Quotes on Death

His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.

Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable.

The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.

So far as I can see the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained mankind for ages.

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

Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.

I've been present at birth, and death is just as present and in equal balance. And I've been present at death, and birth is just as present, again in equal balance.

Ageing destroys youth, sickness destroys health, degeneration of life destroys all excellent qualities and death destroys life. Even if you are a great runner, you cannot run away from death. you cannot stop death with your wealth, through your magic performances or recitation of mantras or even medicines. Therefore, it is wise to prepare for your death.

I think we should look forward to death more than we do. Of course everybody hates to go to bed or miss anything, but dying is really the only chance we'll get to rest.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

At physical death man loses his consciousness of the flesh and becomes conscious of his astral body in the astral world. Thus physical death is astral birth. Later, he passes from the consciousness of luminous astral birth to the consciousness of dark astral death and awakens in a new physical body. Thus astral death is physical birth. These recurrent cycles of physical and astral encasements are the ineluctable destiny of all unenlightened men.

If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.

We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it?

Death smells like homemade apple sauce as it cooks on the stove. It is not the strangling sense of illness. It is not fear. It is freedom.

Death is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory.

You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.

I've worked in the prison system, on death row and maximum security. I did that work for six years. I've worked with some of the most difficult people in our society. Buddhism was accessible and helpful for these individuals.

I think about death all the time. I think that's a good thing because we're all going to die, and the only thing we can control is how we are and what we're doing in the meantime.

Quarreling over food and drink, having neither scruples nor shame, not knowing right from wrong, not trying to avoid death or injury, not fearful of greater strength or of greater numbers, greedily aware only of food and drink - such is the bravery of the dog and boar.