Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 3, Sympathetic Magic.
“Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.”
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter IV: On the terrors of death
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Seneca the Younger 225
Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist -4–65 BCRelated quotes
Mark Twain
(1835–1910) American author and humorist
Not by Twain, but from Edward Abbey's A Voice Crying In The Wilderness (1989).
Misattributed
Fire from Heaven (1969)
Book II, 2.40-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book II
“Until we know that death is equal to life, we live in fear.”
Byron Katie
(1942) American spiritual writer
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)
June Jordan
(1936–2002) Poet, essayist, playwright, feminist and bisexual activist
"Many Rivers To Cross" (1981); later published in Some of Us Did Not Die : New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002)
Context: I wanted to be strong. I never wanted to be weak again as long as I lived. I thought about my mother and her suicide and I thought about how my father could not tell whether she was dead or alive.
I wanted to get well and what I wanted to do as soon as I was strong, actually, what I wanted to do was I wanted to live my life so that people would know unmistakably that I am alive, so that when I finally die people will know the difference for sure between my living and my death.
And I thought about the idea of my mother as a good woman and I rejected that, because I don't see why it's a good thing when you give up, or when you cooperate with those who hate you or when you polish and iron and mend and endlessly mollify for the sake of the people who love the way that you kill yourself day by day silently.
And I think all of this is really about women and work. Certainly this is all about me as a woman and my life work. I mean I am not sure my mother’s suicide was something extraordinary. Perhaps most women must deal with a similar inheritance, the legacy of a woman whose death you cannot possibly pinpoint because she died so many, many times and because, even before she became my mother, the life of that woman was taken; I say it was taken away.