Best 741 quotes in «death and dying quotes» category

Strange, how death had a way of turning a table upside down in an instant. It swept away all the dust that covered treasures, blew the fog from one’s view, knocked away facades.

Such is true joy’s absolute certainty, Its slow lit fuse that burns holes In the shabby shroud of death forever.

Surely misfortune could scarcely have exceeded this last blow. We arrived within 11 miles of our old One Ton Camp with fuel for one last meal and food for two days. For four days we have been unable to leave the tent - the gale howling about us. We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships , help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last. But if we have been willing to give our lives to this enterprise, which is for the honor of our country, I appeal to our countrymen to see that those who depend on us are properly cared for. Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.

Terminado el entierro, por fin podría llorar. Pero no pude. Mi lágrimas, contenidas durante demasiado tiempo, se habían secado. Tendrían que quedarse dentro para siempre.

The living have to live with it. You don’t. Theirs is the grief or the gladness of your death, theirs is the loss or gain of it. Theirs is the pain and the pleasure of memory.

The man died inside cannot live outside. ‪

The mind is a useful tool but not a very good friend.

The moment you will be most stiff is when you die - you never get stiffer than that. So you've got to sleep well, eat well and keep moving.

The music echoes in the emptiness. It reminds us where we came from and where we’re bound.

Then I looked out onto the horizon myself and realized that loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening. How resilient human beings are that we can learn slowly to carry on when we are left all alone, left to fill the void as best we can. Or disappear into it.

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

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.

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

Sullivan had her Crucifix Soldier and now I have mine. No. I am the soldier. Teacup is the cross.

TGWA: Thank God We’re Alive. TGWE: Thank God We’re Eternal.

That feeling stayed with me for months. In fact, I had grown so accustomed to that floating feeling that I started to panic at the prospect of losing it. So I began to ask friends, theologians, historians, pastors I knew, nuns I liked, *What am I going to do when it's gone?* And they knew exactly what I meant because they had either felt it themselves or read about it in great works of Christian theology. St. Augustine called it "the sweetness." Thomas Aquinas called it something mystical like "the prophetic light." But all said yes, it will go. The feelings will go. The sense of God's presence will go. There will be no lasting proof that God exists. There will be no formula for how to get it back. But they offered me this small bit of certainty, and I clung to it. When the feelings recede like the tides, they said, they will leave an imprint. I would somehow be marked by the presence of an unbidden God.

That night, he laid in his bed thinking about all the possibilities. They came like waves in his mind. At first they came slow, then gradually built up speed, cresting into full on dreams, until finally, they broke onto the shore with all of their reality. First dreams, then nightmares.

That’s when it happens. The moment of death is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything, a funnel of burning heat splitting me in two, something searing and scorching and tearing, and if screaming were a feeling it would be this. Then nothing.

That’s when I realized that certain moments go on forever. Even after they’re over they still go on, even after you're dead and buried, those moments are lasting still, backward and forward, on into infinity. They are everything and everywhere all at once.

The afterlife is mostly a dream state where you confront the good and evil within you. The text repeatedly explains that the images the deceased sees and the sounds one hears are hallucinations created by one's own thoughts.

The amazing feeling of being alive beautifully conquers the fear of death

The best gift your true friends will ever give you is carry your casket with respect. So be good to those you consider exceptional.

The biggest magic of the world is DEATH.

The casket was lined with lovely velvet, which must have felt lovely even to the dead, but the glowing man continued to rip up the casket.

The central question of any execution: do you want the hood on or off? Would you rather see it coming? Or would you rather simply drift away, cocooned in warm darkness, stinking of nothing but yourself? A kind, familiar place to hide in, just before the snap, the crackle? Or the pop?

The child's heart beat: but she was growing in the wrong place inside her extraordinary mother, south of safe...she and her mother were rushed to the hospital, where her mother was operated on by a brisk cheerful diminutive surgeon who told me after the surgery that my wife had been perhaps an hour from death from the pressure of the child growing outside the womb, the mother from the child growing, and the child from growing awry; and so my wife did not die, but our mysterious child did...Not uncommon, an ectopic pregnancy, said the surgeon...Sometimes, continued the surgeon, sometimes people who lose children before they are born continue to imagine the child who has died, and talk about her or him, it's such an utterly human thing to do, it helps deal with the pain, it's healthy within reason, and yes, people say to their other children that they actually do, in a sense, have a sister or brother, or did have a sister or brother, and she or he is elsewhere, has gone ahead, whatever the language of your belief or faith tradition. You could do that. People do that, yes. I have patients who do that, yes... One summer morning, as I wandered by a river, I remembered an Irish word I learned long ago, and now whenever I think of the daughter I have to wait to meet, I find that word in my mouth: dunnog, little dark one, the shyest and quietest and tiniest of sparrows, the one you never see but sometimes you sense, a flash in the corner of your eye, a sweet sharp note already fading by the time it catches your ear.

The courage to continue before the face of despair is the recognition in those eyes of darkness we find our own night vision. Women blessed with death-eyes are fearless.