Approaching Death Quotes

I have performed my duty to my God, my country, and my family. I have nothing to fear in approaching death. To me it is the mere shadow of God's protecting wing ... Here I will rest in quiet and peace beyond the reach of calumny's poisoned shaft, the influence of envy and jealous enemies, where treason and traitors or State backsliders and hypocrites in church can have no peace. ~ Andrew Johnson

You will be the first test subject, Tobias. Beatrice, however ... " She smiles. "You are too injured to be of much use to me, so your execution will occur at the conclusion of this meeting."
I try to hide the shudder that goes through me at the word "execution," my shoulder screaming with pain, and look up at Tobias. It's hard to blink tears back when I see the terror in Tobias's wide, dark eyes.
"No," says Tobias. His voice trembles, but his look stern as he shakes his head. "I would rather die."
"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice in that matter," replies Jeanine lightly.
Tobias takes my face in this hands roughly and kisses me, the pressure of his lips pushing mine apart. I forget my pain and the terror of approaching death and for a moment, I am grateful that the memory of that kiss will be fresh in my mind as I meet my end. ~ Veronica Roth

It is a little disappointing to see that your legs are not as strong. But I like the idea of growing old, and the thought of approaching death is not particularly daunting to me. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb. ~ Vaslav Nijinsky

[About the main character approaching death in old age, observed by her husband ... ] He saw that she had already laid down a large portion of her life long ago. Piece by piece she had given it away as she wrestled with existence, as her self was absorbed as nourishment into his life and the life of the children and the community. And laid down most piercingly, as she abandoned, one by one, the shapes of the dreams she had planned. Only to take them up again in other forms. ~ Michael D. O'Brien

You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve. ~ Socrates

I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism. ~ Isaac Asimov

I believe it's imperative to bring the light of support and knowledge to patients and families when death is approaching. ~ Lisa J. Shultz

I sit, this evening, far away,
From all I used to know,
And nought reminds my soul to-day
Of happy long ago.

Unwelcome cares, unthought-of fears,
Around my room arise;
I seek for suns of former years
But clouds o'ercast my skies.

Yes - Memory, wherefore does thy voice
Bring old times back to view,
As thou wouldst bid me not rejoice
In thoughts and prospects new?

I'll thank thee, Memory, in the hour
When troubled thoughts are mine -
For thou, like suns in April's shower,
On shadowy scenes wilt shine.

I'll thank thee when approaching death
Would quench life's feeble ember,
For thou wouldst even renew my breath
With thy sweet word 'Remember'! ~ Patrick Branwell Bronte

The fear of approaching death, which in youth we imagine must cause inquietude to the aged, is very seldom the source of much uneasiness. ~ William Hazlitt

When it comes to jump-starting the intricate machinery of recollection, there's nothing more effective than the scent of approaching death. ~ Gary Krist

When you lose someone, a whole lot of perfectly normal circumstances suddenly take on different meaning. You see it in a different light. You wonder if they knew. I wondered. Doctors have told me that people do have a sense of their own approaching death. ~ Joan Didion

One of the most terrifying questions of all might be, 'Will I unleash myself to live before death unleashes me from the ability to be unleashed?' And in retrospect, maybe it's not the question that's terrifying. Maybe what's terrifying is the answer. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Again, as it was after Udayan's death, there was an acute awareness of time, of the future looming, accelerating. The baby's lifetime, so scant, already outdistancing and outpacing her own. This was the logic of parenthood. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

If you think me weak, bring forth your champion and let me do battle with him.
And kill in that childish way of the Franks? Full of pomp and bravado? We are masters of death here. We do not play at it. - Ware & Sinan ~ Iris Johansen

It is part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means - be it the moral void we perceive in the universe, the certainty of death, the mystery of the origin of things, the meaning of our own lives or the absence of meaning. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If it is necessary to die in order to live like men, what harm in dying? ~ Rabindranath Tagore

The wolves seemed far more interested in watching Marrok tear him apart. For a heartbeat of time, everyone jsut stared at the graceful ballet of death.
'Do those two have a history I don't know about?' Dow asked conversationally.
Richardson nodded. 'Tober punched Marrok's woman.'
'Ooohhhh, that explains it.' Dower snorted. 'Jesus, what kind of wolf hits a girl? ~ Cassandra Gannon

Every cataclysm is welcomed by somebody; there is always someone to rejoice at disaster and see in it the prospect of a new beginning and a better world. ~ Iain Pears

Invariably, knowledge dictates life, liberty, and death, but those who have historically occupied the seats of power not only dictate what is defined as knowledge but also dictate what's included, what's excluded, and how it is filtered to society vis-à-vis America's major institutions . . . particularly the educational system; ultimately, shaping the very essence of life. ~ Martin Guevara Urbina

Rebecca! she who could prefer death to dishonor must have a proud and powerful soul! ~ Walter Scott

Then, when I thought it couldn't get any better, I see it. And I knew, only then, that I'm truly in Heaven. ~ Mandi Lynn

We are within our life and we stay there for as long as possible, that's our home. We need life. There is too much death already, and there is probably more coming our way. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh? ~ Aldous Huxley

For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? (2 Cor. 2:15-16). ~ David Ruis

The body of the last Flealouse contained the flesh of everything that had ever lived. It was content. ~ Alasdair Gray

Your solicitude overwhelms me,' returned Ravenscar. 'I own I had expected at least a loaf of bread and a jug of water in my dungeon – until I learned, of course, that you had some idea of starving me to death. ~ Georgette Heyer

After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke. ~ Russell Baker

The death I should prefer would be to break my neck off the back of a good horse at a full gallop on a fine day. ~ Fanny Kemble

there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would had disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there ~ Thomas Hardy

Why are the photographs of him as a little boy so incredibly hard to look at? Something is over. Now instead of those shiny moments being things we can share together in delighted memories, I, the survivor, have to bear them alone. So it is with all the memories of him. They all lead into blackness. All I can do is remember him, I cannot experience him. Nothing new can happen between us. ~ Nicholas Wolterstorff

But it will be harder for you if you remember. Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another's sake and not counting them. Love is loss of self, loss of other, and faith in the death of loss. ~ Christopher Buehlman

It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment. ~ Bram Stoker

I was thinking about all these things and more, but I wasn't really thinking about them at all. They were just there, floating around in the back of my mind, thinking about themselves. What I was really thinking about, of course, was Lucas. ~ Kevin Brooks

Hecate smelt the odour of death as clearly as she might smell the wonderful, scented fragrance of blooming flowers in springtime or the delicious smell of dinner wafting down the hallway. ~ Adele Rose

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don't want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what's important is only that they are fighting the good fight. 'And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the good fight. ~ Paulo Coelho

But where was God now, with heaven full of astronauts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup.

As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I ha ~ Jeanette Winterson

Oh, the different consciousness between the grieving and the dying! One sees midnight, the other joyful sunrise. One sees death, the other Life as never before. ~ Richard Bach

And what he contemplated was death. Some people complained when death came top early and claimed a child, a young mother, or a sailor with a family to provide for. He'd never understood that. Of course, it was a tragedy for those left behind and for the person who'd been robbed of the greater part of life. But it wasn't unfair. Death was beyond such notions. It seemed to him that the bereaved often forgot their grief at a death in favor of railing fruitlessly against life's injustices. After all, no one would dream of saying that the wind was unfair to the trees and the flowers. True, you might feel uneasy when the sun switched off its light, or ice gave your ship a dangerous list. But indignant, outraged, or angry, no. It was pointless. Nature was neither fair nor unfair. Those terms belonged to the world of men. ~ Carsten Jensen

Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, was not the kind of male anyone addressed like that. Except, apparently, for Wrath. In this case, the Brother with the tattoos on his face and the perverted reputation and the hand of death did exactly what he was told. He shut the fuck up.
Which said volumes about Wrath. Did it not. ~ J.R. Ward

Bone white, blood red, here lies something long dead.
Tree of death and heart of stone. Never enter the crypt alone.
If you do, He'll mark your tracks, hunt you down, and then attack.
Bone white, blood red, there lie those who should have died. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

Byzantium

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the starlit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floo ~ W.B. Yeats

Disease has no intent. It doesn't want anything. It has no malevolent desire to kill. If it could talk it would not say "I want to make you ill. I want to bring you to the brink of death. I want to kill." It would say only "I make people ill. I bring them to the brink of death. I can kill."

The disease is like machine that does what it does, but has no cognizance of self. When a machine stops working, it does not care, and it doesn't celebrate when it starts working again.

To those that have it, and to their loved ones, the disease seems heinous, deliberate,and personal. And of course I know why they feel this way... when you are in a fight for your life, then surely there is an adversary. There is something opposed to you. Something that desires to defeat you. You want to believe the enemy is the disease. You don't want to believe, even for a minute, that the enemy is your own body. This weak tent of flesh, that cannot stand up against a speck of contagion. This fragile weave of muscle, bone, and soul, that also cannot resist the power of flame, nor the pull of the ground below it. ~ Susan Meissner

Desire lies at the heart of who God made us to be, who we are at our core. Desire is both our greatest frailty and the mark of our highest beauty. Our desire completes us as we become One with our Lover, and it separates us from Him and brings death as it wars against His will. ~ Dan B. Allender

He danced with the sky instead, and the sky dropped him like a rotten plum. ~ Laini Taylor

To continue, I had to see the world with clear eyes, to focus on the essential. We only pay attention to rare things, and death was not rare. ~ Kevin Powers

I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know. ~ Lawrence Durrell

when I was a kid I use to put a puzzle together over and over until I got really good at it so one day I turned all the pieces upside down and built it, then I understood the true nature of the puzzle ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Death is going to take the boundaries away from us, that we should no more be persons. That's what death is about. When that is what life also wants to be about, how can you feel except rebellious? ~ Saul Bellow

The death of literature had been exaggerated. Whereas on dating websites, those who like books are usually bracketed into a single category, the broad selections on offer at WH Smith spoke to the diversity of individuals' motives for reading. If there was a conclusion to be drawn from the number of bloodstained covers, however, it was that there was a powerful desire, in a wide cross-section of airline passengers, to be terrified. ~ Alain De Botton

Telecom is a dramatic success in India and our view is, respecting the political process, and respecting the fact that these are sovereign decisions, is that, approaching India as a friend. ~ John W. Snow

I worked with two young women translators. One died and the other received a death threat from the Taliban. ~ Eliza Griswold

The oblivion fear is something else, fear that I won't be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don't live a
life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a
life or a death that means anything. ~ John Green

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

Life is a constant journey. We move from one place to another. The journey is what makes a fish different than a rock, movement different from stillness, light from darkness, life from death. ~ Miquel Reina

I wanted to keep looking at her because I wanted to never take my eyes from her, but still I had to
lower my eyes, I was so ashamed that even now Jenny was reading my mind so perfectly.
'Listen, that's the only goddamn thing I'm asking, Ollie. Otherwise, I know you'll be okay.' That thing in my gut was stirring again, so I was afraid to even speak the word 'okay.' I just
looked mutely at Jenny. ~ Erich Segal

Would we be so enamored with dystopian fiction if we lived in a culture where violent death was a major concern? It wouldn't be escapism. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I'm still of the same mind. For many years I've been ashamed, mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn. As time went on, I merely learned that even those who were better than the rest could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill, because such is the logic by which they live, and that we can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. Yes, I've been ashamed ever since I have realized that we all have the plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the mortal enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. ~ Albert Camus

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear ~ Roger Ebert

Death is senseless yet makes way for the living. ~ Ellen Raskin

Death is filled with whys, what-ifs, and so damn much regret that it can swallow your whole fucking world if you let it. ~ Jewel E. Ann