Quotes on Death

Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops.

The history of liberty is the history of limitations on the power of government, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the processes of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties.

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.

When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.

I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.

Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.

I went to medical school because I wanted to ask the big questions. Do we have a soul? Does God exist? What happens after death?

Our chiefs are killed. . . . The little children are freezing to death. . . . My people have no blankets, no food. . . . My heart is sick and sad. . . . I will fight no more forever.

If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Meeting authors is kind of the death of the characters. That is always heartbreaking.

In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.

A human life has seasons much as the earth has seasons, each time with its own particular beauty and power. And gift. By focusing on springtime and summer, we have turned the natural process of life into a process of loss rather than a process of celebration and appreciation. Life is neither linear nor stagnant. It is movement from mystery to mystery. Just as a year includes autumn and winter, life includes death, not as an opposite but as an integral part of the way life is made.

I've been thinking of death a lot, and I am amazed by its inevitability, frightened, as we all are, of the totally unknown, and yet feel a long sleep is somehow earned by those of us who live on the edge.

When I was a child, I used to paint intently. The older I become, and the closer death approaches, the brighter my life gets day by day.

Do not say that every day you spend on this earth is a day closer to dying. Every day you spend on this earth is a day closer to finally living.

The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.