quotations about death
Nowadays, we have technology that's improved so that we can bring people back to life. In fact, there are drugs being developed right now -- who knows if they'll ever make it to the market -- that may actually slow down the process of brain-cell injury and death. Imagine, you fast-forward to ten years down the line and you've given a patient whose heart has just stopped this amazing drug, and actually what it does is it slows everything down so that the things that would've happened over an hour, now happen over two days. As medicine progresses, we will end up with lots and lots of ethical questions.
SAM PARNIA
interview, Time, Sep. 18, 2008
Death is when the monsters get you.
STEPHEN KING
Salem's Lot
The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the emotions, as the the inviolable condition of life.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
We're ever making plans for life,
But seldom plans for death,
Though death we know must come to us,
And life is but a breath.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the future, with no possible chance of escape.
DAVID GERROLD
The Man Who Folded Himself
Death is the Christian's vacation morning. School is out. It is time to go home.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.
ISAAC ASIMOV
I, Asimov
Death is progress, advance, disimprisonment.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Of all the Gods, Death only craves not gifts:
Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured
Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed
By hymns of praise. From him alone of all
The powers of Heaven Persuasion holds aloof.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
The dying need but little, dear,
A glass of water's all,
A flower's unobtrusive face
To punctuate the wall,
A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret
And certainty that one
No color in the rainbow
Perceive, when you are gone.
EMILY DICKINSON
"The Dying need but little, Dear"
He that abideth when he might depart
From this world hath no wisdom in his heart.
FERDOWSI
Shahnameh
Death's a fable. Did not Heaven inspire your equal Elements with living Fire blown from the Spring of Life? Is not that breath Immortal? Come; ye are as free from death as He that made ye: Can the flames expire which he kindled?
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Whether or not enlightenment is possible at the moment of death, the practices that prepare one for this possibility also bring one closer to the bone of life.
JOAN HALIFAX
Being with Dying
Death makes equal the high and low.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Be Merry Friends
When bones and flesh have finished their business together,
we lay them carefully, in positions they're willing to keep,
and cover them over.
Their eyes and ours won't meet anymore. We hope.
SARAH LINDSAY
"Shanidar, Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower
It seemeth such a little way to me
Across to that strange country -- the Beyond;
And yet, not strange, for it has grown to be
The home of those of whom I am so fond,
They make it seem familiar and most dear,
As journeying friends bring distant regions near.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Beyond"
Look on the grave where thou must sleep
Thy last, and strongest foe;
It is endurance not to weep,
If that repose seem woe.
EMILY BRONTE
Self-Interrogation
We have the promises of God as thick as daisies in summer meadows, that death, which men most fear, shall be to us the most blessed of experiences, if we trust in him. Death is unclasping; joy, breaking out in the desert; the heart, come to its blossoming time! Do we call it dying when the bud bursts into flower?
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A man's life breath cannot come back again--
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.
HOMER
The Iliad