Quotes About Death

On the seventh day of Passover, the curtain finally rose: the Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community. From that moment on, everything happened very quickly. The race toward death had begun. First edict: Jews were prohibited from leaving their residences for three days, under penalty of death. Moishe the Beadle came running to our house. "I warned you," he shouted. And left without waiting for a response. The same day, the Hungarian police

We marched. Gates opened and closed. We continued to march between the barbed wire. At every step, white signs with black skulls looked down on us. The inscription: WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH. What irony. Was there here a single place where one was not in danger of death?

Death alone is invisible. Man's end was the same everywhere.

Forgetfulness was for him the death not only of knowledge but also of imagination.

you should know that the dead, because they are no longer free, are no longer able to suffer. Only the living can.

Everything had been said. The pros and the cons. I would choose the living or the dead. Day or night.

why should God be allied with death? Why should He want to kill a man who succeeded in seeing him? Now, everything became clear. God was ashamed. God likes to sleep with twelve-year-old girls. And He doesn't want us to know. Whoever sees it or guesses it must die so as not to divulge the secret. Death is only the guard who protects God, the doorkeeper of the immense brothel that we call the universe.

There is nothing sacred, nothing uplifting, in hatred or in death. In this story, which calls religious and cultural ideas into question, I evoke the ultimate violence: murder. It aims to put on guard all of those who, in the name of their faith or of some ideal, commit cruel acts of terrorism against innocent victims. And yet

At every step, white signs with black skulls looked down on us. The inscription: WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH. What irony. Was there here a single place where one was not in danger of death?

That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.

God is dead, the God of love, of gentleness and consolation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had, under the watchful gaze of this child, vanished forever into the smoke of the human holocaust demanded by the Race, the most voracious of all idols. And

Or was it simply to preserve a record of the ordeal I endured as an adolescent, at an age when one's knowledge of death and evil should be limited to what one discovers in literature?

It was that moment that I began to hate them, and my hate is still the only link between us today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first of the faces of hell and death.

Yom Kippur. The day of Atonement. Should we fast? The question was hotly debated. To fast would mean a surer, swifter death. We fasted here the whole year round. The whole year was Yom Kippur.

Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!" the Hungarian police were screaming. That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death. They

Behind me, I heard the same man asking: "For God's sake, where is God?" And from within me, I heard a voice answer: "Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows …" That night, the soup tasted of corpses.

shot … Death enveloped me, it suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt I could touch it. The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot. To no longer feel anything, neither fatigue nor cold, nothing. To break rank, to let myself slide to the side of the road … My

That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death. They

We're the only ones who know what death is all about. And the earth itself. Just let somebody try to muscle in on our work, and the earth will swallow him up like that, believe me. The earth is kind to us gravediggers. It doesn't complain, it lets itself be worked over. It accepts what we give it. It endures the assassin's arrogance and the victim's tears. It's open to everybody at any moment; the great conqueror is the earth, for it is the earth that raises the dead and feeds the living.

And I realize that my fear has left me. Not a trace of panic any more. I don't have to save the little girl with the golden hair, she's already dead. The anguish oppressing me for months lifts. I feel strangely relieved. 'And liberated.' T

We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.

Sometimes I think that you're too sweet to die, Sometimes I think that you're too sweet to die, And another time I think you ought to be buried alive.

What happened when we died? How were we to know that death wasn't as profound an adventure as life was?

I knew at least Banalia was dead; that had happened right in front of my eyes. They would either eat her now or smoke her body to sell the meat. It made my stomach turn--the DNA in that meat was almost 99 percent the same as human DNA; it was nearly cannibalism. But the men were hungry.