“The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.”
Maxim 511
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
Source: The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
“The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.”
Maxim 511
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
“More cruel than death itself, to die at that particular conjuncture!”
O morte ipsa mortis tempus indignius!
Letter 16, 6.
Letters, Book V
“The mode of death is sadder than death itself.”
XI, 91.
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 14.8–9
trans. Jay Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (1995), ISBN 0195093364
“I thought of love as a game. It is not a game. It is more serious than death.”
Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death.”
Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 178-179
Context: Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
“The thought of death deceives us; for it causes us to neglect to live.”
La pensée de la mort nous trompe, car elle nous fait oublier de vivre.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 172.