Quotes
Quotes about Death
Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?
As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
A fly bit the bare pate of a bald man, who in endeavouring to crush it gave himself a hard slap. Then said the fly jeeringly, "You wanted to revenge the sting of a tiny insect with death; what will you do to yourself, who have added insult to injury?"
Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them,--thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.
As Cæsar was at supper the discourse was of death,--which sort was the best. "That," said he, "which is unexpected."
Diogenes the Cynic, when a little before his death he fell into a slumber, and his physician rousing him out of it asked him whether anything ailed him, wisely answered, "Nothing, sir; only one brother anticipates another,--Sleep before Death."
In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.
Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.
Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.
Death,--a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.
Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favour; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.
Thales said there was no difference between life and death. "Why, then," said some one to him, "do not you die?" "Because," said he, "it does make no difference."
Anarcharsis, on learning that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, said that "the passengers were just that distance from death."
Euripides says,--
Who knows but that this life is really death,
And whether death is not what men call life?
In every hedge and ditch both day and night
We fear our death, of every leafe affright.
In the jaws of death.
There is a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us out flat some time or other.
The ass will carry his load, but not a double load; ride not a free horse to death.
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
To arms! to arms! ye brave!
The avenging sword unsheathe!
March on! march on! all hearts resolved
On victory or death!
Death is an eternal sleep.
Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh, that is to say over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of illness, of loneliness and of death. There is no real piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.
Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!
