“Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.”

— George Orwell , book Coming Up for Air

Source: Coming Up for Air, Part 3, Ch. 1

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George Orwell 473

English author and journalist 1903–1950

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge

“If the man of power were to take a message of absolute honesty and absolute love seriously he would lose his power, or would divest himself of it.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Christianity and Power Politics (1936)
Context: In the simple and decadent individualism of the Oxford group movement there is no understanding of the fact that the man of power is always to a certain degree an anti-Christ. "All power," said Lord Acton with cynical realism, "corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely." If the man of power were to take a message of absolute honesty and absolute love seriously he would lose his power, or would divest himself of it. This is not to imply that the world can get along without power and that it is not preferable that men of conscience should wield it rather than scoundrels. But if men of power had not only conscience but also something of the gospel's insight into the intricacies of social sin in the world, they would know that they could never extricate themselves completely from the sinfulness of power, even while they were wielding it ostensibly for the common good. (Chapter 29: "Hitler and Buchman")

“When his brain died, all of the memories
held in his gray matter, along with all of the knowledge he had acquired, would simply evaporate
in a flood of chemical reactions.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

“A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

“There comes a time in a man's life when he hears the call of the sea. If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

“When an unbaked pot is broken, the potter can use the mud to make a new one; but when a baked one is broken, he cannot do the same any longer. So when a person dies in a state of ignorance, he is born again; but when he becomes well baked in the fire of true knowledge and dies a perfect man, he is not born again.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 46

“When the good man yields his breath
(For the good man never dies).”

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

The Wanderer of Switzerland, Part v. Compare: "Say not that the good die" (translated from original Greek), Callimachus, Epigram x.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).