Dying Words Quotes

Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground. ~ Cormac McCarthy

John Knox's dying words were, 'Lord, grant true pastors to Thy kirk.' Such was the last prayer of a great man without whom there would have been no America, no Puritans, no Pilgrims, no Scottish covenanters, no Presbyterians, no Patrick Henry, no Samuel Adams, no George Washington. Could it have been so simple? John Knox's agenda was far from political. All he wanted were more pastors and elders. This is our agenda. Lord grant true pastors to Thy church! ~ Kevin Swanson

But with her eyes closed, she began to whisper. "If you have someone to love, then love. If you have someone to forgive, then forgive. You think, when you're seventeen, there's time enough for that, but there's not. There's no time at all."
I squeezed her hand, trying to think of how to respond. But she took the burden from me and kept whispering. "You want to know why God gave us people to love? Because that's the only way we can understand how he feels about us. Desperate and jealous. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Do you remember how the sun, set
On the occasion, we last conversed?

First, it hid behind some lousy clouds
As I was uttering my dying words

Then, out it came with a shiny glare
As I grasped the truth of your beauty

'Twas nothing but my own reflection
To my surprise and curiosity.

Now the sun's told our tale to this town
And I heard how it had made you smile

So if the thought of me drew a smile
Then, I have mastered true lover's guile ~ Zubair Ahsan

We weep as we witness the dead of a loved one. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Nor will I ever find that walled garden where the hibiscus blows, with sweet musk roses and eglantine. Where stamens of rain fall on warm, white breasts. ~ Poile Sengupta

He sank more and more into apathy; little interested him apart from dolls and other children's toys. He still spoke occasionally, but mainly to produce stock sentences in the style of a brainwashed schoolboy. Franziska made a record of some of them: 'I translated much'. 'I lived in a good place called Naumburg'. 'I swam in the Saale'. 'I was very fine because I lived in a fine house'. 'I love Bismarck'. 'I don't like Friedrich Nietzsche'. It would be a mercy to think that he experienced at least a kind of vegetative contentment, but this seems not to have been the case. He suffered from his life-long curse of insomnia, and visitors downstairs were often disturbed by groans and howls coming from the upstairs bedroom. Towards the end of Franziska recorded him uttering 'More light!' (Goethe's dying words) and 'In short, dead!' suggesting that that is what he wanted to be. ~ Julian Young

The dead person once had a life! This is a misery? ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It's either the wallpaper or me. One of us has to go. [These were his dying words.] ~ Oscar Wilde

You never feel more aware of what it means to be alive than when you're falling in love. Or dying. ~ Kate Bassett

What he confessed was this. He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles. He had been on a satanic quest.
These were some of James Jesus Angleton's dying words. He delivered them between fits of calamitous coughing - lung-scraping seizures that still failed to break him of his cigarette habit - and soothing sips of tea. "Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars," Angleton told Trento in an emotionless voice. "The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. . . . Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it."
He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day - Dulles, Helms, Wisner. These men were "the grand masters," he said. "If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell."
Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup. "I guess I will see them there soon. ~ David Talbot

Death is the great equalizer of human beings. Death is the boundary that we need to measure the precious texture of our lives. All people owe a death. There is no use vexing about inevitable degeneration and death because far greater people than me succumbed to death's endless sleep without living as many years as me. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Just as he reached the point of utter exhaustion, he happened to read Raymond Radiguet's dying words, 'God's soldiers are coming to get me,' and sensed once again the laughter of the gods. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

[Talking about Othello] His dying words are about the service he has done to the state -not what he has done to Desdemona. (...) He acknowledges not love but the power structure (...). Othello believes his fellow officer [Iago] rather than his wife, believes death is suitable punishment for infidelity (...).
It makes me uneasy that we so easily state that Othello is a play about race. Race is one of its ingredients, but the most pervasive subject that Shakespeare is tackling is sexism. The two women [Desdemona and Emilia, Iago's wife] end up dead. Bianca, the third woman in the play, Cassio's mistress, ends up in jail for something she never did, and nobody bothers to get her out. Iago, the symbol of evil, remains alive. Brabantio, Desdemona's father, dies of a broken heart because of his daughter's disobedience. And everyone is very regretful about what has happened. But no one, other than Emilia, has pointed out that there is a terrible double standard, something rotten in the system itself. ~ Tina Packer

I give you my wings. ~ Kenneth Oppel

I am a Jewish mother. My dying words will be, "Put a jumper on ~ Amanda Craig

Fall in love with life. We are here on earth for a while. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

public display and operatic suffering - an in-your-face owning of one's vulnerability and fucked-upness to the point of embarrassing and offending tight-asses is a powerful feminist strategy. Writing is tough work, I don't see how anyone can really write from a position of weakness. Sometimes I may start out in that position, but the act of commandeering words flips me into a position of power. ~ Dodie Bellamy

Remember: If someone's trying to pull you down that means they're already beneath you. ~ Karen Salmansohn

Who today reflects that in the Battle of the Somme alone, where every man was an eager volunteer of 'Kitchener's Army', more British lives were lost than in the whole of the Second World War? Or that in the first day's fighting of any major attack on the Western Front, more men were killed than the Americans lost in eight years fighting in Vietnam? - 31,000 at the time these words are written. The average man and woman of today is not interested in such profitless comparisons. Modern life does not want to hear about these inconceivable calamities of the past. ~ Arthur Stanley Gould Lee

We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words. ~ Niels Bohr

The only thing better than word of mouth is words of mouth. Give me at least two words. ~ Jarod Kintz

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position. ~ Nancy Kress

I had no idea words could have so much power and beauty. ~ Michelle Cohen Corasanti

Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, 'I drank what?'... ~ Neal Israel - Chris Knight From Real Genius

In a sense, we are all crashing to our death from the top story of our birth ... and wondering with an immortal Alice at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles - no matter the imminent peril - these asides of the spirit ... are the highest form of consciousness. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

What do you think would happen if we kissed right here, right now?" he asks, digging his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants, grinning right back at me.
"I think it would cause a riot."
"Well, you know me," he says, lowering his head towards me. "Causing a riot is what I do best."
Santangelo approaches before Griggs gets any closer and pulls him away. "Are you guys insane?" he says, irritated.
"It's called peaceful coexistence, Santangelo. You should try it and if it works we may sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians," I say, throwing his own words back at him. ~ Melina Marchetta

Artemis let her head fall back, her eyes closed, her lips suddenly trembling. Apollo dying. "Please. Please, Maximus. I'll refrain from provoking you anymore. I'll stay in the shadows with my stockings and shoes on and never swim in your pond again, never disturb you again, only please do this one thing, I beg you. Save my brother. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Bridgewater Hall
Again, the endless northern rain between us
like a veil. Tonight, I know exactly where you are,
which row, which seat. I stand at my back door.
The light pollution blindfolds every star.
I hold my hand out to the rain, simply to feel it, wet
and literal. It spills and tumbles in my palm,
a broken rosary. Devotion to you lets me see
the concert hall, lit up, the other side of town,
then see you leave there, one of hundreds in the dark,
your black umbrella raised. If rain were words, could talk,
somehow, against your skin, I'd say look up, let it utter
on your face. Now hear my love for you. Now walk. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I don't fall for words, I fall for action because words always carry empty promises but one step at a time is the beginning of fulfilment. Don't say just do it! Don't announce just show it! Don't gloat just prove it! ~ Euginia Herlihy

But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far and superior to that of muscle and sinew. Let me tell you, if you don't know it from your own experience, that reading a good book, losing yourself in the interest of words and thoughts, is for some people (me, for instance) an incredible intensity of happiness. ~ Isaac Asimov

The two great words of antiquity are behold and beware. Behold the possibilities and beware the temptations. ~ Jim Rohn

Meaning, Wahram thought, that right now somewhere in the system there could be machines in human form, escaped into the crowd, doing their best to stay free, perhaps, when any X-ray machine or other surveillance device would reveal what they were - out there hiding, trying to accomplish the goals they had been given, perhaps, or new ones they might choose for themselves, according to some self-invented algorithm of survival. Damaged, dangerous, detached from any other consciousness, solitary and afraid - in other words, just like everyone else. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

The Bible tells you that real peace is found in resting in the wisdom of the One who holds all of your "what-ifs" and "if-onlys" in his loving hands. Isaiah captures this well with these comforting words: "You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you" (Isa. 26:3). Real, sturdy, lasting peace, peace that doesn't rise and fall with circumstances, isn't to be found in picking apart your life until you have understood all of the components. You will never understand it all because God, for your good and his glory, keeps some of it shrouded in mystery. So peace is found only in trust, trust of the One who is in careful control of all the things that tend to rob you of your peace. ~ Paul David Tripp

But music doesn't sum up my approach to literature - even in Vain Art of the Fugue. To 'fugue' I had to invent 'trap-words,' or words that would force the narrator to turn around and start his path anew. ~ Dumitru Tepeneag

I'm the only instrument that's got the words, so I've got to be able to get that across. ~ Rosemary Clooney

Every man who begets a free act projects his personality into the infinite. If he gives a poor man a penny grudgingly, that penny pierces the poor man's hand, falls, pierces the earth, bores holes in suns, crosses the firmament and compromises the universe. If he begets an impure act, he perhaps darkens thousands of hearts whom he does not know, who are mysteriously linked to him, and who need this man to be pure as a traveler dying of thirst needs the Gospel's draught of water. A charitable act, an impulse of real pity sings for him the divine praises, from the time of Adam to the end of the ages; it cures the sick, consoles those in despair, calms storms, ransoms prisoners, converts the infidel and protects mankind ~ Leon Bloy

But I love you, and before you say it words do matter. They're not pointless. If they were pointless then they couldn't start revolutions and they wouldn't change history and they wouldn't be the things that you think about every night before you go to sleep. If they were just words we wouldn't listen to songs, we wouldn't beg to be read to when we're kids. If they were just words, then they'd have no meaning and stories wouldn't have been around since before humans could write. We wouldn't have learned to write. If they were just words then people wouldn't fall in love because of them, feel bad because of them, ache because of them, stop aching because of them, have sex, quite a lot of the time, because of them. ~ Cath Crowley

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money.
If you approach them, they are not asleep; If you seek them, they do not hide;
If you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you. ~ Richard De Bury

God is great.
God is glorious. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Kitai blinked slowly. "Why would you use the same word for these things? That is ridiculous."
"We have a lot of words like that," Tavi said. "They can mean more than one thing."
"That is stupid," Kitai said. "It is difficult enough to communicate without making it more complicated with words that mean more than one thing. ~ Jim Butcher

thighs flesh rather than steel, her groin matted from the moisture of their passion. Her face is dark, the sun behind her, but he sees red flames dying in the multifaceted pits of her eyes. She smiles and he sees sunlight glint on rows of metal ~ Dan Simmons

When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it. ~ Andrzej Wajda

A wedding was a strange ceremony, she thought, with all those formal words, those solemn vows made by one to another; whereas the real question that should be put to the two people involved was a very simple one. Are you happy with each other? was the only question that should be asked; to which they both should reply, preferably in unison, Yes. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Nothing writes itself. Left to its own devices, the world will never transform into words, & no matter how many pages of notes & interviews & documents a reporting trip generates, the one that matters most always starts out blank. ~ Casey Cep

You know," he said. He paused a minute, as though picking his words carefully. "It's okay to disappoint people sometimes. It's okay for us to say no simply because we don't want to do something." Intellectually, ~ Lisa Unger

Our actions and experiences will direct us. In other words, we will be guided by the inherent emptiness of the things we choose to interact with. ~ Frederick Lenz

I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well. ~ Henry Scott Holland

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. ~ Walt Whitman

To be aflame with silence, with joy, is wisdom. It is not through logic but through love. It is not through words but through a wordless state called meditation or a state of no-mind, satori, samadhi. ~ Rajneesh

But i am a black man whose black mama's body and spirit were terrorized by another black man's hands and words. Sexism and patriarchy are not part of the revolution. I am a gender-maneuvering gay black man whose spirit was terrorized by other straight black men. Hetero-sexism and heteronormativity are not a part of our revolution. I am a black man who has ignored the plights of so many of my brothers. Separation because of difference and elitism based on class is not a part of the revolution. ~ Kiese Laymon

Death is part of life my love.We are all dying every minute we are live. ~ K.J. Kilton

I like rust on a nail, fog on a mountain. Clouds hide stars, rooms have doors, eyes close, and the same words that began love end it with changed emphasis. ~ David Ignatow

Books don't repeat the same words over and over. The Gulliver's Travels whose whimsey amused you at twelve is not the Gulliver's Travels whose acid engaged you at thirty. ~ James K. Morrow

There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell. ~ Haruki Murakami

There is a beautiful village in every country. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Among other strategies, he set up a "charitable lead trust" that enabled him to pass on his estate to his sons without inheritance taxes, so long as the sons donated the accruing interest on the principal to charity for twenty years. To maximize their self-interest, in other words, the Koch boys were compelled to be charitable. Tax avoidance was thus the original impetus for the Koch brothers' extraordinary philanthropy. As David Koch later explained, "So for 20 years, I had to give away all that income, and I sort of got into it. ~ Jane Mayer

You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.' This situation is tragic beyond words. We are missing the destiny for which God made us. ~ John R.W. Stott

Silence has its own language and in that silence he found words within himself; words for her, words for him and words for them. ~ Faraaz Kazi

BOOK BEAUTY

Here's the end of that story about the old woman who wanted to lure a man with strange

cosmetics. She made a paste of pages from the Qur'an to fill the deep creases on her face and

neck with. This is not about an old woman, dear reader. It's about you, or anyone who tries

to use books to make themselves attractive. There she is, sticking scripture, thick with

saliva, on her face. Of course, the bits keep falling off. "The devil," she yells, and

he appears! "This is a trick I've never seen. You don't need me. You are yourself a troop

of demons!" So people steal inspired words to get compliments. Don't bother. Death comes

and all talking, stolen or not, stops. Pity anyone unfamiliar with silence when that happens.

Polish your heart with mediation and quietness. Let the inner life grow generous and handsome

like Joseph. Zuleika did that and her "old woman's spring cold snap" turned to mid-July. Dry

lips wet from within. Ink is not rouge. Let language lie bygone. Now is where love breathes. ~ Rumi

I start to think about all the things I haven't said since Bailey died, all the words stowed deep in my heart, in our orange bedroom, all the words in the whole world that aren't said after someone dies because they are too sad, too enraged, too devastated, too guilty, to come out - all of them begin to course inside me like a lunatic river. ~ Jandy Nelson

My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and it was a big shock. For the families left behind, it is not an easy closure. It's not a gradual fading. The person is losing so much of their humanity as they're dying. Losing your memories, you lose so much of who you are as a person. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

Suddenly, it seems ridiculous that we just came from a city airport named for Columbus, a terrible navigator who insisted to his dying day that he was in India - which is why people here are called Indians. As the Native women in Houston said, It could have been worse - he could have thought he was in Turkey. ~ Gloria Steinem

Another important consequence in the arrival of digital technology and its facilitation of feedback is that we can look at large systems and recognize them once more not only as part of ourselves, but also as components that can change ...
Now, though, we live in a world where text is fluid, where is responds to our instructions. Writing something down records it, but does not make it true or permanent. So why should we put up with a system we don't like simply because it's been written somewhere? ~ Nick Harkaway

I think about the people I know with the absolutely largest hearts, people with a stunning capacity for endurance and grace and kindness against the most screaming terrors and pains. My Mom and Dad, for example, enduring the death of their first child at six months old, the boy the brother I never met, dying quietly in his stroller on the porch in the moment that my mother stepped back inside to get a pair of gloves because the crisp brilliant April wind was filled with a whistling cutting wind....

Fifty years later after five more children and two miscarriages she is standing in the kitchen with her usual eternal endless cup of tea and I ask her: How do you get over the death of your child?

And she says, in her blunt honest direct terse kind way,
You don't.
Her face harrowed like a hawk for a moment in the swirling steam of the tea.
p112-13 ~ Brian Doyle