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Quotes About Death

Gods, my gods! How sad the earth is at eventide! How mysterious are the mists over the swamps. Anyone who has wandered in these mists, who has suffered a great deal before death, or flown above the earth, bearing a burden beyond his strength knows this. Someone who is exhausted knows this. And without regret he forsakes the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, and sinks into the arms of death with a light heart knowing that death alone . . .
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
HOW SAD, YE gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the mists over the swamps. You will know it when you have wandered astray in those mists, when you have suffered greatly before dying, when you have walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You know it too when you are weary and ready to leave this earth without regret; its mists, its swamps and its rivers; ready to give yourself into the arms of death with a light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort you.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
I have just been cut in half by a streetcar at Patriarch's. Funeral Friday 3PM. Come. Berlioz
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
Strange, rapid, disconnected thoughts passed through his mind. 'Dead!' Then: 'They have killed him! . . .' And an absurd notion about immortality, the thought of which aroused a sense of unbearable grief.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
Oh, soltanto colui che è stato vinto sa che significhi questa parola! Essa assomiglia a una sera in una casa in cui si sia guastata la luce elettrica, assomiglia a una stanza sulle cui tappezzerie si diffonde una muffa verde piena di vita insana. Assomiglia a dei bambini rachitici indemoniati, all'olio marcio, a una bestemmia oscena pronunciata da voci femminili nell'oscurità. Insomma, assomiglia alla morte.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
El hombre es mortal, y, como acertadamente se dijo, es mortal de repente.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
To die of thirst is a heavenly, blissful death compared with the craving for morphine. The feeling must be something like that of a man buried alive, clawing at the skin on his chest in the effort to catch the last tiny bubbles of air in his coffin, or of a heretic at the stake, groaning and writhing as the first tongues of flame lick at his feet.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
Gods, gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the bogs! Whoever has wandered in these mists, whoever suffered deeply before death, whoever flew over this earth burdened beyond human strength knows it. The weary one knows it. And he leaves without regret the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, and yields himself with an easy heart to the hands of death, knowing that it alone can bring surcease.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
Behind the Blue Division, the frost-bitten horses of Kozyr-Leshko's cavalry regiment crossed the bridge at a wolfish lope followed by a rumbling, bouncing field-kitchen . . . then it all disappeared as if it had never been. All that remained was the stiffening corpse of a Jew on the approach to the bridge, some trampled hay and horse-dung.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
Da, ?ovjek je smrtan, ali to bi bilo tek pola nevolje. Zlo je u tome što je nejgova smrt katkada posve iznenadna, eto u ?emu je trik! I op?enito, on ne može re?i ?ak ni što ?e raditi danas nave?er.
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
Yes, he is dead, dead...But we--we are alive! (67)
~ Mikhail Bulgakov
I learned not long ago that Pechorin had died upon returning from Persia. This news made me very glad: it gave me the right to publish these notes, and I took the opportunity to put my name on someone else's work.
~ Mikhail Lermontov
Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.
~ Milan Kundera
To die; to decide to die; that's much easier for an adolescent than for an adult. What? Doesn't death strip an adolescent of a far larger portion of future? Certainly it does, but for a young person, the future is a remote, abstract, unreal thing he doesn't really believe in.
~ Milan Kundera
The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.
~ Milan Kundera
Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.
~ Milan Kundera
Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.
~ Milan Kundera
And it isn't enough for us to identify with our selves, it is necessary to do so passionately, to the point of life and death. Because only in this way can we regard ourselves not merely as a variant of a human prototype but as a being with its own irreplaceable essence.
~ Milan Kundera
He was repelled by the pettiness that reduced life to mere existence and that turned men into half-men. He wanted to lay his life on a balance, the other side of which was weighted with death. He wanted to make his every action, every day, yes, every hour and minute worthy of being measured against the ultimate, which is death.
~ Milan Kundera
Through the air floated only important words, and Flajsman said to himself that love has but one true measure, and that is death. At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.
~ Milan Kundera
Tereza had gone back to sleep; he could not. He pictured her death. She was dead and having terrible nightmares; but because she was dead, he was unable to wake her from them. Yes, that is death: Tereza asleep, having terrible nightmares, and he unable to wake her.
~ Milan Kundera
No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reign in the cemetery.
~ Milan Kundera
To be mortal is the most basic human experience and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.
~ Milan Kundera