Death Unknown Salvation Quotes

O Death, old captain, it is time! let us lift anchor.
This land tires us, O Death. Let us be under way!
If the sky and the sea are black as ink,
Our hearts, those you know, have rays of light!

Pour us your poison so that it comfort us!
We wish, this fire burns our brain, so much,
To plunge to the bottom of the gulf, Hell or Heaven,
what does it matter? -
To the bottom of the Unknown, to find Something New! ~ Charles Baudelaire

Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown. ~ Emile M. Cioran

The tragedy of Tupac is that his untimely passing is representative of too many young black men in this country....If we had lost Oprah Winfrey at 25, we would have lost a relatively unknown, local market TV anchorwoman. If we had lost Malcolm X at 25, we would have lost a hustler named Detroit Red. And if I had left the world at 25, we would have lost a big-band trumpet player and aspiring composer--just a sliver of my eventual life potential. ~ Quincy Jones

So, O king, does the present life of man on earth seem to me, in comparison with the time which is unknown to us, as though a sparrow flew swiftly through the hall, coming in by one door and going out by the other, and you, the while, sat at meat with your captains and liegemen, in wintry weather, with a fire burning in your midst and heating the room, the storm raging out of doors and driving snow and rain before it. For the time for which he is within, the bird is sheltered from the storm, but after this short while of calm he flies out again into the cold and is seen no more. Thus the life of man is visible for a moment, but we know not what comes before it or follows after it. ~ Bede

Very well, but - who are you?' again asked Gil Gil, in whom curiosity was beginning to get the better of every other feeling.

'I told you that when I first spoke to you - I am your friend. And bear in mind that you are the only being on the face of the earth to whom I accord the title of friend. I am bound to you by remorse! I am the cause of all your misfortunes.'

'I do not know you,' replied the shoemaker.

'And yet I have entered your house many times! Through me you were left motherless at your birth; I was the cause of the apoplectic stroke that killed Juan Gil; it was I who turned you out of the palace of Rionuevo; I assassinated your old house-mate, and, finally, it was I who placed in your pocket the vial of sulfuric acid.'

Gil Gil trembled like a leaf; he felt his hair stand on end, and it seemed to him as if his contracted muscles must burst asunder.

'You are the devil!' he exclaimed, with indescribable terror.

'Child!' responded the black-robed figure in accents of amiable censure, 'what has put that idea into your head? I am something greater and better than the wretched being you have named.'

'Who are you, then?'

'Let us go into the inn and you shall learn.'

Gil hastily entered, drew the Unknown before the modest lantern that lighted the apartment, and looked at him with intense curiosity.

He was a person about thirty-three years old; tall, handsome, pale ~ Pedro Antonio De Alarcón

We then reached a fork in the valley. Should we go left or right? Dad called it left. I had a very powerful intuition that right was the choice we should make. Dad insisted left. I insisted right.
It was a fifty-fifty call and he relented.
Within two hundred yards we stumbled across a snowy track through the woods and followed it excitedly. Within a mile it came out on a mountain road, and within ten minutes we had flagged down a lift from a car heading up the hill in the darkness.
We had found salvation, and I was beat.
The car dropped us off at the gates of the garrison thirty minutes later. It was, by then, late into the night, but I was suddenly buzzing with energy and excitement.
The fatigue had gone. Dad knew that I had made the right call up there--if we had chosen left we would still be trudging into the unknown.
I felt so proud.
In truth it was probably luck, but I learned another valuable lesson that night: Listen to the quiet voice inside. Intuition is the noise of the mind.
As we tromped back through the barracks, though, we noticed there was an unusual amount of activity for the early hours of a weekday morning. It soon became very clear why.
First a sergeant appeared, followed by another soldier, and then we were ushered into the senior officers' block.
There was my uncle, standing in uniform looking both tired and serious. I started to break out into a big smile. So did Dad. Well, I was excited. We had cheated a ~ Bear Grylls

Religion is based primarily upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly as the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the place that the churches in all these centuries have made it. ~ Bertrand Russell

Pain stabs through me as everything I am made of collapses, my entire world dismantled in a moment. The pavement scrapes my knees. If I lie down now, this can all be done. Maybe Eric was right, and choosing death is like exploring an unknown, uncertain place. I feel Tobias brushing my hair back before the first simulation. I hear him telling me to be brave. I hear my mother telling me to be brave. The Dauntless soldiers turn as if moved by the same mind. Somehow I get up and start running. I am brave. ~ Veronica Roth

So you could value your own life," replied the Titan. "Before that you were under the gods' thumbs, doing their bidding without caring if you lived or died. When you could see that life was worth living by your fear of the unknown that was death, then you could really make things happen. ~ Jasper Fforde

The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire; it takes the most purely rational concept of which mankind is capable, mathematical order, and makes it a delight to the senses; and it takes the vague fears of the unknown and sweetens them by showing that the gods are like men and may be worshiped for their life-giving beauty rather than their death-dealing powers. ~ Kenneth Clark

[T]he unnamed soldier is a gift. The named soldier
dead, melted wax
demands a response among the living ... a response no-one can make. Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous
as if cursed
while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?
Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living. ~ Steven Erikson

Some historians subsequently said that the twentieth century actually started in 1914, when war broke out, because it was first war in history in which so many countries took part, in which so many people died and in which airships and airplanes flew and bombarded the rear and towns and civilians, and submarines sunk ships and artillery could lob shells ten or twelve kilometers. And the Germans invented gas and the English invented tanks and scientists discovered isotopes and general theory of relativity, according to which nothing was metaphysical, but relative.And when Senegalese fusiliers first saw an airplane they thought it was a tame bird and one of the Senegalese soldiers cut a lump of flesh from a dead horse and threw it as far as he could in order to lure it away. And airships and airplanes flew through the sky and the horses were terribly frightened. And writers and poets endeavored to find new ways of expressing it best and in 1916 they invented Dadaism because everything seemed crazy to them. And in Russia they invented a revolution. And the soldiers wore around their neck or wrist a tag with their name and the number of their regiment to indicate who was who, and where to send a telegram of condolences, but if the explosion tore off their head or arm and the tag was lost, the military command would announce that they were unknown soldiers, and in most capital cities they instituted an eternal flame lest they be forgotten, because fire preserves the memory of some ~ Patrik Ouředník

A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from his new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence - the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at once into the dim, gray unknown.
("An Episode Of War") ~ Stephen Crane

Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die. ~ John Masefield

By this time, around 0745, unknown others were doing the same, whether NCOs or junior officers or, in some cases, privates. Staying on the beach meant certain death; retreat was not possible; someone had to lead; men took the burden on themselves and did. Bingham put it this way: The individual and small-unit initiative carried the day. Very little, if any, credit can be accorded company, battalion, or regimental commanders for their tactical prowess and/or their coordination of the action. ~ Stephen E. Ambrose

Let an illness, a duel, a runaway horse make us see death face to face, and how richly we should have enjoyed the life of pleasure, the travels in unknown lands, which are about to be snatched from us! And no sooner is the danger past than we resume once more the same dull life in which none of those delights existed for us. ~ Marcel Proust

I know it may sound weird, but looking death square in the eye made me question the unknown. What happens after we exhale our last breathe? Do we really see an otherworldly light? Does God send angels to guide us home? Or when our eyes close, do we forfeit sight? And will our earthly spirits forever roam? ~ Ellen Hopkins

The sages would say similarly, "Just for the heaven of it." Just to reach for the highest. Human beings cannot live without challenge. We cannot live without meaning. Everything ever achieved we owe to this inexplicable urge to reach beyond our grasp, do the impossible, know the unknown. The Upanishads would say this urge is part of our evolutionary heritage, given to us for the ultimate adventure: to discover for certain who we are, what the universe is, and what is the significance of the brief drama of life and death we play out against the backdrop of eternity. In haunting words, the Brihadaranyaka declares: You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. ~ Anonymous

I only do His will, replied Death. I am his gardener. I take all His flowers and trees, and transplant them into the gardens of Paradise in an unknown land. How they flourish there, and what that garden resembles, I may not tell you. ~ Hans Christian Andersen

There are some things that are better left unknown until the time is right. The time is not right until death, which, in my opinion, makes death something to look forward to, not dread. ~ Steven Cooper

There are so many roads in the world and all have a beginning and an end and a road lies ahead to be discovered. A road will take you to a foreign land and no one knows what lies ahead. A road is a destination, it is life, it is happiness and sadness. A road will provide and it will take away. A road will uncover secrets yet unknown to man. A road is filled with expectations and doubt. A road is part of a tradition and culture. Wars and peace have a road to cover. A road will lead to torture and death. Soldiers too will take over the road and cordon it off. A road will lead you to a checkpoint. A road will lead you to a wedding. A road will lead you to pray to Almighty God. A road was discovered by God in the beginning and a road can foretell the future. A road has untold stories that are yet to be discovered. A road was created in the beginning and it prohesied the creation of so many roads and those roads will face judgment. A road can make one to become lost and another to be found. Each and everyone on earth has a road to take. A road will give one laughter and joy. ~ David Ssembajjo

There is beauty in knowing that the unknown has the potential of being prettier than anything we have ever known. ~ Jeni Dhodary

Sleep is the bite of death. ~ Unknown

Disease was a perverse, a dissolute form of life. And life? Life itself? Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the original procreation of matter only a disease, a growth produced by morbid stimulation of the immaterial? The first step toward evil, toward desire and death, was taken precisely then, when there took place that first increase in the density of the spiritual, that pathologically luxuriant morbid growth, produced by the irritant of some unknown infiltration; this, in part pleasurable, in part a motion of self-defence, was the primeval stage of matter, the transition from the insubstantial to the substance. This was the Fall. The second creation, the birth of the organic out of the inorganic, was only another fatal stage in the progress of the corporeal toward consciousness, just as disease in the organism was an intoxication, a heightening and unlicensed accentuation of its physical state; and life, life was nothing but the next step on the reckless path of the spirit dishonored; nothing but the automatic blush of matter roused to sensation and become receptive for that which awaked it. ~ Thomas Mann

Abandon certainty! That's life's deepest command. That's what life's all about. We're a probe into the unknown, into the uncertain. Why can't you hear Muad'Dib? If certainty is knowing absolutely an absolute future, then that's only death disguised! Such a future becomes now! ~ Frank Herbert

Death was not necessarily a portal to the blank bliss of absolute nothingness. It was a deep dive into the unknown. ~ Amy Tan

To die is to move on with the invisible. To die is also a joy, a joy of submitting to that which is greater than the known, namely, the pure unknown. That is a joy. But to live mechanized and cut off within the motion of the will, to live as an entity absolved from the unknown, that is shameful and ignominious. There is no ignominy in death. There is complete ignominy in an unreplenished, mechanized life. Life indeed may be ignominious, shameful to the soul. But death is never a shame. Death itself, like the illimitable space, is beyond our sullying. ~ D.H. Lawrence

The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown. ~ Plato

Don't be afraid of going by a way you've never gone - that's the way we're all going ... ~ John Geddes

Perhaps death is all that waits for me across the great waters, but better to know death than to choose fear of the unknown. ~ Cora Carmack

Of course, I am a heretic. The word hairesis in Greek means choice; a heretic is one who is able to choose. Its root stems from the Greek word hairein, to take. Faced with the mystery of life and death, each act of faith is a gamble. We all risk choices before the unknown. -Forrest Church ~ John A. Buehrens

Man's predicament is that he intuits his hidden resources, but he does not dare use them. This is why warriors say that man's plight is the counterpoint between his stupidity and his ignorance. Man needs now, more than ever, to be taught new ideas that have to do exclusively with his inner world - shamans' ideas, not social ideas, ideas pertaining to man facing the unknown, facing his personal death. Now, more than anything else, he needs to be taught the secrets of the assemblage point. ~ Carlos Castaneda

He believed that there is no end to the mischief and hatred which men harbor deep in themselves and unknown to themselves and no end to their capacity to deceive themselves and that though they loved life, they probably loved death more and in the end thanatos would likely win over eros. ~ Walker Percy

Sabbaths, 1982 - IV
("A gardener rises out of the ground")


Thrush song, stream song, holy love
That flows through earthly forms and folds,
The song of Heaven's Sabbath fleshed
In throat and ear, in stream and stone,
A grace living here as we live,
Move my mind now to that which holds
Things as they change.
The warmth has come.
The doors have opened. Flower and song
Embroider ground and air, lead me
Beside the healing field that waits;
Growth, death, and a restoring form
Of human use will make it well.
But I go on, beyond, higher
In the hill's fold, forget the time
I come from and go to, recall
This grove left out of all account,
A place enclosed in song.
Design
Now falls from thought. I go amazed
Into the maze of a design
That mind can follow but not know,
Apparent, plain, and yet unknown,
The outline lost in earth and sky.
What form wakens and rumples this?
Be still. A man who seems to be
A gardener rises out of the ground,
Stands like a tree, shakes off the dark,
The bluebells opening at his feet,
The light a figured cloth of song. ~ Wendell Berry

Do observe what is actually taking place within yourself and outside yourself in the competitive culture in which you live with its desire for power, position, prestige, name, success and all the rest of it - observe the achievements of which you are so proud, this whole field you call living in which there is conflict in every form of relationship, breeding hatred, antagonism, brutality and endless wars. This field, this life, is all we know, and being unable to understand the enormous battle of existence we are naturally afraid of it and find escape from it in all sorts of subtle ways. And we are frightened also of the unknown - frightened of death, frightened of what lies beyond tomorrow. So we are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there isno hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theo- logical concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

My child died last night - and now I shall be alone again, if I must really go on living. They will come tomorrow, strange, hulking, black-clad men bringing a coffin, and they will put him in it, my poor boy, my only child. ~ Stefan Zweig

There is such a tremendous need for spiritual guidance for those who are facing death, as a patient or with a loved one. Emotions and grief flood everyone involved. There are so many unknown factors. Many times doctors can predict what may happen physically, but no one can truthfully answer the big questions for us, questions like, What is dying like? Will it hurt? What is going to happen to me after I die? Is God going to be there waiting for me? Is God going to be angry at how I lived my life? These questions and fears clearly need to be addressed spiritually and not brushed aside. ~ Megory Anderson

I am only astonished that, while so many women have intelligent things to say and so many men are still unknown, a publisher cared to print such a little book, and at such a price. That confirms what Schopenhauer reveals to us, among other truths: philosophy is a matter of death. A philosopher living and thinking life is a priori suspect in our philosophical culture. ~ Luce Irigaray

Fear of death is fear of surrender to Infinity.
Learn to surrender, to exist at Infinity while alive, and fear of death dissolves.
Fear of death is fear of the Unknown.
Realize the Wonder, the Eternal Unknowability of the Totality of Existence, and fear of death is transcended.
If happiness or freedom depends on the Answer to the Question, then there can be no happiness or freedom.
The Question cannot be satisfactorily or finally Answered.
For one who abides at Infinity, happy and free, at ease with his Ultimate Ignorance, the Question and the Answer are equally unnecessary.
What began will come to an end.
What is Wonderful is not threatened.
The Process of the Totality of Existence is Transcendental and Eternal.
Only a fraction of the Whole can pass away in any moment, since only a fraction of the Whole appears in any moment.
Therefore, the Heart Itself is always already Full of Wonder and Love.
"I" is the body-mind, the fraction of the Whole that is now appearing and will soon disappear.
"I" must be surrendered to the Heart, to the Whole, which is Infinity, Wonder, and Love. ~ Adi Da Samraj

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

'But how?' we ask.

Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'

There they are. There *we* are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace. ~ Brennan Manning

(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes - the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable - the unloving and the unloved - there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death - the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain. ("The Lifted Veil") ~ George Eliot

Death is not a journey into an unknown land; it is a voyage home. We are going, not to a strange country, but to our fathers house. ~ John Ruskin

For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown; and no one know whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows that he does not know? And in this respect only I believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be wiser than they are: that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know ... ~ Socrates

Crows are harbingers of death and omens, good and bad, according to Big Jim according to Google. Midnight-winged tricksters associated with mystery, the occult, the unknown. The netherworld, wherever it is- Portland? We make people think of the deceased and super angsty poetry. Admittedly we don't help the cause when we happily dine on fish guts in a landfill, buy hey ho. ~ Kira Jane Buxton

Stand whoso list upon the slipper top
Of court's estates, and let me here rejoice
And use me quiet without let or stop,
Unknown in court, that hath such brackish joys.
In hidden place so let my days forth pass
That when my years be done withouten noise,
I may die aged after the common trace.
For him death grippeth right hard by the crop
That is much known of other, and of himself, alas,
Doth die unknown, dazed, with dreadful face. ~ Thomas Wyatt

It was death by a thousand cuts ~ Unknown

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more. ~ J.K. Rowling