All Quotes By Tag: Death

“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had ‘given’ their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a ‘divine’ emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome.The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you risk your life?”

“RequiescatTread lightly, she is nearUnder the snow,Speak gently, she can hearThe daisies grow.All her bright golden hairTarnished with rust,She that was young and fairFallen to dust.Lily-like, white as snow,She hardly knewShe was a woman, soSweetly she grew.Coffin-board, heavy stone,Lie on her breast,I vex my heart aloneShe is at rest.Peace, Peace, she cannot hearLyre or sonnet,All my life’s buried here,Heap earth upon it.”

“When you go against the flow of nature and betray the spiritual laws existing within, there is, and always will be, a negative reaction. Those who try escaping life before fate shakes their hand, will forever be stuck on earth, chained to the place they so badly wanted to leave. What a complicated misery. I guarantee you it will be torture to be invisible and ignored by those you love when you can see them – but you are already dead for them to hear you utter another word. Talk about agony, more so, than remaining on this plane and continuing your spiritual cycle as it was written to be lived.”

“And then she moved from shock to grief the way she might enter another room.”

“God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness — to glory?”

“Here’s the other thing I think about. It makes little sense to try to control what happens to your remains when you are no longer around to reap the joys or benefits of that control. People who make elaborate requests concerning disposition of their bodies are probably people who have trouble with the concept of not existing. […] I imagine it is a symptom of the fear, the dread, of being gone, of the refusal to accept that you no longer control, or even participate in, anything that happens on earth. I spoke about this with funeral director Kevin McCabe, who believes that decisions concerning the disposition of a body should be mad by the survivors, not the dead. “It’s non of their business what happens to them whey the die,” he said to me. While I wouldn’t go that far, I do understand what he was getting at: that the survivors shouldn’t have to do something they’re uncomfortable with or ethically opposed to. Mourning and moving on are hard enough. Why add to the burden? If someone wants to arrange a balloon launch of the deceased’s ashes into inner space, that’s fine. But if it is burdensome or troubling for any reason, then perhaps they shouldn’t have to.”

“Doctor: ‘You do not fear death. You think this makes you strong. It makes you weak.’Bruce: ‘Why?’Doctor: ‘How can you move faster then possible, fight longer then possible, without the most powerful impulse of the spirit? The fear of death.’Bruce:’I do fear death. I fear dying in here while my city burns. And there’s no one there to save it.’Doctor: ‘Then make the climb.’Bruce: ‘How?’Doctor: ‘As the child did – without the rope. Then fear will find you again.”

“Cordelia! stay a little. Ha! What is’t thou say’st? Her voice was ever soft.”

“A culture that denies death is a barrier to achieving a good death. Overcoming our fears and wild misconceptions about death will be no small task, but we shouldn’t forget how quickly other cultural prejudices–racism, sexism, homophobia–have begun to topple in the recent past. It is high time death had its own moment of truth.”

“When people get a chance to come close to death without having it touch them personally, they never miss the opportunity.”

“Death is not a reaper, like they say, nor even a friend. It is a dark, fierce water, an inundation.”

“Death’s Diary: 1942 -It was a year for the ages, like 79, like 1346, to just name a few. Forget the scythe, God damn it, I needed a broom or a mop. And I needed a holiday.(…) They say that war is death’s best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly. ‘Get it done, get it done’. So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss however, does not thank you. He asks for more.”

“War is being reminded that you are completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living.”

“In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.”

“How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.”