Quotes About Death

Bravery is a mean state concerned with things that inspire confidence and with things fearful ... and leading us to choose danger and to face it, either because to do so is noble, or because not to do so is base. But to court death as an escape from poverty, or from love, or from some grievous pain, is no proof of bravery, but rather of cowardice.

He then alone will strictly be called brave who is fearless of a noble death, and of all such chances as come upon us with sudden death in their train.

The dead are lucky. They do not have to live with memories of what has been.

Wars demonstrate that our basic impulses have changed little from those of our primitive ancestors, that underneath our civility we are just as uncivilized and savage as ever. Wars show that "our unconscious is just as inaccessible to the idea of our own death, just as murderously inclined towards strangers, just as divided (that is, ambivalent) towards those we love, as was primeval man.

Freud reminds them that children do not conceptualize or fear death as do adults. He then lists what he thinks adults fear about death: "the horrors of corruption . . . freezing in the ice-cold grave . . . the terrors of eternal nothingness." He then adds that adults cannot tolerate these fears, "as is proved by all the myths of a future life." Freud believed that people accepted the religious worldview because of their fear of death and their wish for permanence.

He concludes that one can do only three things about death: "To desire it, to fear it, or to ignore it. The third alternative, which is the one the modern world calls 'healthy,' is surely the most uneasy and precarious of all.

Time reminds everybody of death, but who goes around day and night talking about it? Was this the source of that strange anxiety which sometimes comes over us, without our knowing why? Like some strange sister of joy, it was a tremor of fear, of ending, of all that begins and passes away. Was this the source of that odd loneliness we feel even when we aren't alone. and which is akin to stardust?

To kill and caress. Or simply kill, so you're not always bothered by something or somebody. So it is to be killed or to kill.

There was some need, some attraction that drew him closer to the German boy whose life he'd save, just to lose his own. But it was life that connected them, because it was death at the same time. It couldn't be put into words, it was intangible, but it was as complete as everything in life is; it was what connected birds and people or a grain of dust and the stars. It was strong because it was so weak and weak because it was so strong.

I don't believe in omens or fear Forebodings. I flee from neither slander Nor from poison. Death does not exist. Everyone's immortal. Everything is too. No point in fearing death at seventeen, Or seventy. There's only here and now, and light; Neither death, nor darkness, exists. We're all already on the seashore; I'm one of those who'll be hauling in the nets When a shoal of immortality swims by. from "Life, Life

To die, it's easy. But you have to struggle for life.

It's as if life equals winning, so death equals losing

The crisis of our time is essentially a religious crisis. It is a matter of life or death.

If Disney was a mouthpiece for an American way of life, the force of his voice depended on a curious obsession with death."[6] Virtually every one of his most famous films focused on the subject, from Snow White to Pinocchio.

Death is the most normal, natural thing in life itself, and yet we are amazingly adroit at acting as if it were abnormal and a big surprise.

Planning for the end, then, is our next challenge—and opportunity. CHAPTER 5 Ponder Your Death A couple of years ago I was having lunch with an old friend, a CEO who is almost exactly my age.

Fear animates all success addicts. As philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Confessions, "I was not afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace; and that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything else in the world."[26] Can you relate to this?

That which comes and goes, rises and sets, is born and dies is the ego. That which always abides, never changes, and is devoid of qualities is the Self.

Kenya has deep resonances for the royals: it was here, after all, that the young Princess Elizabeth heard of the death of her father, George VI. From that moment, she was Queen.

I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire.

I have not seen much dignity in the process by which we die. The quest to achieve true dignity fails when our bodies fail.

I've always questioned death and birth and life. Where do we go? Are we here now? Or is this just one of the lives that we live?

Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.

My neighbors are quiet. I am not. I don't know if they're dead or alive.