Quotes About Death

Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy!

There is not only nothing in common between the churches as such and Christianity, except the name, but they represent two principles fundamentally opposed and antagonistic to one another. One represents pride, violence, self-assertion, stagnation, and death; the other, meekness, penitence, humility, progress, and life. We cannot serve these two masters; we have to choose between them.

He saw nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything.

He had been stricken with horror, not so much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and how, and what it was

Yes, there it is. Well, then, let there be pain. "And death? Where is it?" He sought his old habitual fear of death and could not find it. Where was it? What death? There was no more fear because there was no more death. Instead of death there was light.

The question how to live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question presented itself—death.

And do you know, there's less charm in life, when one thinks of death, but there's more peace.

Well, what of it? I've not given up thinking of death. It's true that it's high time I was dead; and that all this is nonsense. It's the truth I'm telling you. I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - it's all dust and ashes.

When I am not, what will there be? There will be nothing. Then where shall I be when I am no more? Can this be dying?

What are these deaths and revivals? It is clear that I do not live whenever I lose my faith in the existence of God, and I would have killed myself long ago if I did not have some vague hope of finding God. I truly live only whenever I am conscious of him and seek him. "What, then, do I seek?" a voice cried out within me. "He is there, the one without whom there could be no life." To know God and to liVe come to one and the same thing. God is life.

It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for.

But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact—that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so.

Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself.

Besides considerations as to the possible transfers and promotions likely to result from Ivan Ilych's death, the mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent feeling that, 'it is he who is dead and not I.' Each one thought or felt, 'Well, he's dead but I'm alive!

Love? What is love?" he thought. "Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?

He suffered ever the same unceasing agonies and in his loneliness pondered always on the same insoluble question: "What is this? Can it be that it is Death?" And the inner voice answered: Yes, it is Death. "Why these sufferings?" And the voice answered, For no reason—they just are so.

You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease asking.

Now they are playing." (He heard through the door the distant sound of a song and its accompaniment.) "It's all the same to them, but they will die too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them. And now they are merry... the beasts!

What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all? There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease asking." But dying was also dreadful.

Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort? How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud!

Life is a dream, death is an awakening.

The answer was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease asking.

He fought as a prisoner sentenced to death fights the executioner, knowing that he cannot prevail; and with each minute he felt, despite all the efforts of his struggle, that he was getting closer and closer to what terrified him.