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Moods of Washington" (p.36)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Beauty , Exercises , Imagination , Business

“The masochist bullies the sadist into action. The most person person is actually the aggressor. Every day, just you living means the misery and death of plants and animals- and even some people. "Slaughterhouses, factory farms, sweatshops," she says, "like it or not, that's what your money buys."”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Money , People , Animals , Personality

“Death is in the nature of the universe, Barker. Death is only the operation of a mechanism. All the universe has been running down from the moment of its creation. Did you expect a machine to care what it acted upon? Death is like sunlight or a falling star; they don’t care where they fall. Death cannot see the pennants on a lance, or the wreath of glory in a dying man’s hand. Flags and flowers are the inventions of life. When a man dies, he falls into enemy hands—an ignorant enemy, who doesn’t merely spit on banners but who doesn’t even know what banners are. No ordinary man could stand to find that out. You found it out today. You sat in the laboratory and were speechless at the injustice of it. You’d never thought that justice was only another human invention.”

Algis Budrys book Rogue Moon

Source: Rogue Moon (1960), Chapter 5, Section 6 (p. 117)

Life , Justice , Star , Flowers

“Mr. President, this is Ed Bradley in New York. There are many people who would question our system of criminal justice today in the United States--in fact, many people who have lost faith in our criminal justice system. With so many people languishing on death row today for so many years, how can you say with such assurance that justice will be certain, swift, and severe?”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Ed Bradley, Interview with '60 Minutes' on CBS, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/WCPD-1995-05-01/html/WCPD-1995-05-01-Pg689.htm, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 17, 689-694, April 23, 1995, United States Government Printing Office]

People , Faith , Justice , Question

“ITEM: The Mike Tyson trial. The hotel in which the jury is sequestered goes ablaze. Two firefighters die saving its occupants. The trial of Mike Tyson made us increasingly aware of men-as-rapists. The firefighters' deaths did not make us increasingly aware of men-as-saviors. We were more aware of one man doing harm than of two men saving…”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 36.

Men

“We went to the hospital; it was full. The doctor told me that two hundred had died the day before. I asked the cause of death; he shrugged and said, "Tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to live."”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Broadcast from Buchenwald (1945)

“If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would have this legalese up front:
The content of this book is distributed on an 'as is' basis, without warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation, usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index (if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns, is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis, even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art, literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance. References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person, corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn't good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive license to read the material contained herein. You may not read it aloud to any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first published in 2004, and is distributed 'as is', without warranty as to quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness of jibe.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

"If Books Were Sold as Software" http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=20040818#11200, NewsScan.com (18 August 2004)
If Books Were Sold as Software (2004)

People , Books , Art , Error

“Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?
Hugo: No.
Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.
Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Act 4, sc. 4
Dirty Hands (1948)

Life

“Birth control may in time catch up with death control. …But for the present and the short-range future, it remains obvious that humanity is in course of one of the most massive and extraordinary ecological upheavals the planet has ever known. …a sequence of sharp alterations and abrupt oscillations in existing balances between microparasitism and macroparasitism can therefore be expected in the near future as in the recent past.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

Birth , Time , Past , Future

“Death will find a way.
Even the gods must pass.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 85 (p. 574)

God , Way

“I had every reason to believe that my collection would be permanently established in Sussex, and serve as the foundation for a County Museum. In that expectation I have… been utterly disappointed. …after the death of my noble and lamented friend, the late Earl of Egremont, the munificent patron of the Institution, the proposed measure was abandoned… I have therefore, in compliance with the wishes of my scientific friends, disposed of my entire collection to the Trustees of the British Museum. …that collection, which would have been of tenfold importance if located in the district from whence it was derived, and whose physical structure it was designed to illustrate, is now broken up, and will be dispersed through the cabinets of our National Institution… a time will assuredly come, when their endeavours to promote a taste for scientific knowledge among the intelligent inhabitants of Sussex, and to direct attention to the investigation of its physical phenomena, will he properly appreciated, and the failure of their attempt to secure to the county a collection so rich in its peculiar fossil and mineral productions, be remembered with regret.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Vol. 1
The Wonders of Geology (1839)

Disappointment , Intelligence , Failure , Knowledge

“Just as the mother influence is formative with a man's anima, the father has a determining influence on the animus of a daughter. The father imbues his daughter's mind with the specific coloring conferred by those indisputable views mentioned above, which in reality are so often missing in the daughter. For this reason the animus is also sometimes represented as a demon of death. A gypsy tale, for example, tells of a woman living alone who takes in an unknown handsome wanderer and lives with him in spite of the fact that a fearful dream has warned her that he is the king of the dead. Again and again she presses him to say who he is. At first he refuses to tell her, because he knows that she will then die, but she persists in her demand. Then suddenly he tells her he is death. The young woman is so frightened that she dies. Looked at from the point of view of mythology, the unknown wanderer here is clearly a pagan father and god figure, who manifests as the leader of the dead (like Hades, who carried off Persephone). He embodies a form of the animus that lures a woman away from all human relationships and especially holds her back from love with a real man. A dreamy web of thoughts, remote from life and full of wishes and judgments about how things "ought to be," prevents all contact with life. The animus appears in many myths, not only as death, but also as a bandit and murderer, for example, as the knight Bluebeard, who murdered all his wives.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Source: Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Animus, a Woman's Inner Man, p. 319 - 320

Love , Life , God , Fear

“Death was soon and growing sooner.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 20, “The Shield of Lady Wisdom” Section 6 (p. 280)

“I'm weary of conjectures,—this must end 'em.
Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me:
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Life , War , Youth , Age

“The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

"Pale Horse, Pale Rider" (1939)

Evil , Heart

“You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement; only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style. And refrain from insult as much as you are able. Having levelled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home. If I imagined you really wished me to marry Isabel, I'd cut my throat!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XI).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Home , Imagination

“One should be firm on the Truth, and to bow down to (worldly) might is not the actual truth. The actual truth is Allah, and to Allah we all return. Life and death are true. Man should live with honor. These people wanted me to bow down to them.”

Abdul Rashid Ghazi (1964–2007) Pakistani fundamentalist

Life , People , Truth

“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 16 “Between Drumner and Dremegole” (p. 233)

Life , Way , Lying , Lovers

“Tonight is the night we celebrate excellence in film, with me, the fourth male lead from Death to Smoochy.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Rent it.
The 78th Academy Awards (2006)

Night

“…death came so easily, hardly announced, without apparent cause, often greeted with smiles.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Smile

“Will the tax cut destroy America’s prosperity? Probably not. As Adam Smith observed, there’s a deal of ruin in a nation. We have a huge, resilient economy that can survive and recover from even quite bad government policies.
Yet while the tax cut may not be a matter of economic life or death, it is a very serious issue. For one thing, like it or not, the tax cut has become the central political issue in the United States right now. Conservatives who want to reshape America view passage of a large tax cut as a first step toward realizing their vision. For that reason, those who do not share this vision feel, rightly, that they must oppose the plan.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Introduction
Fuzzy Math: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan (2001)

Life , Feeling

“There is no danger to the man that knows
What life and death is; there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.
He goes before them, and commands them all,
That to himself is a law rational.”

George Chapman The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron

Act III, scene i.
The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608)

Life , Law , Knowledge

“Oedipus had already probed his impious eyes with guilty hand and sunk deep his shame condemned to everlasting night; he dragged out his life in a long-drawn death. He devotes himself to darkness, and in the lowest recess of his abode he keeps his home on which the rays of heaven never look; and yet the fierce daylight of his soul flits around him with unflagging wings and the Avengers of his crimes are in his heart.”
Impia jam merita scrutatus lumina dextra merserat aeterna damnatum nocte pudorem Oedipodes longaque animam sub morte trahebat. illum indulgentem tenebris imaeque recessu sedis inaspectos caelo radiisque penates seruantem tamen adsiduis circumuolat alis saeva dies animi, scelerumque in pectore Dirae.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 46

Life , Home , Soul , Heart

“Think of the majesty of that moment in this dying world's history, when Jesus Christ declared that to the Christian death was only a sleep. Outside of that small dwelling in Capernaum, a great race of men rushed and toiled as they harassed continents and seas; mighty events marshaled themselves into annals and pageants. What was inside? In one inconspicuous chamber of a now forgotten house, man's Redeemer, unobserved, martyred man's final enemy. There Immanuel subdued death forever.”

Charles Seymour Robinson (1829–1899) American pastor, editor and compiler of hymns

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 64.

Men , World , History , Thinking

“I've lived through 17 stays in penal institutions. Incarceration in a penitentiary. Five marriages, a bankruptcy, a broken back, brawls, shooting incidents, swindlings, sickness, the death of loved ones and more. I've heard tens of thousands chant my name when I couldn't hear the voice of my own soul. I wondered if God was listening and I was sure no one else was.”

Merle Haggard (1937–2016) American country music song writer, singer and musician

Sing Me Back Home (1981), co-written with Peggy Russell; also quoted in "Country Legend Merle Haggard Dies At 79" at NPR (6 April 2016) http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/04/06/473260432/country-legend-merle-haggard-dies-at-79

Love , God , Marriage , Soul

“I drug your ghost across the country, and we plotted out my death.
Every city and memory we whispered "Here is where you rest."
Well I was determined in Chicago but I dug my teeth into my knees
And I settled for a telephone, sang into your machine:
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine."”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

The Calendar Hung Itself
Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

Memory , Country

“I cannot conceive of anything after my physical death—perhaps it will end it all. The knowledge that I am now on this earth and a mysterious part of eternity is enough for me. My death will be an easy one, too, for since early youth I have always detached myself from family, friends, and surroundings. And should I live on, I have no fear of the next life. Whatever good I did helped to free me from myself. What a miserable creature man would be if he were good not for the sake of being good, but because religion told him that he would get a reward after this life, and that if he weren't good he'd be punished.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 104

Life , Youth , Fear , Family

“Angel of Death ain't kissing me! I'm full of garlic!”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

The 2,000 Year Old Man (and sequels)

Angels , Kiss

“The relation between physical sanitary laws and the national welfare is now hardly disputed. At this moment the cholera is stealthily feeling its terrible way along the edges of Europe to this country, and there is not an intelligent man who does not know that it is a divine vengeance upon uncleanliness. Let it seize the unclean city of New York, and it will riot in horror and devastation. Panic will empty the palaces, trade will stop in the warehouses. Those who can will flee, while the poor and wretched, poisoned in tenement-houses, will be huddled in heaps of agony and death. Does any man say that cholera is God's remedy for overpopulation? On the contrary, it is only the ghastly proof that God's laws of human health are disregarded. It is not a proclamation that the world is over-peopled; it is merely a warning for the world to provide decently for its population. God does not create men in his image to rot in tenement-houses, and he will make squalor and filth and misery plague-spots threatening the fairest prosperity, until that prosperity acknowledges in vast sanitary reforms that cleanliness is next to godliness. And if the dread pestilence now approaching our shores would frighten us into universal purgation of our foul cities, it would be seen at this moment hovering in the wintry air, not an angry demon, but a stem angel with a sword of fire to open the path of knowledge and humanity and civilization.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men , God , People , Health

“I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

Reg. v. Bradlaugh and others (1883), 15 Cox, C.C. 230.

God , People , Age , Religion

“What will you do with Jesus? Do with Him did I say? O what, what will you do without Him f What, when affliction and anguish shall come upon you? what, when closing your eyelids in death? what, when appearing before the awful judgment-seat?”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 95.

Affliction , Appearance

“…the covenant people must wage war against the enemies of God, because this war is unto death. The deliberate, refined, and obscene violence of the anti-God forces permits no quarter…this warfare must continue until the Amalekites of the world are blotted out, until God's law-order prevails and His justice reigns.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), P. 308

God , War , People , World

“This is his [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus'] conclusion (II. 17): "What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, Philosophy. But this consists in keeping the divinity within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements [himself]? for it is according to nature; and nothing is evil that is according to nature."”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

The Philosophy of Antoninus

Pain , Pleasure , Feeling , Nature

“Don Conroy died with exemplary courage, as one would expect. He never complained about pain or whimpered or cried out. His death was stoical and quiet. He never quit fighting, never surrendered, and never gave up. He died like a king. He died like The Great Santini. I thank you with all my heart.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Letter to his readers (1998)

Pain , Courage , Heart , Fight

“Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part II “The Water”, Chapter 1 (p. 170)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“Julio, in those libraries of death
study the bodies of those bones—an assured evil;
and learn from those characters
that they form the abecedary of death!”

Hernando Domínguez Camargo (1606–1659) Colombian poet

En tantas de la muerte liberias,
Los cuerpos de esos huesos mal seguro
Estudia Julio, y en su letra advierte,
que son abecedarios de la muerte!
San Ignacio de Loyola (1666), Poema heroyco ('Heroic Poem of Saint Ignatius of Loyola'), Book IV, Canto 6.
Quoted in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 335

Study , Learning , Evil