Quotes
Quotes about Death
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference,and undernourishment.
Letters, from absent friends, extinguish fear, Unite division, and draw distance near; Their magic force each silent wish conveys, And wafts embodied though, a thousand ways: Could souls to bodies write, death's pow'r were mean, For minds could then meet minds with heav'n between.
He is so plaguy proud that the death-tokens of it Cry 'No recovery.'
To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness. He must cease to be George, Hans, Ivan or Tadao- a human atom with an existence bounded by birth and death. The most drastic way to achieve this end is by complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body. The fully assimilated individual does not see himself and others as human beings. When asked who he is, his automatic response is that he is a German, a Russian, a Japanese, a Christian, a Moslem, a member of a certain tribe or family. He has no purpose, worth and destiny apart from his collective body; and as long as that body lives he cannot really die.
Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works, are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men; which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed.
He who serves the public is a poor animal; he worries himself to death and no one thanks him for it. [Ger., Wer dem Publicum dient, ist ein armes Thier; Er qualt sich ab, niemand bedankt sich dafur.]
But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him. - Francis Bacon,
See they suffer death, But in their deaths remember they are men, Strain not the laws to make their tortures grievous.
The best of us being unfit to die, what an unexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death.
I bought an unction of a mountebank, So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, Where it draws blood so cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death That is but scratched withal. I'll touch my point With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, It may be death.
Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone.
An advantage of poverty, your relatives gain nothing by your death.
Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.
I admit that the generation which produced Stalin, Auschwitz and Hiroshima will take some beating; but the radical and universal consciousness of the death of God is still ahead of us; perhaps we shall have to colonize the stars before it is finally borne in upon us that God is not out there.
Christ's grave was the birthplace of an indestructible belief that death is vanquished and there is life eternal.
What then? What rests? Try what repentance can. What can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O wretched state? O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that struggling to be free Art more engaged!
Thy deathbed is no lesser than thy land, Wherein thou liest in reputation sick; And thou, too careless patient as thou art, Committ'st thy anointed body to the cure Of those physicians that first wounded thee.
Welcome death, quoth the rat, when the trap fell.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Rivalry is the life of trade, and the death of the trader.
Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.
In tears I tossed my coin from Trevi's edge. A coin unsordid as a bond of love-- And, with the instinct of the homing dove, I gave to Rome my rendezvous and pledge. And when imperious Death Has quenched my flame of breath, Oh, let me join the faithful shades that throng that fount above.
For God's sake let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings! How some have been deposed, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed-- All murdered; for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and humored thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood With solemn reverence, Throw away respect, Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty; For you have but mistook me all this while. I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, Need friends. Subjected thus,
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
