Quotes on Dying

The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves. Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we need this money to meet the needs of children who are dying right now so we will put the debt servicing payments into urgent social investment in health, education, drinking water, control of AIDS and other needs.'

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha`s own words must be rejected.

It has served us well, this myth of Christ.

There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out.

Even if they don't know that you are practicing for them, you are helping them and in turn they are helping you. They are actively helping you to develop your compassion, and so to purify and heal yourself. For me, all dying people are teachers, giving to all those who help them a chance to transform themselves through developing their compassion.

Come to the sunset tree! The day is past and gone; The woodman's axe lies free, And the reaper's work is done.

If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life: worms, fungi, microorganisms of all kinds ... Given only the health of the soil, nothing that dies is dead for very long.

Nothing retains its form; new shapes from old. Nature, the great inventor, ceaselessly contrives. In all creation, be assured, there is no death - no death, but only change and innovation; what we men call birth is but a different new beginning; death is but to cease to be the same. Perhaps this may have moved to that, and that to this, yet still the sum of things remains the same.

We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.

I do not believe in personal immortality; it seems so unnecessary. Show me one man who deserves to live forever.

Everything you cherish_x000D_ _x000D_ Throws you over in the end_x000D_ _x000D_ Thorns will grab your ankles_x000D_ _x000D_ From the gardens that you tend.

Fear no more the heat o' th' sun Nor the furious winters' rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet; And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing -a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

What shall he fear that does not fear death.

But the peasants - how do the peasants die?

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.

The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.