Best 741 quotes in «death and dying quotes» category

The only thing that can break the unbreakable is the unthinkable. I knew the moment I saw them alone in the waiting room that my worst fears were confirmed. They were all dead. I turned around and walked out. I didn't want to be there. I had to go outside. I couldn't breathe. When I reached the grass across from the parking lot, I fell to my knees. I didn't cry. Instead, I became physically ill. Over and over, my stomach repelling the truth that I refused to believe. When there was nothing left in me, I fell backward onto the grass and stared up at the sky, the stars staring back at me. Millions of stars staring back at the whole world. A world where parents die and brothers die and nothing stops to respect that fact. The whole universe just goes and goes as if nothing has happened, even when one person's entire life is forced to a complete halt.

the only way to get over a death is by seeing it as a life completed, instead of a life interrupted.

The palliative care nurses welcome him: he's a spot of brightness, they claim he keeps the patients interested in life. "We don't think of the clients here as dying," one of them said to him on his first visit. "After all everyone's dying, just some of us more slowly.

The perfect metaphor," he said, "looming up suddenly out of nowhere in the middle of your maiden voyage, unseen until it is nearly upon you, unavoidable even when you try to swerve, unexpected even though there have been warnings all along. [...]

...the phone rang. When the phone rang so early in the morning, it oftentimes meant somebody was dead. An elderly person had passed in the night. A Friday night traffic fatality. The families of deceased would set about the task of notifying family and friends, and somewhere among the sad litany of phone calls, they dialed our number.

The picture enclosed here is of a hibiscus that has been flowering in the parlor window one bloom at a time for what seems like a year or more. It’s getting to where I don’t remember when there wasn’t a bud or two and a flower either out or on the way. This morning there is a fresh new flower just like the one in the picture, but right next to it is the one that was new yesterday and is already spent. I don’t know whether to be happy for the beautiful one or sad for the one that is gone. I guess if I wait until tomorrow I can be sad for the one that is so beautiful now. But how can I anticipate being sad for something that is so pretty? It’s really a good thing that people can only “see” the present because we are on the same train as a hibiscus except that we are on a longer trip. I’ve told you before but it fits in here so I will say it again. Sometimes I get feeling so good that I get afraid to anticipate the loss. If life could be a series of beautiful scenes and beautiful music and pleasant visits with people we love, then life should just go on forever. I suppose that’s why people get old and feeble with wandering minds. What is can end without too much loss, and what was did not stop so will be forever. Right now and as far as I can see, I want to be this morning’s flower. I’ll be a hibiscus. You be a rose…

The place smelled of commodes and playing cards, and before I was halfway to the end I had made a firm resolve never to begin to die. For me it would be all or nothing: no half measures, no lingering on the doorstep.

The poetry you could write about Rufus helping me out of my grave isn't lost on me.

The price of coming from a small town is that everyone knows your story. Your book has been read, shelved, dusted, and re-read by everybody.

The rare opportunity to exist, no matter how brief, is worth the pain left in the wake of its disappearance.

There are moments in our lives that define the people we will become in the future, like a symptom before an ailment, or the catalyst before the cure.

There are televisions and radios and the sounds of life, but too there is the sound of death, crying and oxygen tanks, and the squeaky wheels on wheelchairs. Like life and death are in a very close proximity to one another.

There are no more surprises and shocks in life, so that I watch the flame without agitation. For me the greatest reality is this and nothing else... Nothing else will worry or interest me in life hereafter.

There are so many ways to exit towards the Light, but with my luck, I'd be the one electrocuted by Diwali lights. Or the one who cracks her head falling off a footstool. I'd still be a jester, leaving the audience with a stitch in their sides.

There are spiritual guardians at all the transitional places in our mysterious multidimensional Universes. The precious sacred souls of animals are created to beautifully traverse these regions when their bodies are no more upon the Earth.

there are songs about life, but fewer about death and that is some small consolation as there are many more on love than there are hate.

The reason dying is so easy is because death has no meaning... And the reason death has no meaning is because life has no meaning. All the same, have fun!

There came a moment in this journey when I freely realized that the lives most of lead are small. Important, but small. Our radius reaches family, clients, friends for whom we do selfless and amazing feats. But our sphere of influence is local.... So our illnesses/deaths are small, too. Not unimportant. Just local in nature... - 209

There is a thin line that separates life from death, but once it's crossed, it becomes as large as an ocean, and so treacherous that it’s impossible to cross back.

There is a continuity in our lives—a strain of music that flows through it all, unaltered by death or pain. It is true that in the face of pain and death, we are very small. But in the face of life and memory and love, even death is very small.

There's a saying that you can't put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it's so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity.

There is neither a Heaven for a Hell. Life after Death is an oxymoron. Life is just another word for existence, and Death is just another word for non-existence.

There is neither a Heaven nor a Hell. Life after Death is an oxymoron. Life is just another word for existence, and Death is just another word for non-existence.

There is not a single dying human being who does not yearn for love, touch, understanding, and whose heart does not break from the withdrawal of those who should be drawing near.

There is not a single person I have met in my lifetime who is comfortable talking about death. It’s the biggest downside to our youth-centric culture. Death is a bummer, so let’s not talk about it. Let’s hide it away and hope it never strikes close to home.

There is only one God and all atheists will learn that after their deaths

There's death and life, you see. We all shine on. A leaf, a star, a song, a laugh. Notice the little things, because somebody is reaching out to you. ...Somebody loves you.

There’s no such thing as negative energy on the spiritual plane. It is an illusion. All negative energy comes from the ego. What we call negative experiences are only contradictions of the human ego’s belief…how we think we want things to be. When we can’t control, or when things don’t work as we expect, we think it is negative. It is not, it just is.

there's only one thing we can depends on when we dying, it's faith .

There was nothing else, there was nothing after, and the people who did believe in the great afterlife were just terrified children looking for the happy ending to a fairy-tale, a fairy–tale that contained more darkness than light, and the closer to the end they came the more terrified they became that there would be no light at the end of the story.

There will be no beautiful widow with Persian eyes sitting at your grave. And teary-eyed kids won't be asking: "Papa, papa, can you hear us?

The Romans’ ideal was torn between heroism and glory. Both are epitomized in the instant of death. To die ‘fine death’ was their obsession: to snatch that moment, to gather - carpere - the instant of death. Tiberius died from the effort he had expended at the age of seventy-three by throwing the javelin at a boar in the arena at Circeii. The moment of death isn’t just a subject for painters. It isn’t simply the stuff of the odes and annals. The moment of death exists in the amphitheatre: human sacrifices, bullfights, denudations, tortures and carnivorous scenes. The ancient Romans had taken over the ‘sport’ associated with the figure of Phersu from the Etruscans. The populus romanus gambled on the men who would be put to death within the next hour- The jus gladii - this is the Roman Empire (the right of the sword, the right of life and death).

The same joy is in a stone which, thrown aloft, hesitates a little at the height of its flight and then rushes down to the ground. It is the same with a man when in his final convulsion he takes a last deep breath and dies.

The scariest thing about death is not dying, it's the uncertainty of what happens after

There is one invisible bridge for every one of us and death is the first step of it. On this side, there is life where there are questions and fear but on that other side of that bridge, there is a whole new world full of answers and peace.

There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.

There was no hope in death, only an end.

The sky looks comfortingly mundane compared to the garish kaleidoscope of the stained glass. It makes Rose yearn to be reliving any one of a thousand ordinary days spent with her ordinary older sister, who has now done this extraordinary thing and died.

The start and the end is same for all of us. We were all born, and we will all die - in the same state. It is the journey where we experience Happiness.

The sorrow we feel when we lose a loved one is the price we pay to have had them in our lives.

The spiritual messages for mum kept coming to me in meditation. I never questioned them, I just passed them on.

The sky is but a looking glass into a pool of airless oceans, cast off into a dance of light and energy, leaving only a facet of guidance to navigate. Such an existence lays but within the mind man.

The syrup of lilies hangs thick and sweet in the air, its cloying scent the traditional mask of death and rebirth: ashes and incense, rain and dirt, and something like rosin. It's the scent Hector associates with God. The scent of heavenly things.

The theme of the book is simple: a man is dying: you feel him sinking throughout the book; his thought and his memories pervade the whole with greater or lesser distinction (like the swell and fall of uneven breathing), now rolling up this image, now that, letting it ride in the wind, or even tossing it out on the shore, where it seems to move and live for a minute on its own and presently is drawn back again by grey seas where it sinks or is strangely transfigured.

The thought came to Yale, as Dr. Cheng listened to his lungs, that this could be the man presiding over his final days. That in walking through his door, he'd potentially chosen a partnership more permanent than any other in his life. Till death do us part.

The ticking of the clock has gotten so loud." - 74

The wind and light on rock top hill and his voice and the rest, all the rest. All the days and lights and winds and years that would have been and that would not be. That should be and were not because he was dead. Shot dead on the road in the wind at 21. His mountains unclimbed, never to be climbed.

The whirlwind of life. Spinning so quickly you can loose sight. But hold tight. In a blink of an eye, time swallows light.

The Weaveress squinted at the loom. While any other person would merely see a thickset of colour-flashing Threads, Ærinna saw cosmic events, destinies and the collective soul of countless beings. Some of them were about to kick the bucket and kick it well. They weren’t to die of any expected natural causes either – unless one counted being “woven out of the Pattern” either natural or expected.

The world didn't end with a whimper or a bang. Your life finished in complete silence. Gone in a blink. And then there was nothing.