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Quotes About Death

Some will be alarmed by the prospect of a doctor's writing about the inevitability of decline and death. For many, such talk, however carefully framed, raises the specter of a society readying itself to sacrifice its sick and aged. But what if the sick and aged are already being sacrificed—victims of our refusal to accept the inexorability of our life cycle?
~ Atul Gawande
People believed death should be accepted stoically, without fear or self-pity or hope for anything more than the forgiveness of God. Reaffirming one's faith, repenting one's sins, and letting go of one's worldly possessions and desires were crucial, and the guides provided families with prayers and questions for the dying in order to put them in the right frame of mind during their final hours. Last words came to hold a particular place of reverence.
~ Atul Gawande
The main objection to killing people as a punishment...is that killing people is wrong
~ Auberon Waugh
I am much bigger than the average chicken, and furthermore I was armed with a rolling pin and kitchen knife. As a matter of fact I have always had the greatest contempt for chickens. They are so stupid that they probably don't even notice the difference when they die, but I must admit that this particular chicken put up a very good fight.
~ Auberon Waugh
What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?
~ Audre Lorde
Speaking] is never without fear; of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now, that if I were to have been born mute, and had maintained an oath of silence my whole life for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.
~ Audre Lorde
I want to write rage but all that comes is sadness. We have been sad long enough to make this earth either weep or grow fertile. I am an anachronism, a sport, like the bee that was never meant to fly. Science said so. I am not supposed to exist. I carry death around in my body like a condemnation. But I do live. The bee flies. There must be some way to integrate death into living, neither ignoring it nor giving in to it.
~ Audre Lorde
This hatred and our anger are very different. Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.
~ Audre Lorde
Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.
~ Audre Lorde
When we admit and deal with difference; when we deal with the deep bitterness; when we deal with the horror of even our different nightmares; when we turn them and look at them, it's like looking at death: hard but possible. If you look at it directly without embracing it, then there is much less that you can ever be made to fear.
~ Audre Lorde
The only answer to death is the heat and confusion of living; the only dependable warmth is the warmth of the blood.
~ Audre Lorde
This new century arrived and we saw death, generational death, peeling our skins down to our blood plasma. And I asked you question after question, distracted by the scandal of billionaires accessorizing their flesh with newly minted coins. Where are we on this food chain of life to be eaten so easily century after century, decade after decade? Are
~ Audre Lorde
Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly, now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else's words.
~ Audre Lorde
Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction.
~ Audre Lorde
Our dead line our dreams, their deaths becoming more and more commonplace.
~ Audre Lorde
Within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not - I am not only a casuality, I am also a warrior.
~ Audre Lorde
Death folds the corners of my mouth into a heart-shaped star. It sits on my tongue like a stone around which your name blossoms distorted. — Audre Lorde, from "Speechless," The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde . (W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition February 17, 2000)
~ Audre Lorde
Ah woe is me, how sad a thing Is life within this vale of tears, Death's angel triumphs like a king, And calls aloud to all the spheres— Vanity, all is vanity. Yes
~ August Strindberg
All that on earth hath life and breath To earth must fall before his spear, And sorrow, saved alone from death, Inscribes above the mighty bier. Vanity, all is vanity. Yes
~ August Strindberg
TROY: Death ain't nothing. I done seen him. Done wrasled with him. You can't tell me nothing about death. death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner. And you know what I'll do to that! Lookee here, Bono...am I lying? You get one of them fastballs, about waist high, over the outside corner of the plate where you can get the meat of the bat on it...and good god! You can kiss it goodbye. Now, am I lying?
~ August Wilson
You die how you live.
~ August Wilson
What police officer would dare ticket Death's minivan?
~ Augusten Burroughs
Give me down. And give me the Polaroids of the fifty geese that had to die in the process.
~ Augusten Burroughs
eath, when it finally arrives, does so in a surprising fashion: it adds nothing to the room, not a light or a spark or a sound; death does not stir a molecule of the air. You know it arrives because there is suddenly a subtraction. You will feel it before you know it.
~ Augusten Burroughs