quotations about death
When one fears that somehow he will not be able to maintain an understanding grasp of something complex and extensive, he tries to find or to make for himself a brief summary of the whole--for the sake of a comprehensive view. Thus death is the briefest summary of life or life reduced to its briefest form. Therefore to those who in truth meditate on human life it has always been very important again and again to test with this brief summary what they have understood about life. For no thinker has power over life as does death, this mighty thinker who is able not only to think through every illusion but can think it analytically and as a whole, think it down to the bottom.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
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Works of Love
Death makes equal the high and low.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Be Merry Friends
Look on the grave where thou must sleep
Thy last, and strongest foe;
It is endurance not to weep,
If that repose seem woe.
EMILY BRONTE
Self-Interrogation
The dead body makes the living one obscene. It's why we close the eyes, too. The dead shouldn't have to look on the lewd aliveness of things.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
The gate of death is never at rest.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
All living things were brothers, and all dead things were even more so.
KURT VONNEGUT
The Sirens of Titan
Death is a meeting place of sea and sea.
CONRAD AIKEN
The House of Dust
Death is not an end, but a transition-crisis. All the forms of decay are but masks of regeneration--the secret alembics of vitality.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Death is progress, advance, disimprisonment.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Death is the continuing of life ... the next part of our life. It's like walking through a door, you know? Walking through the door marked "Death": It's the beginning of a new part of our journey.
ROSEMARY ALTEA
interview, Larry King Live, Mar. 15, 2000
Death's a fable. Did not Heaven inspire your equal Elements with living Fire blown from the Spring of Life? Is not that breath Immortal? Come; ye are as free from death as He that made ye: Can the flames expire which he kindled?
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
If we were sensible we would seek death--the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"Nietzscheism and Realism"
Nowadays, we have technology that's improved so that we can bring people back to life. In fact, there are drugs being developed right now -- who knows if they'll ever make it to the market -- that may actually slow down the process of brain-cell injury and death. Imagine, you fast-forward to ten years down the line and you've given a patient whose heart has just stopped this amazing drug, and actually what it does is it slows everything down so that the things that would've happened over an hour, now happen over two days. As medicine progresses, we will end up with lots and lots of ethical questions.
SAM PARNIA
interview, Time, Sep. 18, 2008
Remember the coffin where men
All must to dust be returning.
HENRI CAZALIS
"Always"
It seemeth such a little way to me
Across to that strange country -- the Beyond;
And yet, not strange, for it has grown to be
The home of those of whom I am so fond,
They make it seem familiar and most dear,
As journeying friends bring distant regions near.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Beyond"
Man dies. Come from darkness, into darkness he returns, and is reabsorbed, without a trace left, into the illimitable void of time.
LEONID ANDREYEV
The Life of Man
Odd thing about death ... it reaffirms life.
RITA MAE BROWN
Hounded to Death
People living deeply have no fear of death.
ANAIS NIN
The Diary of Anais Nin
Death is when the monsters get you.
STEPHEN KING
Salem's Lot
Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.
IRVIN D. YALOM
Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death