Quotes About Death

Someone might say: "Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have followed the kind of occupation that has led to your being now in danger of death?" However, I should be right to reply to him: "You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his {33} actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.

Porque temer la muerte, atenienses, no es otra cosa que creerse sabio sin serlo, y creer conocer lo que no se sabe. En efecto, nadie conoce la muerte, ni sabe si es el mayor de los bienes para el hombre. Sin embargo, se la teme, como si se supiese con certeza que es el mayor de todos los males. ¡Ah! ¿No es una ignorancia vergonzante creer conocer una cosa que no se conoce?

Then you have sufficient indication, he said, that any man whom you see resenting death was not a lover of wisdom but a lover of the body, and also a lover of wealth or of honors, either or both.

Then whatever the soul possesses, to that she comes bearing life? Yes, certainly. And is there any opposite to life? There is, he said. And what is that? Death.

You seem to think me inferior to the swans in prophecy. They sing before too, but when they realize that they must die they sing most and most beautifully, as they rejoice that they are about to depart to [85] join the god whose servants they are. But men, because of their own fear of death, tell lies about the swans and say that they lament their death and sing in sorrow.

Doch jetzt ist's Zeit fortzugehen: für mich, um zu sterben, für euch, um zu leben. Wer von uns dem besseren Los entgegengeht, ist uns allen unbrkannt - das weiß nur Gott.

Cei str?ini de filosofie au toate ÅŸansele s? nu-ÅŸi dea seama c? de fapt singura preocupare a celor care i se d?ruiesc cu adev?rat este trecerea în moarte ÅŸi starea care îi urmeaz?.

Then I showed again, not in words but in action, that, if it were not rather vulgar to [d]say so, death is something I couldn't care less about, but that my whole concern is not to do anything unjust or impious.

You may feel irritated at being suddenly awakened when you are caught napping; and you may think that if you were to strike me dead as you easily might, then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you gives you another gadfly.

You were the Morning Star among the living. In death, O Evening Star, you light the dead.

Any man whom you see resenting death was not a lover of wisdom but a lover of the body.

From this tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, I draw the following inferences:—Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else.

SOCRATES: And you would admit once more, my good sir, that great power is a benefit to a man if his actions turn out to his advantage, and that this is the meaning of great power; and if not, then his power is an evil and is no power. But let us look at the matter in another way:—do we not acknowledge that the things of which we were speaking, the infliction of death, and exile, and the deprivation of property are sometimes a good and sometimes not a good?

I should not be surprised that Euripides' lines are true when he says: 'But who knows whether being alive is being dead And being dead is being alive?

But now it is time for us to leave: for me, to go to my death, and for you to go on living. Whether it's you or I who are going to a better thing is clear to no one but the god.

I am on the brink of death, while you will carry on living. The judgment of which is truly better rests only within the knowledge of God.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Death may even be the greatest of all good things for a human being - no one knows, yet people fear it as if they knew for sure that it's the greatest of bad things.

Death doesn't hurt," said one of the twins, and a light came into his silver eyes. "Death is dark, death is sweet." The other twin took up the litany. "Death is all that lasts forever. Death is eternal beauty." "Death is a lover with a thousand tongues—" "A thousand insect caresses—" "Death is easy.

And what was I if not death's ghostwriter?

The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.

Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting. by Primo Levi in Drowned

We too are so dazzled by power and money as to forget our essential fragility, forget that all of us our in the ghetto, that the ghetto is fenced in, that beyond the fence stands the lords of death, and not far away the train is waiting.

One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand.