Knowing Death Is Near Quotes

For the rest of the earth's organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death - and nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dying - and nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before suffering - slowly or quickly - as we draw near to death. This is the knowledge we "enjoy" as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are - hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones. ~ Thomas Ligotti

Until that moment Vetch had watched him with an anxious dread, for he was not sure what had happened there in the dark land. He did not know if this was Ged in the boat with him, and his hand had been for hours ready to the anchor, to stave in the boat's planking and sink her there in midsea, rather than carry back to the harbors of Earthsea the evil thing that he feared might have taken Ged's look and form. Now when he saw his friend and heard him speak, his doubt vanished. And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. In the Creation of Ea, which is the oldest song, it is said, "Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky." That song Vetch sang aloud now as he held the boat westward, going before the cold wind of the winter night that blew at their backs from the vastness of the Open Sea. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

It is hard, said Mme Landau, when I told her about those railway lessons, in the end it is hard to know what it is that someone dies of. Yes, it is very hard, said Mme Landau, one really doesn't know. ~ W.G. Sebald

I am only mortal, desperate, urgent. Spirits have endless ages in which to do nothing, if they so choose, but humans have death to hurry them on. Near or far, the end is always in sight. We have no time to stand and stare. Make your choice, Fernanda. ~ Jan Siegel

It is really incredible how meaningless and insignificant when seen from without, and how dull and senseless when felt from within, is the course of life of the great majority of men. It is weary longing and worrying, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life to death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. They are like clockwork that is wound up and goes without knowing why. Every time a man is begotten and born the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations. Every individual, every human apparition and its course of life, is only one more short dream of the endless spirit of nature, of the persistent will-to-live, is only one more fleeting form, playfully sketched by it on its infinite page, space and time; it is allowed to exist for a short while that is infinitesimal compared with these, and is then effaced, to make new room. Yet, and here is to be found the serious side of life, each of these fleeting forms, these empty fancies, must be paid for by the whole will-to-live in all its intensity with many deep sorrows, and finally with a bitter death, long feared and finally made manifest. It is for this reason that the sight of a corpse suddenly makes us serious. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

To strategize a rescue mission irrefutably capable of saving every human being is leagues beyond our ability to comprehend, and enormous beyond any resource we possess to execute. And to embark upon just such a mission fully knowing that without our death the mission will fall to failure is bravery of the greatest sort imaginable. Yet, that is exactly what Christmas is. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

You are unwilling to pay that price, even knowing that the consolation prize is not only to learn every philosophy that has ever existed, but ones which have not yet been conceived? Even knowing that if you do not accept, you will soon cease to learn anything at all?"
Raimund tilted his head, still staring into my eyes, and I knew he must see the tears filling them, though I held them back from falling.
"My friend," he whispered, "do you really believe your own words, I wonder? Your pain makes me think you know that death is not the end of learning, but only the beginning. ~ Krisi Keley

I used to be very afraid of graveyards and death and such things, but not anymore. There is just no sense of being afraid when you live so near the graves; it would be like the tongue fearing the teeth. ~ NoViolet Bulawayo

Air buffeted him and he heard the heavy flap of wings. Rake smiled. "Silanah," he said softly, knowing she would hear him. The red dragon slipped between two towers and banked, returning to his position. "I know you sense the Demon Lord's presence, Silanah. You would help me in this. I know, I know." He shook his head. "Return to Moon's Spawn, dear friend. This battle is mine. Yours is done. But know this: if I fail, you may seek to avenge my death." Silanah swept overhead and loosed a thin wail. "Go home," Rake whispered. The red dragon cried again, then swung westward and rose through the night air. ~ Steven Erikson

The glee of it. The ecstasy of It. I can't speak about this It because I know no word. It is just there, It is always there, like death in life. In this instant I know that something terrible is rising that must be seized and turned back upon itself before it twists outward into violence. But that knowing always comes too late, a wild unraveling is under way and I am caught up in it like a coyote seen late one afternoon in an Arkansas tornado-a toy dog spinning skyward, struck white by a ray of sun against black clouds, then black, then white, then gone and lost forever. The wind dies. A dead stillness. Mirror water. That ecstasy that shivered every nerve replaced by the precise knowing that what this self perpetrated is as much a part of the universal will as erupting lava that subsides once more into the inner earth. ~ Peter Matthiessen

I believe that death should not be feared instead we should endure life and give our best even though life isn't always fair we shall always enjoy life the way it comes and if death is upon us its cause its time for us to go knowing that there is something better for us ... ~ Miguel Angel Puma

I have found that battling despair does not mean closing my eyes to the enormity of the tasks of effecting change, nor ignoring the strength and the barbarity of the forces aligned against us. It means teaching, surviving and fighting with the most important resource I have, myself, and taking joy in that battle. It means, for me, recognizing the enemy outside, and the enemy within, and knowing that my work is part of a continuum of women's work, of reclaiming this earth and our power, and knowing that this work did not begin with my birth nor will it end with my death. And it means knowing that within this continuum, my life and my love and my work has particular power and meaning relative to others. ~ Audre Lorde

It's when you hear the crows caw that you know that death is near. ~ Anthony T. Hincks.

Being older, I began to understand the lyrics. At the beginning, it sounds like a guy is trying to get his girlfriend to secretly meet up with him at midnight. But it's an odd place for a tryst, a hanging tree, where a man was hung for murder. The murderer's lover must have had something to do with the killing, or maybe they were just going to punish her anyway, because his corpse called out for her to flee. That's weird obviously, the talking-corpse bit, but it's not until the third verse that "The Hanging Tree" begins to get unnerving. You realize the singer of the song is the dead murderer. He's still in the hanging tree. And even though he told his lover to flee, he keeps asking if she's coming to meet him. The phrase Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free is the most troubling because at first you think he's talking about when he told her to flee, presumably to safety. But then you wonder if he meant for her to run to him. To death. In the final stanza, it's clear that that's what he was waiting for. His lover, with her rope necklace, hanging dead next to him in the tree.

I used to think the murderer was the creepiest guy imaginable. Now, with a couple of trips to the Hunger Games under my belt, I decide not to judge him without knowing more details. Maybe his lover was already sentenced to death and he was trying to make it easier. To let her know he'd be waiting. Or maybe he thought the place he was leaving her was really worse than death. Didn't I wa ~ Suzanne Collins

There are a million things in this world that can end you, that can in one second obliterate the life you work so hard to keep alive. Our lives are structured around not dying. Eating, sleeping, looking both ways before you cross the street. It's all, all of it, to keep us safe from the thing that we know is going to get us anyway. It doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. It's the world's biggest joke. Our entire lives are set up around not dying, knowing all the while that it's the one thing we can't avoid. ~ Rebecca Serle

So we may well believe that the King's men were shriven on the night before they fought. Something of the young man's vision had penetrated to his captains and his soldiers. Something of the new ideal of the Round Table which was to be born in pain, something about doing a hateful and dangerous action for the sake of decency
for they knew that the fight was to be fought in blood and death without reward. They would get nothing but the unmarketable conscience of having done what they ought to do in spite of fear
something which wicked people have often debased by calling it glory with too much sentiment, but which is glory all the same. This idea was in the hearts of the young men who knelt before the God-distributing bishops
knowing that the odds were three to one, and that their own warm bodies might be cold at sunset. ~ T.H. White

I forgot the maid who works in my P.G. and struggles to make money, every day, who is in fear that one day her cruel husband will find her out eventually and beat her and her son to death.
I forgot that auto driver I met on my way to M.G. road metro station, and who wanted to be in the army but gave up study due to the financial crisis.
I forgot that security guard I met at IIT Delhi, and who was forced to leave the study and marry at the age of 15.
I forgot those little kids I generally encounter at Railway stations and trains selling packets of pens @ Rs.25 per packet.
I forgot that 75 years old ricksha wala I met in sector 23 market with only one eye and high power lens
I forgot that washroom cleaning staff at my office who always welcomes me with a broad smile.
I forgot the dead body of that martyred soldier I saw at the Kashmir airport, laden with garlands of marigold and people shouting," jawan amar rahe!"
I forgot the scream of that pig near my office when a thick rope was brutally tied in its nose and it was forcefully taken by some people on a bike.
I almost forgot everything! ~ Sangeeta Mann

We've all been near death more than once." He shook his head. "No one has ever been able to pinpoint the trigger."
"But?"
"But it is legend that ambrosia only rises when - "
She held her breath.
" - an archangel loves true."
The world stopped. The air particles seemed to still above her, the molecules suspended as she stared at the magnificence of the man who held her in his arms. "Maybe I was just biologically compatible." It came out a ragged whisper.
"Perhaps." The possession of lips against her neck. "We have eternity to discover the truth. And in that eternity, you will be mine. ~ Nalini Singh

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Better beware of the newly dead

Of the white-handed ghost

And the brightness of these lamps . . .

wrote Luc Berimont in 1940, in Reign of Darkness.

I've always felt the greatest reluctance to go anywhere near, to touch, a fresh corpse. For me, it's an unseemly thing. Useless. Hostile. Cunning. Dangerous. The 'presence' is much stronger, more perceptible one hour after death than one hour before. By my observation, this was not the case with Heisserer.

He was entirely absent from his head, his hands,his quivering body. He was gone instantly, unburdened of his absurd life, released. ~ Jacques Yonnet

The saddest thing is there won't be anyone to miss us when we're gone. No family, no friends, no one waiting at home."
"It's better that way," I said. "It'll be easier for me, knowing my death doesn't add to anyone's pain."
"If you can't give anyone pain, then you can't give them joy either. ~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

In the time you will live, there will be heroes around. Simple men, honest men who work two jobs, go to school, raise a family, and serve our God. An older couple who have the courage to seek out the truth while enduring the scorn and ridicule of their children and friends. A young man, a special spirit, who will take on a body that is deformed- and yet you will never see hime unhappy or without a smile on his face. A young mother who will care for a daughter while she suffers a painful death, and yet never doubt or loose faith that her Father loves them both.
In your worl famous people will be hard to find. But you will be surrounded by heroes, you will meet them everyday. They will be the simple people who struggle but never give up, those who strive to be happy despite the cares of the physical world, those who dream of the day when they will find the truth, those who search for understanding as to why they were born, why there is pain, or what it all means, and yet continure to endure, knowing in their soul, somewhere deep inside, that there has to be an answer.
These are the heroes that our Father needs down on earth. And you will be a hero. We already know that. ~ Chris Stewart

The death of Jesus Christ on the cross is His greatest single act of unwavering trust in His Abba's love. He plunged into the darkness of death, not fully knowing what awaited Him, confident that somehow, some way, His Abba would vindicate Him. ~ Brennan Manning

I am a black bird, a Raven, I am Raven. I know and I am knowing - I know and see life and death, expansion and contraction and I do not shiver and cry - I am unafraid.

I am Raven. I am black as liquid night with wings and my eyes are stars to see by.

The light within me leads the way and it is revealed through my eyes and I am what lies between the dark and light.

I am the balance between. ~ Sophia Rose

I believe consciousness is non-local and a big part of what we experience with near death and past lives. It's the consciousness that has come into us from other experiences and our consciousness that we remain aware of when we leave our bodies and they communicate with us through dreams, and even through drawings which I do a lot of work with myself. ~ Bernie Siegel

The sad truths I've been taught by the families of the dead are these: seeing is believing; knowing is better than not knowing; to name the hurt returns a kind of comfort; the grief ignored will never go away. For those whose sons and daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers and friends went off alive and never did return, the worst that can happen has already happened. The light and air of what is known, however difficult, is better than the dark. The facts of death, like the facts of life, are required learning. ~ Thomas Lynch

In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John Burns, I experienced four near misses in all, three of them in the course of one day. I certainly thought that the Bosnian cause was worth fighting for and worth defending, but I could not take myself seriously enough to imagine that my own demise would have forwarded the cause. (I also discovered that a famous jaunty Churchillism had its limits: the old war-lover wrote in one of his more youthful reminiscences that there is nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result. In my case, the experience of a whirring, whizzing horror just missing my ear was indeed briefly exciting, but on reflection made me want above all to get to the airport. Catching the plane out with a whole skin is the best part by far.) Or suppose I had been hit by that mortar that burst with an awful shriek so near to me, and turned into a Catherine wheel of body-parts and (even worse) body-ingredients? Once again, I was moved above all not by the thought that my death would 'count,' but that it would not count in the least. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called "mind-only," or "essence of mind," or "big mind," After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

I took a little walk outside for a while. I was surprised that I wasn't feeling what I thought people were supposed to feel under the circumstances. May be I was fooling myself. I wasn't delighted, but I didn't feel terribly upset, perhaps because we had known for a long time that it was going to happen.

It's hard to explain. If a Martian(who, we'll imagine never dies except by accident) came to Earth and saw this peculiar race of creatures-these humans who live about seventy or eighty years, knowing that death is going to come--it would look to hi like a terrible problem of psychology to live under those circumstances, knowing that life is only temporary Well, we humans somehow figure out how to live despite this problem: we laugh, we joke, we live.

The only difference for me and Arlene was, instead of fifty years, it was five years. It was only a quantitative difference--the psychological problem was just the same. The only way it would have become any different is if we had said to ourselves, "But those other people have it better, because they might live fifty years." But that's crazy. Why make yourself miserable saying things like, "Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?"--all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life..

We had a hell of goo ~ Richard P. Feynman

What is it?" said Jeanne, when Diana was gone; "you look rather gloomy."
"Why, yes."
"What has happened?"
"Oh, mon Dieu! an accident."
"To you?"
"Not precisely to me, but to a person who was near me."
"Who was it?"
"The person I was walking with."
"M. de Monsoreau?"
"Alas! yes; poor dear man."
"What has happened to him?"
"I believe he is dead."
"Dead!" cried Jeanne, starting back in horror.
"Just so."
"He who was here just now talking ... "
"Yes, that is just the cause of his death - he talked too much. ~ Alexandre Dumas

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

Big G.B. said, "Your Daddy ain't magic."
I said, "He ain't?"
He said, "Naw, there ain't any magic."
I said, "What about the blind man's dummy? Is Joesph of Arimathea magic?"
He said, "Get your shotgun, Sugar."
I went to the corner near the stove and took my shotgun by the barrel. I got my shell bag and looked at Big G.B.to see what he was thinking. His face didn't tell me. I stood by the kitchen door holding the shotgun and shells. I said, "Is Joseph of Arimathea magic, Big G.B.?"
He said, "There ain't no magic. Magic is the same as sentimental. Scratch the surface of sentimental and you know what you find?
Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Magic is German in nature and evil and not real. Scratch magic, Sugar, and you're looking for death. ~ Lewis Nordan

The Boys and the Frogs SOME BOYS, playing near a pond, saw a number of Frogs in the water and began to pelt them with stones. They killed several of them, when one of the Frogs, lifting his head out of the water, cried out: Pray stop, my boys: what is sport to you, is death to us. ~ Aesop

Old age arrives like the first days of fall. One afternoon you look up, or smell something in the air, and know instinctively things have changed. I suppose the same thing is true about our own death. Suddenly it's near enough that we can smell it ~ Jonathan Carroll

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing it.
Becoming: an agony without an ending.The older I grow, the less I enjoy performing my little Hamlet. The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death. If History had a goal, how lamentable would be the fate of those of us who have accomplished nothing!
On the frontiers of the self: 'What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I'. Events - tumours of time.
Man secretes disaster.
The secret of my adaptation to life? - I've changed despairs the way I've changed shirts. Each day is a Rubicon in which I aspire to be drowned. ~ Emil M. Cioran

When we raise ourselves through meditation to what unites us with the spirit, we quicken something within us that is eternal and unlimited by birth and death. Once we have experienced this eternal part in us, we can no longer doubt its existence. Meditation is thus the way to knowing and beholding the eternal, indestructible, essential centre of our being. ~ Rudolf Steiner

We all know our dates of birth but ... every year there is another date that we pass over without knowing what it is but it is just as important it is the other date the death date. ~ Ali Smith

Occupation, curfew, settlements, closed military zone, administrative detention, siege, preventive strike, terrorist infrastructure, transfer. Their WAR destroys language. Speaks genocide with the words of a quiet technician.

Occupation means that you cannot trust the OPEN SKY, or any open street near to the gates of snipers tower. It means that you cannot trust the future or have faith that the past will always be there.

Occupation means you live out your live under military rule, and the constant threat of death, a quick death from a snipers bullet or a rocket attack from an M16.

A crushing, suffocating death, a slow bleeding death in an ambulance stopped for hours at a checkpoint. A dark death, at a torture table in an Israeli prison: just a random arbitrary death.

A cold calculated death: from a curable disease. A thousand small deaths while you watch your family dying around you.

Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in the earth, water falling over water.

And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine. ~ Suheir Hammad

Time's relativity
is considered and abandoned,
for the more revelatory
experiences of starlight
in strands, and pearly
floors that span as far as
absolute compassion... ~ Kristen Henderson

Heaven comes to people - and their loved ones - when they are dying. It is not uncommon for angels to appear when people are on the edge of death, and people who have had near-death experiences often describe feelings of indescribable peace - Angels. ~ Gary Kinnaman

Aubade to Langston"

When the light wakes & finds again
the music of brooms in Mexico,
when daylight pulls our hands from grief,
& hearts cleaned raw with sawdust
& saltwater flood their dazzling vessels,
when the catfish in the river
raise their eyelids towards your face,
when sweetgrass bends in waves
across battlefields where sweat
& sugar marry, when we hear our people
wearing tongues fine with plain
greeting: How You Doing, Good Morning
when I pour coffee & remember
my mother's love of buttered grits,
when the trains far away in memory
begin to turn their engines toward
a deep past of knowing,
when all I want to do is burn
my masks, when I see a woman
walking down the street holding her mind
like a leather belt, when I pluck a blues note
for my lazy shadow & cast its soul from my page,
when I see God's eyes looking up at black folks
flying between moonlight & museum,
when I see a good-looking people
who are my truest poetry,
when I pick up this pencil like a flute
& blow myself away from my death,
I listen to you again beneath the mercy
of a blue morning's grammar.

Originally published in the Southern Humanities Review, Vol. 49.3 ~ Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Let us love silence till the world is made to die in our hearts. Let us always remember death, and in this thought draw near to God in our heart - and the pleasures of this world will have our scorn. ~ Isaac Jogues

15:58 For this reason you can afford to be absolutely settled and rock-solid in faith's persuasion and always ready to go beyond where you would have gone before. Your doing now is inspired by your knowing that you are in him. If his resurrection is yours then his victory over sin and death is equally yours. ~ Francois Du Toit

From forty-nine to fifty-six this aloneness becomes your focus of being. Everything else in the world loses meaning. The only remaining meaningful thing is this aloneness. From fifty-six to sixty-three you become absolutely what you are going to become: the potential blossoms, and from sixty-three to seventy you start getting ready to drop the body. Now you know you are not the body, you know you are not the mind either. The body was known as separate from you somewhere around the time when you were thirty-five. That the mind is separate from you was known near the time when you were forty-nine. Now, everything else drops except the witnessing self. Just the pure awareness, the flame of awareness remains with you - and this is the preparation for death. ~ Osho

Be near me when my light is low ... And all the wheels of being slow. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson