In Death Quotes

In death, hope is everlasting. ~ Ildefonso Falcones

The reason, as I had learned from my father, is that there is no certainty in death. Because there is no beginning or end, there is no way to measure how long your time. ~ Terry Goodkind

(T)he cadet was too young to believe in death after life. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Young man, be of good courage. Care not for what the world says or thinks: you will not be with the world always. Can man save your soul? No. Will man be your judge in the great and dreadful day of account? No. Can man give you a good conscience in life, a good hope in death, a good answer in the morning of resurrection? No! no! no! Man can do nothing of the sort. Then "fear not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings: for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool" (Isa. 51:7,8). Call to your mind the saying of good Colonel Gardiner: "I fear God, and therefore I have none else to fear." Go and be like him. ~ J.C. Ryle

Believe that the difference in death rates can be traced to the fundamental human need for a reason to live. ~ Atul Gawande

Give me a paper and pen, so I can write about my life of sin. A couple of bottles of gin, in case I don't get in. ~ Tupac Shakur

So long as Christians remained members of a suspect society, subject to death, the boldest among them maintained that, since demons controlled the government and inspired its agents, the believer could gain freedom at their hands only in death. ~ Elaine Pagels

A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil--of people passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices--of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's rhythmic death--of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work--of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller's court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell--of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold the devil-god for long and that swiftly its blight would spread! ~ A. Merritt

Every time I go look for God amidst sorrow, I always find Jesus at the cross, in death and resurrection. This is our God. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

If you are in a position where a little mistake results in death, you don't have to worry about the big mistakes! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. ~ Epicurus

I am not one of your repentant sinners, Kenneth. I have lived my life - God, what a life! - and as I have lived I shall die, unflinching and unchanged. Dare one to presume that a few hours spent in whining prayers shall atone for years of reckless dissoluteness? 'Tis a doctrine of cravens, who, having lacked in life the strength to live as conscience bade them, lack in death the courage to stand by that life's deeds. I am no such traitor to myself. ~ Rafael Sabatini

What God did for Jesus in standing up for Him, standing behind Him in life and in death, and in standing in communion and solidarity with Him, the Father also does for us, here and now, in our lives. ~ Megan McKenna

No mortal thing has a beginning, nor does it end in death and obliteration; there is only a mixing and then separating of what was mixed, but by mortal men these processes are named "beginnings. ~ Empedocles

You are rebirth; therefore you have one foot in life and the other in death. ~ Anonymous

It was characteristic of the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist movements in Europe after 1930 that they recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been "spoiled" by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction. They presented disagreements as invariably originating in deep natural, social, or psychological sources beyond the control of the individual and therefore beyond the power of reason. This would have been a shortcoming only if they had sincerely entered into competition with other parties; it was not if they were sure of dealing with people who had reason to be equally hostile to all parties. ~ Hannah Arendt

Those who can serve best, those who help most, those who sacrifice most, those are the people who will be loved in life and honoured in death, when all questions of colour are swept away and when in a free country free citizens shall meet on equal grounds. ~ Annie Besant

Savannah shook her head and banged it against the heavy muscles of his chest. "I hate this, Gregori. I feel so useless. I feel like I'm endangering you. We are lifemates. I asked you to meet me halfway in my world, and you've done it. You've done everything I've asked of you. What have I done to live in your world with you?"
Gregori bent his dark head to the slim white column of her neck. "You are my world, ma petite, my very existence. You are what makes living bearable. You are my light, the very air I breathe." His mouth brushed her pulse, her earlobe. "You are not meant to walk in death. You never were. ~ Christine Feehan

I don't really enjoy experiencing pain. No one does. But we will become less human if we learn to detach ourselves from one another to the point that when we experience death of a beautiful being (our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our soul mates, our friends etc.) that it will not bother us that we will not feel. But see that's suppression. It will bother us somewhere deep inside. So, love someone. Hold them tight. Don't fear the loss. Fear the part of being too afraid to love someone. Love Everyone. It's inevitable: we all die. Thats the ugly part of life. But Love and being alive is so beautiful and so strong that the love, the memories stay even in death. Life is love, life is being alive to feel pain. The love the beautiful love always remains. Love. Life. Joy. Peace ~ Jill Telford

When you find nothing, Morris said, it means you're eliminating what surrounds the something.
Is that a Zen thing? Eve questioned.
If not, it should be. ~ J.D. Robb

In the midst of life, we are in death. ~ Fred Chappell

Loving you is and will always be my greatest honor. You've done the impossible; you've opened me,
Gabriella. And despite what the future may hold for us, I will carry that with me forever. My heart will
always be yours, in life and in death. ~ S.L. Jennings

Even in dreams and in death, a monk and a fox are from different worlds, as they were in life, and in different worlds they will forever stay ~ Neil Gaiman

Marriage is mostly a sucker bet"
"Spoken by the woman with Dream Husband"
"You just said Dream Husband might take a turn down the road and decide he wants to do a threesome or _"
"Me! Me!" Peabody shot up a hand. "Pick me!"
Eve & Peabody ~ J.D. Robb

The greatest mystery in life is not life itself, but death. Death is the culmination of life, the ultimate blossoming of life. In death the whole life is summed up, in death you arrive. Life is a pilgrimage towards death. From the very beginning, death is coming. From the moment of birth, death has started coming towards you, you have started moving towards death. ~ Rajneesh

What Jesus meant was that whoever is attached to the worldly life and this earthly body will lose them in death. But whoever lets go of attachments to this worldly life and this earthly body and identifies with the permanence or God-consciousness that Jesus represented, will never die. ~ Rama Swami

We cannot live to be together
Forever doomed to love and death,
The latter bringing us together
Claiming from life the final breath!
So we shall love in death forever,
Evicted as we are from life,
As long as living shall be never
Successful in the love-long strife! ~ Tatyana K. Varenko

Dear Camryn,

I never wanted it to be this way. I wanted to tell you these things myself, but I was afraid. I was afraid that if I told you out loud that I loved you, that what we had together would die with me. The truth is that I knew in Kansas that you were the one. I've loved you since that day when I first looked up into your eyes as you glared down at me from over the top of that bus seat. Maybe I didn't know it then, but I knew something had happened to me in that moment and I could never let you go.

I have never lived the way I lived during my short time with you. For the first time in my life, I've felt whole, alive, free. You were the missing piece of my soul, the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins. I think that if past lives are real then we have been lovers in every single one of them. I've known you for a short time, but I feel like I've known you forever.

I want you to know that even in death I'll always remember you. I'll always love you. I wish that things could've turned out differently. I thought of you many nights on the road. I stared up at the ceiling in the motels and pictured what our life might be like together if I had lived. I even got all mushy and thought of you in a wedding dress and even with a mini me in your belly. You know, I always heard that sex is great when you're pregnant. ;-)

But I'm sorry that I had to leave you, Camryn. I'm so sorry…I wish the story of Orpheus and Eurydice was real ~ J.A. Redmerski

The cycle of life is death, decomposition and regeneration, and a person who wants to stop killing animals is actually anti-life because it's only in death that life can be regenerated. ~ Joel Salatin

I had arrived at an understanding of faith that had far more to do with trust than with certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world although I could not say for sure how that happened. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

I think that the exactitude of the photograph has a sort of compelling nature based in its power to duplicate life. But to me the real power of photography is based in death: the fact that somehow it can enliven that which is not there in a kind of stultifying frightened way, because it seems to me that part of one's life is made up of a constant confrontation with one's own death. ~ Barbara Kruger

Bryce's face crumpled as she lurched to her feet, sprinting to the Gate
She didn't care how it was possible as Danika said again, "Light it up"
Then Bryce was laughing and sobbing as she screamed, "LIGHT IT UP, DANIKA! LIGHT IT UP, LIGHT IT UP, LIGHT IT UP!"
Bryce slammed her palm onto the bronze disk of the Gate.
And soul to soul with the friend whom she had not forgotten, the friend who had not forgotten her, even in death, Bryce made the Drop ~ Sarah J. Maas

If the storytellers told it true, all stories would end in death. ~ George Pelecanos

It is unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free though thrall, happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death. ~ Giordano Bruno

In death, lie. In living, cry. Carry me home to remember to be remembered. ~ Kami Garcia

But he will fear least to become nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now, and who consequently no longer takes any share in his individual phenomenon, because in him knowledge has, as it were, burnt up and consumed the will, so that no will, thus no desire for individual existence, remains in him any more. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

We don't live our lives with this much order and control. To represent them in death like this is a lie. A proper cemetary should have big, gnarled trees among crumbling angel's and weathered tombstones arranged haphazardly. The grass should be littered with clover and worn down to dirt in places. Not like the manicured, rootless sod in this place. ~ Kevin A. Kuhn

In the midst of life we are in death, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection. ~ Thomas Cranmer

Invitation to Eternity

Say, wilt thou go with me, sweet maid,
Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me
Through the valley-depths of shade,
Of bright and dark obscurity;
Where the path has lost its way,
Where the sun forgets the day,
Where there's nor light nor life to see,
Sweet maiden, wilt thou go with me?

Where stones will turn to flooding streams,
Where plains will rise like ocean's waves,
Where life will fade like visioned dreams
And darkness darken into caves,
Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me
Through this sad non-identity
Where parents live and are forgot,
And sisters live and know us not?

Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me
In this strange death of life to be,
To live in death and be the same,
Without this life or home or name,
At once to be and not to be -
That was and is not - yet to see
Things pass like shadows, and the sky
Above, below, around us lie?

The land of shadows wilt thou trace,
Nor look nor know each other's face;
The present marred with reason gone,
And past and present both as one?
Say, maiden, can thy life be led
To join the living and the dead?
Then trace thy footsteps on with me:
We are wed to one eternity. ~ John Clare

Into the mercy seat I climb My head is shaved, my head is wired And like a moth that tries To enter the bright eye I go shuffling out of life Just to hide in death awhile And anyway I never lied. ~ Nick Cave

Professor Severus Snape: There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don't expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making. However, for those select few ...
[stares at Draco Malfoy]
Professor Severus Snape: Who possess, the predisposition ... I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.
[notices Harry scribbling on his paper]
Professor Severus Snape: Then again, maybe some of you have come to Hogwarts in possession of abilities so formidable that you feel confident enough to not pay attention!
[steps over to Harry]
Professor Severus Snape: Mister Potter. Our new celebrity. ~ J.K. Rowling

Whoever desires Paradise, proceeds towards goodness; whoever fears Hell, refrains from the impulses of passions; whoever believes firmly in death, detests wordly life; and whoever recognises the worldly life, the trials and tribulations (of life) become slight for him. ~ Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious effort to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try.
Nero Wolf in Death of a Dude. ~ Rex Stout

I have been made to protect you. Even in death, I will find a way. ~ Leigh Bardugo

What's a Hot Steam?" asked Dill. "Haven't you ever walked along a lonesome road at night and passed by a hot place?" Jem asked Dill. "A Hot Steam's somebody who can't get to heaven, just wallows around on lonesome roads an' if you walk through him, when you die you'll be one too, an' you'll go around at night suckin' people's breath - " "How can you keep from passing through one?" "You can't," said Jem. "Sometimes they stretch all the way across the road, but if you hafta go through one you say, 'Angel-bright, life-in-death; get off the road, don't suck my breath.' That keeps 'em from wrapping around you - ~ Harper Lee

Sometimes I just want to gobble you whole, eat you alive. You're so gorgeous. You're so beautiful. ~ J.D. Robb

I go now to my long rest in the timeless halls beyond the seas and the Mountains of Aman. It will be long ere I am seen among the Noldor again; and it may be that we shall not meet a second time in death or life, for the fates of our kindreds are apart. Farewell! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

It is vain to shut our eyes to the fact that there is a vast quantity of so-called Christianity nowadays, which you cannot declare positively unsound - but which, nevertheless, is not full measure, good weight and sixteen ounces to the pound. It is a Christianity in which there is undeniably "something about Christ, and something about grace, and something about faith, and something about repentance, and something about holiness," but it is not the real "thing as it is" in the Bible. Things are out of place and out of proportion. As old Latimer would have said, it is a kind of "mingle-mangle," and does no good. It neither . . . exercises influence on daily conduct, nor comforts in life, nor gives peace in death. And those who hold it often awake too late to find that they have got nothing solid under their feet. ~ J.C. Ryle

Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?


Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Savior; thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee. ~ Episcopal Church

Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dimlit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear, but whether it decays under the earth or above on green fields, or out to sea or in the very air, all shall come to revelation, and to revel, in the knowledge of the strangling fruit - and the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive. And there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their teeth shall devour and sustain and herald the passing of an age. That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame ~ Jeff VanderMeer

The mind will not believe in death, perhaps because, as far as the mind is concerned, death never happens. ~ Jeanette Winterson

And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death. ~ Grant Morrison

Cage

It's a tear i want to shed,
For the weathered roses that once was red,

Today it's a decision want to make,
To move on in life ignoring the fate,

It's the promises i want to break,
Because its a nightmare and i want to awake,

It is the poem that don't rhyme,
I don't know how, but things changed with the tides of time,

It's the memories i want to forget,
Now i am tired, no more i can regret,

I'm the one, who feels alone in the crowd,
I want to cry, run and shout out loud,

Please leave me alone, relieve me from the pain,
I am empty now, there is nothing more you can regain,

Look at me and deep into my eyes,
You will find the love that never dies, ~ Ratish Edwards

A book can only end one of two ways: truthfully or artfully. If it ends artfully, then it never feels quite right. It feels forced, manipulated. If it ends truthfully, then the story ends badly, in death. It's the reason most theories and religions and economic systems break down before you get too far into them
and the reason Buddhism and the Beach Boys make sense to teenagers, because they're too young to know what life really is: a frantic struggle that always ends the same way. The only thing that varies is the beginning and the middle. Life itself always ends badly. ~ Jess Walter

Anyone is capable of going to Heaven. Heaven is our home. People ask me about death and whether I look forward to it and I answer, 'Of course', because I am going home. Dying is not the end, it is just the beginning. Death is a continuation of life. This is the meaning of eternal life; it is where our soul goes to God, to be in the presence of God, to see God, to speak to God, to continue loving Him with greater love because in Heaven we shall be able to love Him with our whole heart and our soul because we only surrender our body in death - our heart and our soul live forever. When we die we are going to be with God, and all those we have known who have gone before us: our family and our friends will be there waiting for us. Heaven must be a beautiful place. ~ Mother Teresa

If the kingdom of God is within us and that is a kingdom of justice, of peace, and of joy then whoever remains with these virtues is certainly in the kingdom of God. By contrast, all who deal in unrighteousness, in discord, and in death-bearing gloom have taken their stand in the kingdom of the devil, in hell and in lifelessness. It is by these tokens that the kingdom of God or of the devil is recognized. ~ John Cassian

Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I save and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again. ~ Robert Browning

The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Billy sipped the last of his coffee from the mug and shut down his laptop. 1,000 words wasn't great but it also wasn't as bad as no words at all. It hadn't exactly been a great couple of years and the royalties from his first few books were only going to hold out so much longer. Even if he didn't have anything else to worry about there was always Sara to consider. Sara with her big blue eyes so like her mother's.
He sat for a moment longer thinking about his daughter and all they'd been through since Wendy had passed. Then he picked up his mug with a long sigh and carried it to the kitchen to rinse it in the sink.
When he came back into his little living room and the quiet of 1 AM he wasn't surprised to find her there over to the side of the bookshelf hovering close to the floor just beyond the couch.
Wendy.
Her eyes were cold and intense in death, angry and spiteful in a way he'd never seen them when she was alive. What once had been beautiful was now a horror and a threat, one that he'd known far too well in the years since she'd died. He and Sara both.
He stood where he was looking at her as she glared up at him. Part of her smaller vantage point was caused by kneeling next to the shelf but he knew from the many times she'd walked or run through a room that death had also reduced her, made her no higher than 4 or 4 and half feet when she'd been 6 in life. She was like a child trapped there on the cusp between youth and coming adulthood. Crushe ~ Amanda M. Lyons

Grimaud left the chamber, and led the way to the hall, where, according
to the custom of the province, the body was laid out, previously to
being put away forever. D'Artagnan was struck at seeing two open coffins
in the hall. In reply to the mute invitation of Grimaud, he approached,
and saw in one of them Athos, still handsome in death, and, in the
other, Raoul with his eyes closed, his cheeks pearly as those of the
Palls of Virgil, with a smile on his violet lips. He shuddered at seeing
the father and son, those two departed souls, represented on earth by
two silent, melancholy bodies, incapable of touching each other, however
close they might be. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Because our consciousness doesn't die at death, we carry our mind-set of thoughts and beliefs with us to the other side. As in life, so in death. When we cross over into the other dimensions, we continue to create experiences through our thoughts, the same way we did in life. ~ James Van Praagh

More and more, I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice. In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It's a real pleasure for me to hear people pushing their craft. ~ John Darnielle

He was sorry for himself as well, for he was doomed to find life and identity in death letters. ~ Mahesh Poudyal

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation. ~ Susan Abulhawa

With little effort, he rolled his late lover off the edge of the cliff and watched, grimacing, when her dainty body bounced off a rocky outcropping. True, he planned on packing her back to France, or to another of his associates. And true, he didn't see her death as a great loss, but he wouldn't have wished her bashed on the rocks, even in death. However, this was the most expedient way to rid himself of an inconveniently dead mistress. ~ Chris Karlsen

Oh the stellar sensation,
Oh the cosmic elevation;
Time is sober in death,
For the wine of love;
Is the blue life of the earth. ~ Stephan Attia

It didn't matter what he'd said or done in life, in death he was innocent. ~ Callie Hunter

Sin defies God, utterly corrupts each individual, corrodes all social relationships, and issues in death. ~ D. A. Carson

Only in death does duty end. ~ Unknown

You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on! ~ Yann Martel

I listen to the Beatles all the time - in my car, at the gym. The Beatles are still part of my life. And because of that, John Lennon - in life and in death - remains part of my life. ~ Laurence Shames

Life can become a celebration if you know how to live without concern. Otherwise life becomes a long prolonged disease, an illness which culminates only in death. ~ Osho

Bite me. -Lieutenant Eve Dallas, from any of the In Death books. ~ J.D. Robb

When brought to meaning, all importance becomes small, as in death, all life seems nothing. Knowing is destroyed by thinking, not destroyed but sterilized; distilled into knowledge. Thinking, the processing of knowing to knowledge. ~ William Wharton

A man whose life has been dishonourable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death. ~ Lucius Accius

The greatest enemy is conquered only in death. Your greatest enemy is yourself. ~ James "Logan" Howlett A.K.A "Wolverine"

In death - no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Preserve your peace of mind. There is not much time; all things end in death. Do not lament the past too much, or fear the future too acutely, ot waste too much energy on other peoples' woes, in case the present dissolves altogether. ~ Fay Weldon

Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics - all those profundities which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness; destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent I, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable ~ Victor Hugo

Men's lives are short .
The hard man and his cruelties will be
Cursed behind his back and mocked in death.
But one whose heart and ways are kind - of him
strangers will bear report to the whole wide world,
and distant men will praise him.

- Penelope in Robert Fitzgerald trans. THE ODYSSEY (364) ~ Robert Fitzgerald

To feel forever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever-or else swoon in death. ~ John Keats

Love without trust? It's not love at all. ~ J.D. Robb

In death, I love you still.
So, forward! Aspire! Achieve!
I remain,
Daniel Blessing ~ Jeff Mariotte

The truth in death can only be found in the dying itself. ~ Matthew Culberson

We begin to die from the moment we are born, for birth is the cause of death. The nature of decay is inherent in youth, the nature of sickness is inherent in health, in the midst of life we are verily in death. ~ Gautama Buddha

One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though ... betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope. ~ Steven Dietz

Was it an hour, or a week before the light of the moon rose in the interior of my body? A bird with luminous wings flew in front of that full moon, and its head was as radiant as a point of light. That bird must be the Khu--this sweet bird of the night--a creature of divine intelligence loaned to us just so much as the Ren or the Sekhem. Yes, the Khu was a light in your mind while you lived, but in death, it must return to heaven. For the Khu was also eternal. ~ Norman Mailer

You can't drown yourself that simply. All good suicides involve speed and irreversibility, because the body will always move to protect itself against the sicko mind trying to do it in. ~ Josephine Humphreys

Death gets a bad rap. People think that euthanasia is putting their pets "down" when it really is lifting us up. In the first moment, when we come back to earth, we remember the comfort of the Heaven we came from and this is why we cry when we are born. When we are born in Heaven we come in laughing not crying! In birth we have the passage and then the pain. In death we have the pain and then the passage. ~ Kate McGahan

To have the universe bear one company, would be a great consolation in death. ~ Publilius Syrus

Even in death you'd still hold a place in someone's heart that none can ever fill. ~ Poise

It is more magnificent than what I thought heaven might be, and yet it is all of its wonder, as well."
...
"Iris, we are shut off from it in this life because if any knew its magnificence, life itself would end, for all who are living would seek death. But as the egg must be in the nest for the bird to fly from it, so the living must live and die when nature intends so that the shell may be broken at the point when the living have wings to fly. It is as if in life we are blind, and in death we see. In life we think in error, but in death we know and love and understand. ~ Douglas Clegg

Humans die," said the grandmother, "and humans suffer too, for they lead short lives and when they are dead, no one eats them. They are stuffed in boxes and hidden in the dirt, or else set on fire and turned into cinders, so no one else can make any use of them; they are a prodigiously selfish race and consider themselves their own private property even in death. ~ Mallory Ortberg

Likes to fight, does he?" Sandra said thoughtfully.

"Oh, yeah. He says there are only two reasons to fight."

"Which are?"

"Joy and death."

Her mother's brows went up. "Joy in death?"

"No, no... For joy, to stretch yourself with a friend; or death, to kill as quickly as you can. Nothing in between. ~ S.M. Stirling

O gods, If any gods will listen, I deserve Punishment surely, I do not refuse it, But lest, in living, I offend the living, Offend the dead in death, drive me away From either realm, change me somehow, refuse me Both life and death!
-- Myrrha, before being transformed into a tree ~ Ovid

death of a child or a brother or a sister, one may half-waken, thinking of that person with that same lost emptiness, that feeling of places which may never be filled . . . perhaps not even in death? ~ Stephen King

I don't like the idea of you shivering unless I cause it. Stay warm.
Roarke, Naked In Death ~ J.D. Robb

In death we shall rediscover all the instants of our life and we shall freely combine them as in dreams. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Now I knew that life and truth were one; that life mere and pure is in itself bliss; that where being is not bliss, it is not life, but life-in-death. Every inspiration of the dark wind that blew where it listed went out a sigh of thanksgiving. At last I was! I lived, and nothing could touch my life! My darling walked beside me, and we were on our way home to see the Father! ~ George MacDonald

Life ... is a joyful expression of love, praise and thanksgiving instead of a hopeless struggle which eventually ends in death. Giving thanks in every circumstance, we forego the logic and reason which asks, "Why me?" and open our hearts and learn to trust. Every obstacle becomes an occasion for rejoicing. We put love at the center of our universe and we are lifted beyond the world of limitation, doubt, and fear into the realm of love, hope, and eternal happiness. ~ Robert Scheid