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Quotes About Death

So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question. And what did the former governess die of? – of so much respectability? Our friend's answer was prompt. That will come out. I don't anticipate.
~ Henry James
Cara Isabel, la vita è meglio; perché nella vita c'è l'amore. È una buona cosa la morte... ma l'amore non c'è.
~ Henry James
Should you positively like to live here? I think I should like, said poor Milly after an instant, to die here.
~ Henry James
She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more - this idea was as sweet as a vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land. She had moments in her journey from Rome which were almost as good as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive, simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and regret . . .
~ Henry James
What it all amounted to, oddly enough, was that in his finally so simplified world this garden of death gave him the few square feet of earth on which he could still most live.
~ Henry James
There were hours at which he almost caught himself wishing that certain of his friends would now die, that he might establish with them in this manner a connection more charming than, as it happened, it was possible to enjoy with them in life.
~ Henry James
On her limbs was the stiffness of death, and on her face, in the fading light of the sun, the terror of something more than death.
~ Henry James
Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.
~ Henry Louis Mencken
There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of our time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves.
~ Henry Miller
I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.
~ Henry Miller
Boris has just given me a summary of his views. He is a weather prophet. The weather will continue bad, he says. There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves. The hero, then, is not Time, but Timelessness. We must get in step, a lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. The weather will not change.
~ Henry Miller
One thing is certain, that when you die and are resurrected you belong to the earth and whatever is of the earth is yours inalienably. You become an anomaly of nature, a being without shadow; you will never die again but only pass away like the phenomena about you.
~ Henry Miller
Estoy muerto espiritualmente. Físicamente, estoy vivo. Moralmente, soy libre.
~ Henry Miller
Si tuviera la oportunidad de ser Dios, la rechazaría. Si tuviese la oportunidad de ser una estrella, la rechazaría. La oportunidad más maravillosa que ofrece la vida es la de ser humano. Abarca todo el universo. Incluye el conocimiento de la muerte, del que ni siquiera Dios goza.
~ Henry Miller
The frantic desire to live, to live at any cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm.
~ Henry Miller
There are people in this world who cut such a grotesque figure that even death renders them ridiculous. And the more horrible the death the more ridiculous they seem. It's no use trying to invest the end with a little dignity – you have to be a liar and a hypocrite to discover anything tragic in their going.
~ Henry Miller
Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.
~ Henry Miller
Onward and away from the self, until the lat substantial particle of the soul be stretched to infinity. In her panic-stricken flight she seemed to bear the whole world in her womb. We were being driven out of the confines of the universe towards a nebula which no instrument could visualize. We were being rushed to a pause so still, so prolonged, that death by comparison seems a mad witches' revel.
~ Henry Miller
We are all alone here and we are dead . . . Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves.
~ Henry Miller
There are people in this world who cut such a grotesque figure that even death renders them ridiculous. And the more horrible the death the more ridiculous they seem. It's no use trying to invest the end with a little dignity—you have to be a liar and a hypocrite to discover anything tragic in their going.
~ Henry Miller
Even as a child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for.
~ Henry Miller
There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves. The hero, then, is not Time, but Timelessness. We must get in step, a lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. The weather will not change.
~ Henry Miller
And inevitably there always crept into our discussions the figure of Whitman, that one lone figure which America has produced in the course of her brief life. In Whitman the whole American scene comes to life, her past and her future, her birth and her death. Whatever there is of value in America Whitman has expressed, and there is nothing more to be said.
~ Henry Miller
They died comfortably in their little bed of understanding, to become useful citizens of the world. I pitied them, and in short order I deserted them one by one, without the slightest regret.
~ Henry Miller