Imminent Death Quotes

To be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death. But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating. So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment. The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference.
Now you must detach yourself; detach yourself from everything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can't deny himself anything. A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything. ~ Carlos Castaneda

[A] person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if: (1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself. ~ Lisa Bloom

Those who romanticize war often like to think of it, at least in areas of mortal peril, as nothing but "guts and glory." Those who are inclined to pacifism, by contrast, often think of it as an unbroken sequence of horrors. Actually, however, people in wartime still fall in love, do the laundry, worry about pimples, drink beer, and do most of the same things that they do in times of peace. The patterns of daily life may be mundane, but they are remarkably tenacious.
But, while people in wartime still go about their daily routines, the prospect of imminent death can give even quotidian chores a heightened intensity. When the first bombs were dropped on London in autumn of 1940, the population bore adversity better than almost anybody had expected. The danger was mixed with excitement, and the terror had a sort of apocalyptic magnificence. ~ Boria Sax

He recounted how, after the last of Charlemagne's forty-seven victorious campaigns, when he was returning from Saxony, a comet flashed across the sky and the Emperor's horse shied and threw him to the ground. The great Frankish Emperor had fallen so violently that his sword belt had been torn off him and the Spear, which he was clasping in his left hand, had been hurled some twenty feet away from him. At the same time there were earth tremors in the Royal Palace at Aachen, and the word "Princeps" had mysteriously faded from the red ochre inscription high up on a central beam in the Cathedral, which had formerly read 'Karolus Princeps.' Charlemagne himself had taken little notice of these portents, which his courtiers had taken to be a prophecy of his imminent death. In Einhard's own words: 'He refused to admit that any of these events could have any connection ith his own personal affairs.' Yet the 70-year-old Emperor drew up his last will and testament just in case these portents were correct. And they were! ~ Trevor Ravenscroft

Is what's manifesting as a fear actually some instinct to resist being young? Youth, with all its accompanying risks, humiliations, and uncertainties, the pressure to do it all before it's too late. Is the sense of imminent death bound up in the desire to leave some kind of a legacy? ~ Lena Dunham

Imminent death is a fact of life ~ Valentine Adams

I don't think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn't offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just be complicated, time-consuming endeavors that we'd steer well clear of because they got in the way of real life. ~ Sebastian Junger

Keeda had survived the death of her Titan, murdered by a Lysander Reaver in black and white that killed them without looking twice. She survived the wracking pain of severance from the Syrgalah's great-hearted machine spirit - a soul she adored and would willingly died to defend. She'd pulled her mutilated colleague free from imminent death and bidden her dead mentor farewell. She'd even fired hopelessly a soldier sworn to kill her, who she knew she could never have harmed.

But she only started screaming when a demon embraced and said he'd come to save her life. ~ Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Only you could contemplate imminent death and just say 'all right.'"
He smiled at me and pushed the hair back from my tear-stained face. "How about 'oh no'? ~ Leigh Bardugo

The hero acts alone, without encouragement, relying solely on conviction and his own inner resources. Shame does not discourage him; neither does obloquy. Indifferent to approval, reputation, wealth, or love, he cherishes only his personal sense of honor, which he permits no one else to judge.[ ... ] Guided by an inner gyroscope, he pursues his vision single-mindedly, undiscouraged by rejections, defeat, or even the prospect of imminent death. ~ William Manchester

On August 1, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel granted the CIA's request to begin water-boarding Abu Zubaydah. The technique, tantamount to torture, was designed to elicit confessions through the threat of imminent death by drowning. That same day John Yoo, now a deputy to Attorney General Ashcroft, advised the White House that the laws against torture did not apply to American interrogators. The president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, and the director of Central Intelligence approved. The ~ Tim Weiner

The recorder consisted of a biochip smaller than the head of a pin implanted into the hippocampus and nanosensors embedded throughout the body. Normally, the system lay dormant. But as soon as it detected severe deviations from the norm in various brain activity parameters - indicative of the stress caused by imminent death or great danger - the black-box would automatically contact the police and record the short-term memory in the hippocampus via molecular scanning. In the event of death, about one to two minutes of memories preceding the cessation of brain activity could be decrypted from the black box. ~ Bao Shu

When faced with your imminent death, the wise man reaches into the depths of his soul, grabs his sword, and does what is proper. The gods have a way of treating you like a two-penny whore on payday, but at least you might face the experience with the faintest bit of dignity. ~ Terry Mancour

In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable gray of a dawning morning in Bavaria. "Et lux in tenebris lucet"-and the light shineth in the darkness. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Fang looked at me, hope in his eyes, and I smirked at him. I save the huge emotional kissy-face for imminent death scenes. This probably didn't qualify. ~ James Patterson

Imminent death didn't terrify her as much as did the prospect of having lived a life in perpetual retreat, a life that would amount now to so much less than she'd ever hoped, ... ~ Dean Koontz

If I can't joke about imminent death, then I might as well just resign. ~ James A. Owen

When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

That if I had to choose between dying tomorrow or spending the rest of my life without him, I would seriously consider picking imminent death. ~ James Patterson

He leaned towards me, and I did what any reasonable person would do when facing imminent death by being eaten alive. I screamed. ~ Donald G. Firesmith

Too bad Justice refused to let him toss live grenades to the side of the course. That would add motivation. He knew from personal experience. His personal best time for a quarter-mile run had been in Africa - while being chased by an angry rhino. Imminent death made for a great workout. ~ Susan Mallery

Bosch knew that department policy held that deadly force was justified if it was used to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to an officer or a citizen. Mendenhall was not required to identify herself or give Ellis the opportunity to drop his weapon. ~ Michael Connelly

There was no point moping around when you faced imminent death. ~ Rick Riordan

Lok'tar ogar!" The daemon holding me pulled my head back, exposing my throat.
"Victory or death," I retorted at my captor hoarsely. "For the Horde. And for the record, shouting World of Warcraft battle
cries kind of kills the whole 'imminent death' expectation."

The daemon paused. "What server are you on?" he demanded.
"Blackhand."
"Righteous. Guild?"

I couldn't imagine what the hell that mattered at this point, but it was keeping me alive so that was a bonus. I'd gladly spit out
the rest of my Warcraft stats if it bought me a few more minutes.

"Yeah," I coughed. "ElfhunterBitches."

He blinked and then grinned, tapping himself on the chest. "No shit. I'm TartBarbie. Undead DeathKnight."
I stared at him. "TB? Seriously? I'm Baconator. Blelf Warlock. You did a hell of a job tanking on that raid the other night."

"Yeah, I am pretty awesome." He glanced over his shoulder, releasing me. "Look, if I'd known it was you, I'd never have
agreed to this. Go on." He nudged me with a leather boot. "I'll tell them you got away."

I didn't have to be told twice. "Thanks," I said softly. "I'll make it up to you, somehow."
"No worries." He winked. "See you next Thursday. ~ Allison Pang

What if an EO isn't a product of just any trauma? What if their bodies are reacting to the greatest physical and psychological trauma possible? Death. Think about it, the kind of transformation we're talking about wouldn't be possible with a physiological reaction alone, or a psychological reaction alone. It would require a huge influx of adrenaline, of fear, awareness. We talk about the power of will, we talk about mind over matter, but it's not one over the other, it's both at once. The mind and the body both respond to imminent death, and in those cases where both are strong enough - and both would have to be strong, I'm talking about genetic predisposition and will to survive - I think you might have a recipe for an EO. ~ Victoria Schwab

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character ... Would you slow down? Or speed up? ~ Chuck Palahniuk

How stand I, then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth
My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!
He exits. ~ William Shakespeare

There's a lot of Hollywood bullshit about flying. I mean, look at the movies about test pilots or fighter pilots who face imminent death. The controls are jammed or something really important has fallen off the plane, and these guys are talking like magpies; their lives are flashing past their eyes, and they're flailing around in the cockpit. It just doesn't happen. You don't have time to talk. You're too damn busy trying to get out of the problem you're in to talk or ricochet around the cockpit. Or think about what happened the night after your senior prom. ~ Robin Olds

It seems reckless, even perverse, to spend so much time and effort nurturing such a deadly thing ... Ernie and Pooka seek to understand death and to master their fear of it by domesticating it in the form of the brugmansia. ~ Dean Koontz

Death bears with it a stain that seeps into the hollow and fills the mind. ~ Kathryn Lasky

Westley: Hear this now: I will always come for you.
Buttercup: But how can you be sure?
Westley: This is true love-you think this happens every day?
Westley: I told you I would always come for you. Why didn't you wait for me?
Buttercup: Well ... you were dead.
Westley: Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.
Buttercup: i will never doubt again.
Westley: There will never be a need. ~ William Goldman

Death may indeed be final but the love we share while living is eternal ~ Donald E. Williams, Jr.

I wanted to scream with the pain, scream with the feeling of death pressing so close but I clenched my teeth together, grinding then until my head pounded and forced my trembling legs to stand. I had always been stubborn, wilful and no power on earth could change that. ~ Hannah Blatchford

Once supply begins to dwindle, the years to follow will see shortages that at best will cause global recession, possibly worse than the 1930s Great Depression, ... war, famine, pestilence and death. ~ Kenneth S. Deffeyes

VICEROY OF PORTUGAL. ...My late ambition hath distain'd my faith;
My breach of faith occasion'd bloody wars;
Those bloody wars have spent my treasure;
And with my treasure my people's blood;
And with their blood, my joy and best belov'd
My best belov'd, my sweet and only son.
O, wherefore went I not to war myself
The cause was mine; I might have died for both:
My years were mellow, his but young and green;
My death were natural, but his was forc'd. ~ Thomas Kyd

I have transmitted genetic material, all I have to do between my daughters' birth and my death is to decorate my life. ~ Peter Greenaway

I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that. ~ Brian Joyce

The end of a life is always vivifying. ~ Samuel Beckett

The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one had ever been put to death in Socrates' name. And that is because Socrates' ideas were never made law. Law, in whatever name, protects privilege. ~ E.L. Doctorow

On Women:

"What do you mean?" Martin asked curiously, passing him a glass. "Here, down this and be good."

"Because–" Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation of it. "Because of the women. They will worry you until you die, as they have already worried you, or else I was born yesterday. Now there's no use choking me; I'm going to have my say. This is undoubtedly your calf love; but for Beauty's sake show better taste next time. What under heaven do you want with a daughter of the bourgeoisie? Leave them alone. Pick out some great, wanton flame of a woman, who laughs at life and jeers at death and loves one while she may. There are such women, and they will love you just as readily as any pusillanimous product of bourgeois-sheltered life. ~ Jack London

Because, to do manual work now, means in reality to shut yourself up for ten or twelve hours a day in an unhealthy workshop, and to remain chained to the same task for twenty or thirty years, and maybe for your whole life.
It means to be doomed to a paltry wage, to the uncertainty of the morrow, to want of work, often to destitution, more often than not to death in a hospital, after having worked forty years to feed, clothe, amuse, and instruct others than yourself and your children.
It means to bear the stamp of inferiority all your life; because, whatever the politicians tell us, the manual worker is always considered inferior to the brain worker, and the one who has toiled ten hours in a workshop has not the time, and still less the means, to give himself the high delights of science and art, nor even to prepare himself to appreciate them; he must be content with the crumbs from the table of privileged persons. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

We are medium-sized mammals who only prosper because we've developed a half-arsed ability to terraform the less suitable bits of the planet we evolved on, and we're conscious of our inevitable decay and death, and we can't live anywhere else. There is no invisible sky daddy to give us immortal life and a harp and wings when we die. ~ Charles Stross

And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them,
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere,
even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied. ~ Walt Whitman

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. ~ Thomas Gray

I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes. ~ Frank Herbert

The seed of death sprouts within the desire for union. ~ Rabisankar Bal

Fear envelops bones like new skin,
envelops blood with night's skin,
the earth moves beneath the soles of the feet -
it is not your hair but the terror in your head,
like long hair made of vertical nails,
and what you see are not shattered streets,
but rather, within you, your own crushed walls,
your frustrated infinity, again the city comes
crashing down: in your silence, only water's threat
is heard, and in the water
drowned horses gallop through your death. ~ Pablo Neruda

Death is as normal and digestion. People move through life the way food moves through our bodies. Their natural usefulness is extracted along the way to help enrich the world, and when they have nothing left to give, they're eliminated. Much like our bodies would clog up with excrement if we didn't defecate, the world would do the same if we didn't die. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson

Dad didn't believe in God, but he was a lifelong member of the Church of Shit or Get Off the Can. So his actual death itself was less an event than a final sad detail. ~ Jonathan Tropper

People are reluctant to talk about old age and death because they are afraid of emotion, and they willingly avoid the things they feel most emotional about, though these are the very things they most need to talk about. ~ Paul Tournier

Then love-devouring Death do what he dare. ~ William Shakespeare

What about the Symmetry?! ~ Atsushi Ohkubo

By noon, silence arrives one last time, flowing into every space of her room. And before long, silence swallows sound and color and seconds and equations and entire stanzas of old poetry, leaving new words. The sheets are breathless. The room is bruised.

My mother is still warm. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death. ~ John F. Kennedy

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

Amazingly similar in the execution. A bow pulled, an arrow shot. Entirely different in the aftermath. I killed a boy whose name I don't even know. Somewhere his family is weeping for him. His friends call for my blood. Maybe he had a girlfriend who really believed he would come back ... ~ Suzanne Collins

The friend I can trust is the one who will let me have my death.
The rest are actors who want me to stay and further the plot. ~ Adrienne Rich

Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king's command or a people's favour. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that. ~ Seneca.

I have no fear of death. More important, I don't fear life. ~ Steven Seagal

Im not afraid of death...Only what leads to it ~ Rayanna Vilera

At first glance, a militant conception of revolution seems more impractical than a nonviolent conception, but this is because it is realistic. People need to understand that capitalism, the state, white supremacy, imperialism, and patriarchy all constitute a war against the people of this planet. And revolution is an intensification of that war. We cannot liberate ourselves and create the worlds we want to live in if we think of fundamental social change as shining a light in the darkness, winning hearts and minds, speaking truth to power, bearing witness, capturing people's attention, or any other passive parade. Millions of people die every year on this planet for no better reason than a lack of clean drinking water. Because the governments and corporations that have usurped control of the commons have not found a way to profit from those people's lives, they let them die. Millions of people die every year because a few corporations and their allied governments do not want to allow the production of generic AIDS drugs and other medicine. Do you think the institutions and the elite individuals who hold the power of life or death over millions give a fuck about our protests? They have declared war on us, and we need to take it back to them. Not because we are angry (though we should be), not to get revenge, and not because we are acting impulsively, but because we have weighed the possibility of freedom against the certainty of shame from living under whatever form of dominat ~ Peter Gelderloos

He made the poor choice of deciding that he couldn't live either. You can make a better choice. You can choose to get up and live. ~ Jesse Haubert

Wasn't there some belief about how if you drop a frog into boiling water, it will jump right out? But if you put it in cold water and turn up the heat gradually, it will allow itself to slowly cook to death? ~ Lisa Unger

I have to acknowledge that the sea is a cup of death, and the land is a stained altar stone. We the living are survivors huddled on flotsam, living on jetsam. We are escapees. We wake in terror, eat in hunger, sleep with a mouth full of blood. ~ Annie Dillard

Only when you fuck is everything that you dislike in life and everything by which you are defeated in life purely, if momentarily, revenged. Only then are you most cleanly alive and most cleanly yourself. It's not the sex that's the corruption – it's the rest. Sex isn't just friction and shallow fun. Sex is also the revenge on death. Don't forget death. Don't ever forget it. Yes, sex too is limited in its power. I know very well how limited. But tell me, what power is greater? ~ Philip Roth

I came, then, to serve my Church first of all, and the whole world, that is, every person I find along my way. I serve and I will give of myself unto death so that there will be no distance between speaking and doing, so that the people will never again say, 'there is a chasm between us and the leaders' and word spread that the Church is far from her people. I know very well that our people are good and that they want from us today to go to them, to seek them out wherever they are, to search out the lost and return them joyfully to the fold. They hunger and thirst for the Word of God. ~ Metropolitan Ephraim Kyriakos

By then she's lost in the land of sleep and he is too, and when they go there they never go together, and she is afraid that it is also a preview of death, a place where there may be dreams but never love, never home, never a hand to hold yours when squadrons of birds flock across the burnt-orange sun at the close of the day. ~ Stephen King

We find the vast majority of people in every country believing that there will be a time when this world will become perfect, when there will be no disease, nor death, nor unhappiness, nor wickedness. That is a very good idea, a very good motive power to inspire and uplift the ignorant. But if we think for a moment, we shall find on the very face of it that it cannot be so. How can it be, seeing that good and evil are the obverse and reverse of the same coin? How can you have good without evil at the same time? ~ Swami Vivekananda

is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. ~ Anonymous