Deathbed Quotes

It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn't the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn't we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed? ~ Graham Greene

ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, 'What is the answer?' Then, after a long silence, 'What is the question?' Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks. ~ Frederick Buechner

No one on his deathbed ever said, I wish I had spent more time on my business. ~ Paul Tsongas

But nothing will fill your heart with a greater sense of regret than lying on your deathbed knowing that you did not live your life and do your dreams." Robin ~ Robin S. Sharma

Eventually, I would love to be on my deathbed and looked at as an icon. Right now I'm still at the baby stages of my career. But that is the goal. ~ Kesha

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. ~ Wheston Chancellor Grove

With a fiction it was the same. Mine was the whole story. For I took the place of the character who was most like myself, and his story was mine; until, grown weary with the life of years condensed in an hour, or arrived at my deathbed, or the end of the volume, I would awake, with a sudden bewilderment, to the consciousness of my present life, recognising the walls and roof around me, and finding I joyed or sorrowed only in a book. ~ George MacDonald

The kings of terrors, the last enemy, will never be able to breach the pearly gates and disturb the bliss of heaven! No more deathbed vigils or funerals. The hearse will have made its last journey. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

I'm great at a deathbed. I've never given tranquillisers or psychiatric medicine. I've given love and fun and creativity and passion and hope, and these things ease suffering. ~ Patch Adams

How naive Lore had been, despite being the daughter of a father no one spoke of, despite the strange, incomplete conversations at her mother's deathbed; how again and again she was caught up short by the discovery that other people had stories they didn't tell, or told stories that weren't entirely true. How mostly you got odd chunks torn from the whole, impossible truly to understand in their damaged form. ~ Pamela Erens

And when Tolstoy found God his lines went limp, and Turgenev on his deathbed grieved for him because although Tolstoy had given up his land and his coppers for God, he had also given up something else. And although Dostoevski ended up on believing in Christ, he took the long road to get there, a most interesting and perhaps unwholesome road over roulette tables, raping a small child, standing before a wall waiting for the rifles to fire, he found that "adversity is the main-spring of self-realism," he found his Christ, but what a most interesting Christ, a self-made Christ, and I bow to him. ~ Charles Bukowski

The grit of the deathbed earth grows soft ~ Donald Revell

Jason rose from his deathbed so he could drown with the rest of the crew. ~ Rick Riordan

I don't understand hospital chaplains that try to rob my patients of their anger. Sometimes anger is a key motivator that gets people to take action. Anger can push a cancer patient to jump out of his hospital bed, walk down to the nurses station and scream, "I am getting the hell out of here!". There is a misconception that God is simply sweet and passive. Actually, God can be quite cunning, manipulative and relentless with his children. What we consider as negative traits are actually helpful in molding us. He will use a negative emotion if needed to push people to do things that will change them for the better. He will allow people or situations to derail us if there is a chance that those interactions will push us forward. Personally, I don't want a God that is going to send some church member to my deathbed with a plate of cookies and tell me to have faith. Actually, I rather have a God that screams, "Get the hell off your ass, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Walk down the hall with that Physical Therapist so you can get on with your life!" A little anger in a person can push them to do amazing things. ~ Shannon L. Alder

If I were today on my deathbed, I would name my love of the color blue and making love with you as two of the sweetest sensations I knew on this earth. ~ Maggie Nelson

Perhaps the real therapy occurred at the deathbed scene, when they moved into honesty with the revelation that they were fellow travelers, both simply human, all too human. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

One regret dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough. ~ Hafez

=The Burial of Love= His eyes in eclipse, Pale cold his lips, The light of his hopes unfed, Mute his tongue, His bow unstrung With the tears he hath shed, Backward drooping his graceful head. Love is dead; His last arrow sped; He hath not another dart; Go--carry him to his dark deathbed; Bury him in the cold, cold heart-- Love is dead. ~ Alfred Tennyson

As he lay on his deathbed, Zushya lamented to those gathered around how little he had accomplished during his lifetime. One of his students asked him if the rabbi feared the divine judgment awaiting him. Zushya began to reply, "Yes," but then stopped himself. "No. For when I appear before the Almighty, I will not be asked, 'Why were you not Moses?'or 'Why were you not David?'I will only be asked, 'Why were you not Zushya? ~ Michael Lodahl

I wish I had spent more time at the office. ~ Paul Tsongas

He was waiting, I think, for me to cross that space and take him in my arms again - waiting, as one waits at a deathbed for the miracle one dare not disbelieve, which will not happen. ~ James Baldwin

I've always got my eye on my deathbed. ~ Martin Freeman

A good social system is not to be secured by making people unselfish, but, by making their own vital impulses fit in with other peoples. This is feasible. Those who have produced stoic philosophies have all had enough to eat and drink.

I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understand - fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom.

I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads – prison is horribly like that. ~ Bertrand Russell

I'm very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch. ~ Woody Allen

In view of the fact that I surround myself with numbskulls now, I shall die among numbskulls, and on my deathbed shall be surrounded by numbskulls who will not understand what I am saying ... Whom am I sleeping with these days ? Franz Kafka. ~ Patricia Highsmith

You will not remember much from school.

School is designed to teach you how to respond and listen to authority figures in the event of an emergency. Like if there's a bomb in a mall or a fire in an office. It can, apparently, take you more than a decade to learn this. These are not the best days of your life. They are still ahead of you. You will fall in love and have your heart broken in many different, new and interesting ways in college or university (if you go) and you will actually learn things, as at this point, people will believe you have a good chance of obeying authority and surviving, in the event of an emergency. If, in your chosen career path, there are award shows that give out more than ten awards in one night or you have to pay someone to actually take the award home to put on your mantlepiece, then those awards are more than likely designed to make young people in their 20's work very late, for free, for other people. Those people will do their best to convince you that they have value. They don't. Only the things you do have real, lasting value, not the things you get for the things you do. You will, at some point, realise that no trophy loves you as much as you love it, that it cannot pay your bills (even if it increases your salary slightly) and that it won't hold your hand tightly as you say your last words on your deathbed. Only people who love you can do that. If you make art to feel better, make sure it eventually makes you feel better. If i ~ Pleasefindthis

And remember-no woman ever said, on her deathbed, I wish I'd eaten less cake. ~ Jennifer Weiner

It's a harrowing experience to see death approaching in haste towards you, what is hell but confronting your own mortality ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

No one ever went to their deathbed saying, 'You know, I wish I'd eaten more rice cakes. ~ Amy Krouse Rosenthal

I am fundamentally happy. Everyone has experiences that makes them cynical, jaded or unhappy - you just have to fight those things off. I have totally emotional days when I cry and get insecure. PMS weirded out, doomed and tragic. I mean, I'm definitely not just a lollipop, happy in the wind girl. I'm human just like everyone else, but I think that it would be tragic to be on your deathbed and think, 'I could've I should've.' That gets me out of bed everyday. I can't even last like an hour in bed in the morning. I have to get out there and live. ~ Drew Barrymore

At the end of our life, we ought to be able to look back over it from our deathbed and know somehow the world is a better place because we lived, we loved, we were other-centered, other-focused. ~ Joe Ehrmann

Anyway, you can't leave her like that. You can't do that to the woman. She doesn't deserve it; nobody does. You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would still know she was part of you. ~ Iain Banks

You are. Even if people agree with it, it is ultimately a fiction. Many people don't realize until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away that no thing ever had anything to do with who they ~ Eckhart Tolle

But when you were on your deathbed, there was no time to be mad. Vindictiveness was thrown out the window, along with any other soul-eating, negative trait that was ingrained in us. When you were on your deathbed, time reminded you just how precious it really was. Feelings were bare and open for the world to see, poke, and dig into. ~ L.J. Shen

You do not always say goodbye to those you love beside a deathbed, in an atmosphere of leisure and incense. ~ Graham Greene

And I say, 'Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.' And he says, 'Oh, uh, there won't be any money. But when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice. ~ Bill Murray

Only the things you do have real, lasting value, not the things you get for the things you do. You will, at some point, realise that no trophy loves you as much as you love it, that it cannot pay your bills (even if it increases your salary slightly) and that it won't hold your hand tightly as you say your last words on your deathbed. Only people who love you can do that. ~ Pleasefindthis

No one, on his deathbed, ever regretted having been a Catholic. ~ Thomas More

...of the emperor whose gorgeous clockwork bird had seized up in the end; on his deathbed he'd called for the dark-feathered nightingale, knowing he never should have chosen a shiny substitute, because nothing but her real song could save him now. Was there any music that would bring back memories once they were lost in the fog? What were we, once our stories had drifted off like smoke? ~ Emma Donoghue

My dear Péguy, it would, however, be wrong to wait, to postpone continually. He who takes the road of later ends then on the road of never. I know some people who seem to turn life into a perpetual waiting room. The trains come and go, and they say: 'I'll leave another time! I'll make a confession on my deathbed!' Visconti-Venosta said of the 'hero Anselmo':

A day goes by, and then another,
But the hero Anselmo never returns.

Here we have the opposite: an Anselmo who never sets out. ~ Pope John Paul I

When all is said and done, everyone should be able to look back on their life and know that they made it exactly as they wanted it to be. ~ A.J. Darkholme

What is it about that fricking boat? Gets more visitors than a rich uncle on his deathbed. ~ Anonymous

I regret always writing, writing. I gave
my kid the whole plastic bag of marshmallows,
so i could have 20 minutes to write.
I sat at my mother's deathbed, writing.
I did swab her mouth with water, and feel
her pliant tongue enjoy water, then harden
and die. Before I had language,
before I had stories, I wanted to write.
That desire is going away.
I've said what I have to say.
I'll stop and look at things I called
distractions. Become a reader of the world,
no more writer of it. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

If I were a dominatrix I would force my submissive to do my washing up and clean the fridge and brush the cats and whenever he tried to say the safety word ("banana") to make me stop because it wasn't what he wanted I would chuckle softly and say, "No, Gary. That's definitely not the safety word," and I would tighten the leash and hand him a mop and I'd say, "So your wife won't do this for you? That's so sad. Now finish the floors and go pick up my dry-cleaning." It would be ten years later and I'd still have someone to pick me up at the airport and do all the shit I didn't want to do and then on his deathbed I'd say, "Hey, Gary? I was just kidding. The secret word really was 'banana,'" and then we'd laugh and laugh. ~ Jenny Lawson

Oh sharp diamond, my mother!
I could not count the cost
of all your faces, your moods
that present that I lost.
Sweet girl, my deathbed,
my jewel-fingered lady ... ~ Anne Sexton

Purpose is a man-made fiction. Nobody on their deathbed gets a plaque that says "he focused on only one thing for his entire life!" Those are counterfeit thoughts in a counterfeit society. ~ James Altucher

Katie informed us that there was a life ever after, a place called Heaven or Eternal Rest where there was no pain or suffering. She forewarned him of his death and his Alzheimer Disease disappeared. He saw a fast rewind replay of his life and he regained his sanity on his deathbed he got an opportunity to say thanks for everything and goodbye to his loved ones. His gift to Emma was a kiss sealing the gift of a ghost whisperer to Emma so he will never abandon her or the kids. They will communicate forever. He will help her through this life and return watching over her and navigate a path for her into the next life, Heaven ~ Annette J. Dunlea

I have a checklist of things I'd like to do in movies. One of them is get possessed. Die on a deathbed with a ghostly pallor - that's on my list. ~ Talulah Riley

Leave it to a vampire to think a healthy guy in his late thirties or early forties was on his deathbed. ~ MaryJanice Davidson

A broken heart is a monument to a love that will never die; fulfillment is a monument to a love that is already on its deathbed. ~ George Jean Nathan

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire, who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Do you ever worry that life is passing you by while day in and day out you're focused on what you're supposed to be doing, rather than what you want to be doing? Then, before you know it, you're old and curled up on your deathbed, weigh ninety pounds, nothing but elbows and knees, consumed with remorseful thoughts that obligations and function controlled your life while you sat idly by and watched it happen. Feeble and unable to eat anything but chicken broth or ice chips, you think, Golden years my ass, I'll never get the chance to shout my name from the rooftop and why didn't I take advantage of my youth? ~ Allison Morgan

Your explanation brought up a host of dim recollections, which affected me as a song of his childhood affects a man on his deathbed when hear from the lips of another. ~ Frank Wedekind

We distill happiness from garnering joy in the ordinary fragments of life, while dedicating personal effort to creating a body of work that one can look back on their deathbed and be satisfied with achieving. Happiness comes from living beautifully, which necessarily involves reason in thought and speech (logos), and leading an ethical and virtuous life devoted to achieving worthy goals. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Like deathbed conversions, last paragraph soul-saving does not convince. ~ Rosellen Brown

I am not my uncle. I am not my father, but I do subscribe to the twenty rules he taught me from the cradle. One, if you're afraid to fight, then you'll never win. Two, in times of tragedy and turmoil, you'll learn who your true friends are. Treasure them because they are few and far between. Three, know your enemies, and never become your own worst one. Four, be grateful for those enemies. They will keep you honest and ever striving to better yourself. Five, listen to all good advice, but never substitute someone else's judgment for your own. Six, all men and women lie. But never lie to yourself. Seven, many will flatter you. Befriend the ones who don't, for they will
remind you that you're human and not infallible. Eight, never fear the truth. It's the lies that will destroy you. Nine, your worst decisions will always be those that are made out of fear. Think all matters through with a clear head. Ten, your mistakes won't define you, but your memories, good and bad, will. Eleven, be grateful for your mistakes as they will tell you who and what you're not. Twelve, don't be afraid to examine the past, it's how you learn what you don't want to do again. Thirteen, there's a lot to be said for not knowing better. Fourteen, all men die. Not everyone lives. Fifteen, on your deathbed, your greatest regrets will be what you didn't do. Sixteen, don't be afraid to love. Yes, it's a weakness that can be used against you. But it's also a source of the greatest strength you will ever ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I refuse to live with the regret of gambling for tomorrow. I will not lay on my deathbed wondering what might have been. I will ride the waves of purpose and chance towards the wonderful splendor of my dreams. At the end of my day, I will rest my head on the pillow of a day well-lived and a life well-ventured. ~ Steve Maraboli

What sort of mother talks about whores on her deathbed? Your mother wouldn't do that, would she?"

"I have no idea," Grey said, "The situation has fortunately not arisen. ~ Diana Gabaldon

I fought angrily against seeing particular types of poetic organization because it seemed awful to see my own life and these actual events in that way. But when you put forth an intention into the universe to speak a certain truth and narrate a certain period of your life, you start to see the sorts of symmetries that you are not usually supposed to be able to see until you are on your deathbed and your life flashes before your eyes. And you see exactly why everything happened. And even the most painful things you've ever been through can seem unbearably beautiful. ~ Joanna Newsom

You know, they say that Bill Wilson asked for whiskey as his dying wish. The man was dying, at the end of the line, and he wanted the one vice he'd been fighting all his life. Even the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous wanted whiskey on his deathbed. ~ Kandi Steiner

Never cosign a loan. Once you have cosigned, you cannot get out of it - even on your deathbed. ~ Suze Orman

Top 10 Deathbed Regrets:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life other people expected of me.

2. I wish I took time to be with my children more when they were growing up.

3. I wish I had the courage to express my feelings, without the fear of being rejected or unpopular.

4. I wish I would have stayed in touch with friends and family.

5. I wish I would have forgiven someone when I had the chance.

6. I wish I would have told the people I loved the most how important they are to me.

7. I wish I would have had more confidence and tried more things, instead of being afraid of looking like a fool.

8. I wish I would have done more to make an impact in this world.

9. I wish I would have experienced more, instead of settling for a boring life filled with routine, mediocrity and apathy.

10. I wish I would have pursued my talents and gifts.

(contributed by Shannon L. Alder, author and therapist that has 17 years of experience working with hospice patients) ~ Shannon L. Alder

Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed. ~ Hugh Leonard

It was about half-past one - 'only half-past one,' Lucy complained - when she and Walter and Spandrell left the restaurant. 'Still young,' was Spandrell's comment on the night. 'Young and rather insipid. Nights are like human beings - never interesting till they're grown up. Round about midnight they reach puberty. At a little after one they come of age. Their prime is from two to half-past. An hour later they're growing rather desperate, like those man-eating women and waning middle-aged men who hop around twice as violently as they ever did in the hope of persuading themselves that they're not old. After four they're in full decay. And their death is horrible. Really horrible at sunrise, when the bottles are empty and people look like corpses and desire's exhausted itself into disgust. I have rather a weakness for the deathbed scenes, I must confess,' Spandrell added. 'I'm ~ Aldous Huxley

Love was holding someone's hand when you wanted to escape. ~ Krista Van Dolzer

Improvising, I participated in the discussion, and questioned another woman in the group. I asked her how old she was and she answered, "Thirty." I replied, "No, you are not thirty but instead eighty and lying on your deathbed. And now you are looking back on your life, a life which was childless but full of financial success and social prestige." And then I invited her to imagine what she would feel in this situation. "What will you think of it? What will you say to yourself?" Let me quote what she actually said from a tape which was recorded during that session. "Oh, I married a millionaire, I had an easy life full of wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I teased them! But now I am eighty; I have no children of my own. Looking back as an old woman, I cannot see what all that was for; actually, I must say, my life was a failure! ~ Viktor E. Frankl

And she arose from her deathbed in a gossamer gown, with eyes the color of starlight and hair as black as the night. And those who were her captors trembled, for the scent of death and madness emanated from her soul, and yet she was not dead. She moved like the spiders that creep in the treetops, and none could look away.
Taking her first captor in hand, she fed deep and ravenous. And so it was that Myst, Queen of the Indigo Court, was born from the blood of the dead. ~ Yasmine Galenorn

I think someone could be near on at their deathbed, barely able to get out of bed in their final throes, and still not be able to resist the smell of frying bacon and hot coffee on a wet morning. They would postpone the afterlife for one last breakfast; ~ Michael Hiebert

We can be sure that we will hold on to the deathbed as part of the last balance sheet – and this part will taste bitter as cyanide – that we have wasted too much, much too much strength and time on getting angry and getting even with others in a helpless shadow theater, which only we, who have suffered importantly, knew anything about

~ Night Train to Lisbon ~ Pascal Mercier,

The promises you make on your mother's deathbed are promises that are absolute; they're titanium. There's no way you're breaking them. I promised my mother that I would take care of my brother. That I would look after him. I kept my word. I did it the best way I could. By leaving. ~ Jenny Han

Perhaps my gift to you will be as simple as a single word, whispered into your ear by one of your servants as you lie on your deathbed, a word that solves a final mystery and makes it easy for you to slip quietly into the dark. ~ Dexter Palmer

Acid filled Sara's mouth.

It wasn't fair.

That's what Sara wanted to say. To scream at the top of her lungs.

It just wasn't fair.

Lena wasn't strong. She would bend, not break. She would recover from this tragedy the same easy way she recovered from every other tragedy before.

Even if she lost Jared, Lena would always know what it felt like to have his child growing inside of her. She could always hold her baby's hand and think of holding Jared's. She could see her child laugh and learn and grow and play sports and do school projects and graduate from college and Lena would always, always remember her husband. She would see Jared in her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On her deathbed, she would find peace in the knowledge that they had made something beautiful together. That even in death, they would both go on living.

"Sara," Faith said. "What's happening here?"

Sara wiped her eyes, angry that she was back in the same dark place she'd started at this morning. "Why does everything come so damn easy to her?" She struggled to speak. Her throat clenched around every word that wanted to come out of her mouth. "Everything just opens up, and she always walks through unscathed and - " Sara had to stop for breath. "It's just so easy for her. She always has it so goddamn easy. ~ Karin Slaughter

God will forgive me. It's his job. Heine said this on his deathbed (1856). Hilarious. He must have thought that up years before and counted the seconds to use it. ~ Heinrich Heine

No one ever says on their deathbed they wish they'd loved fewer people. ~ Jeff Zentner

On his deathbed he called my father to him and said, "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open ~ Ralph Ellison

He was staring down another loss, and, though he had to be logical, though he knew her to be logical, he saw the stricken look of betrayal on her face, and all of those arguments threatened to fly away from him. What was history anyway but the lies of the winning few? Why was it worth protecting, when it forgot the starving child under siege, the slave woman on her deathbed, the man lost at sea? It was an imperfect record written by a biased hand, diluted to garner the most agreement from competing parties. He was tempted to see her point, to imagine that she could realign the past and present and future into something beautiful. God, if anyone was capable of it, it would be her. ~ Alexandra Bracken

I'll make you this promise: on your deathbed, in the twilight of your life, it will not be all the risks you took that you will regret the most. Rather, what will fill your heart with the greatest amount of regret and sadness will be all those risks that you did not take, all those opportunities you did not seize and all those fears you did not face. ~ Robin S. Sharma

College girls on the road! One-night stands! Lee felt like an Austro-Hungarian emperor attended on his deathbed by flappers. He felt them stealing his life - literally going back in time and taking, through their incoherent lifestyles, the little he had struggled so hard to attain. ~ Nell Zink

Sometimes when I'm facing a horrendous week or am upset over a perceived slight, I remind myself that I won't remember it (much less care about it) one month, six months, or a year from now. (The more extreme version of this strategy is to use the deathbed criterion: Will it matter when you're on your deathbed?) ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

Twas a still, calm night and the moon's pale light
Shone over hill and dale
When friends mute with grief stood around the deathbed
Of their loved, lost Lily Lyle.
Heart as pure as forest lily
Never knowing guile,
Had its home within the bosom
Of sweet Lily Lyle. ~ Flora Thompson

I was just reviewed by Robert Gottlieb, who was my editor at The New Yorker, and he sort of wondered at the fact that I still need to exorcise my parents at my age. I think he makes a basic mistake in thinking that exorcism can ever be total. The exorcism of your parents will still be occurring on your own deathbed. ~ Francine Du Plessix Gray

Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers. ~ Walter De La Mare

Isn't that sweet of my only son to travel all this way so he can whine about his pathetic little friend? Maybe if I weren't strapped to my deathbed I could muster up the strength to give a damn. ~ David Sedaris

When Olivier had been taken away Gamache had sat back down and stared at the sack. what could be worse than Chaos, Despair, War?
What would even the Mountain flee from? Gamache had given it a lot of thought.
What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And Gamache thought he had the answer.
Regret.
Regret for things said, for things done, and not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.
Finally, when he was alone, the Chief Inspector had opened the sack and looking inside had realize he'd been wrong. The worst thing of all wasn't regret. ~ Louise Penny

Standing beside her grandmother's deathbed, woolen dress still smelling of black logwood dye, Ade had felt the way a sapling might as it watched one of the old forest giants come crashing magnificently to rest: awed, and perhaps a little frightened. But when Mama Larson's final breath rattled from her ribs, Ade discovered the same thing the young sapling would have: in the absence of the old tree, there was a hole in the canopy above her. ~ Alix E. Harrow

Sad truth is. . . we all end up alone on some death bed. Yeah? No way to take anybody else's place and no way we can be lying on the same one."

I was at the edge of the white-wed cloth. My shoes filled with concrete, as did my head, looking at the empty shell of what was once a woman full of wonder.

"Any way to make someone feel not so alone?" she asked.

"The only thing anyone can ever do is help someone feel a little less lonely before they get there."

"How does someone do that?"

"Memories. Help create memories. Better ones. Ones to replace the old. ~ S.D. Lawendowski

On her deathbed ... I tell her she is as good a soul as I have ever met or hope to meet, that she is an angel in the flesh, and that I will speak her name to God every night of my life before I go to sleep. ~ Dean Koontz

What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And [he] thought he had the answer. Regret. Regret for things said, things done, and things not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be. ~ Louise Penny

When I am on my deathbed, I don't think I will be thinking about a nice pair of shoes I had or my beautiful house. I am going to be thinking about an evening I spent with somebody when I was twenty where I felt that I was just absolutely connected to them. ~ Tom Ford

I know I am dying, but my deathbed is a bed of roses. I have no thorns planted upon my dying pillow. Heaven is already begun! ~ John Pawson

Or a saint who had spent all his years preparing for his grand entry into heaven, only to discover on his deathbed that heaven was not some blue expanse full of angelic string quartets and opalescent clouds, but an eternity granted for reliving one's happiest moments, and that he had none to remember; ~ Olga Grushin

In theory, Jefferson could have fathered all of Sally Hemings's children. Fawn M. Brodie has written, "Jefferson was not only not 'distant' from Sally Hemings but in the same house nine months before the births of each of her seven children and she conceived no children when he was not there."54 Jefferson freed only two slaves in his lifetime and another five in his will, and all belonged to the Hemings family, though he excluded Sally. On her deathbed, Sally Hemings told her son Madison that he and his siblings were Jefferson's children. In 1998, DNA tests confirmed that Jefferson (or some male in his family) had likely fathered at least one of Sally Hemings's children, Eston. Reading between the lines of "Phocion," one surmises that Hamilton knew all about Sally Hemings, quite possibly from Angelica Church. ~ Ron Chernow

Had I been allowed to testify, I would have told them that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the bullet that killed President Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll area. I would have also informed the Warren Commission about the call I received from Lyndon Johnson while we were operating on Lee Harvey Oswald. President Johnson told me that a man in the operating room would get a deathbed confession from Oswald. ~ Charles A. Crenshaw

Of course, even before Flaubert, people knew stupidity existed, but they understood it somewhat differently: it was considered a simple absence of knowledge, a defect correctable by education. In Flaubert's novels, stupidity is an inseparable dimension of human existence. It accompanies poor Emma throughout her days, to her bed of love and to her deathbed, over which two deadly agélastes, Homais and Bournisien, go on endlessly trading their inanities like a kind of funeral oration. But the most shocking, the most scandalous thing about Flaubert's vision of stupidity is this: Stupidity does not give way to science, technology, modernity, progress; on the contrary, it progresses right along with progress! ~ Milan Kundera

His discontent stemmed from dislike rather than appreciation for the hardness growing in him, and the fear that in another ten years he would not recognise himself. The fear that in another twenty, he would not even remember that any doubt had disturbed him. And that in some distant future, age and death would find him - the first person in history to utter on his deathbed: I wish I'd spent more time at the office. ~ Roberta Pearce

It was then that Brown took his revenge upon the world which, after twenty years of contemptuous and reckless bullying, refused him the tribute of a common robber's success. It was an act of cold-blooded ferocity, and it consoled him on his deathbed like a memory of an indomitable defiance. . . . Thus Brown balanced his account with the evil fortune. Notice that even in this awful outbreak there is a superiority as of a man who carries right - the abstract thing - within the envelope of his common desires. It was not a vulgar and treacherous massacre; it was a lesson, a retribution - a demonstration of some obscure and awful attribute of our nature which, I am afraid, is not so very far under the surface as we like to think. ~ Joseph Conrad

The passionate ones, the ones who go after what they want, may not get what they want, but they remain vital, in touch with themselves, and when they lie on their deathbeds, they have few regrets. ~ Charlie Kaufman

Good answer! Part of us thinks all kinds of things," said Mrs Ogg.
"Part of me is thinking: who's this haughty little miss who talks to me as if I was a kiddie of five? But most of me is thinking: she's got a heap of troubles of her own and has seen plenty of things a human shouldn't have to see. Mind you, part of me says: so have I. Seeing things a human shouldn't have to see makes us human. Well, miss … if you've any sense, part of you is thinking, there's a witch in front of me who's seen my granddad many times, when she's sat by a sickbed that's suddenly become a deathbed, and if she's ready to spit in his eye when the time comes then she could probably bother me considerably right now if she puts her mind to it. Understand? Let's all keep our parts to ourselves," and suddenly she gave Susan a wink, "as the High Priest said to the actress. ~ Terry Pratchett

Although the 'New York Times' annually declares that Broadway is on its deathbed, news of its demise is greatly exaggerated. There's a lot of life yet in the old tart. ~ John Lahr

Back in the car, I sit for a long time, breathing. I'll remember this, what just happened, for a very long time. I'll be on my own deathbed someday, replaying this in my head, wishing it had gone differently. We hold on to the shitty things the tightest, for some reason. And this is the shittiest thing ever. Are ~ Matthew Norman