Best 741 quotes in «death and dying quotes» category

Bernice had told her once that you could feel some patient through the walls like heat through an oven door, that the ones with troubled spirits radiated that trouble out into the nearby air.

Between the dark, heavily laden treetops of the spreading chestnut trees could be seen the dark blue of the sky, full of stars, all solemn and golden, which extended their radiance unconcernedly into the distance. That was the nature of the stars. and the trees bore their buds and blossoms and scars for everyone to see, and whether it signified pleasure or pain, they accepted the strong will to live. flies that lived only for a day swarmed toward their death. every life had its radiance and beauty. i had insight into it all for a moment, understood it and found it good, and also found my life and sorrows good.

Big Angel could not reconcile himself to this dirty deal they had all been dealt. Death. What a ridiculous practical joke. Every old person gets the punch line that the kids are too blind to see. All the striving, lusting, dreaming, suffering, working, hoping, yearning, mourning, suddenly revealed itself to be an accelerating countdown to nightfall. ....This is the prize: to realize, at the end, that every minute was worth fighting for with every ounce of blood and fire.

Biology includes the study of the human death which began when you took your first breath

blue-gold sky, fresh cloud, emerald-black mountain, trees on rocky ledges, on the summit, the tiny pin of a telephone tower-all brilliantly clear, in shadow and out. and on and through everything everywhere the sun shines without reservation (p. 97)

But he drank a lot. When love dies, he told me, there are no survivors.

Birth is not a beginning; it’s a continuation. That lends tremendous comfort because we then understand that, equally true, death is not an end; it’s merely a continuation.

But it's hard to explain, Mitch. Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims... and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But--how can I put this?--I'm almost... drawn to them.

But never has the Call been so clear As now, when death’s cool hand Eases my spirit from my fevered body-- And I answer the Call of the Master— The Call to new Heights.

But the guilt of outliving those you love is justly to be borne, she thought. Outliving is something we do to them. The fantasies of dying could be no stranger than the fantasies of living. Surviving is perhaps the strangest fantasy of them all.

But when I am due… Keep local the chest to lay rest my simple skins in,

But why was the room suddenly becoming so dark? It was the middle of the afternoon. With a supreme effort Giuseppe Corte, who felt himself paralyzed with a strange lethargy, looked at the clock on the nightstand beside the bed. It was 3:30. He turned his head in the other direction and saw that the shutters, in obedience to some mysterious command, were closing slowly, blocking the passage of light.

But dying people don't need to be reminded that they're dying; I feel they need to be reminded that they're still very much alive.

But you'll see, you can feel time on the wind it whips up as it passes. We don't worry about time or the wind. Nothing can touch us any more. As long as people remember us, we are here. Anyway, it's the wind that tells us, lets us know about the thigs we've left behind.

But who thinks of death in the middle of life?" -Mike Rogers Endless Night by Agatha Christie

By not talking about death with our loved ones, not being clear through advanced directives, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and funeral plans, we are directly contributing to this future ... and a rather bleak present, at that. Rather than engage in larger societal discussions about dignified ways for the terminally ill to end their lives, we accept intolerable cases like that of Angelita, a widow in Oakland who covered her head with a plastic bag because the arthritic pain of her gnarled joints was too much to bear. Or that of Victor in Los Angeles, who hung himself from the rafters of his apartment after his third unsuccessful round of chemotherapy, leaving his son to discover his body. Or the countless bodies with decubitus ulcers, more painful for me to care for them even babies or suicides. When these bodies come into the funeral home, I can only offer my sympathy to their living relatives, and promise to work to ensure that more people are not robbed of a dignified death by a culture of silence.

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection. [Henry V, Act IV Scene I]

Caterpillar dun' become butterfly-caterpillar die so butterfly can be. A new thing. We all must let ourselves die to be what we will be. But we cling to what we know.

Ce n'était pas moi qu'ils regardaient. Pas moi qu'ils voyaient. J'étais deux hommes morts. J'étais une ferme en feu. J'étais le couteau. J'étais le sang.

- C'est bizarre que nous, qui sommes sur une île, nous ne mettions pas nos morts sur des barques, la nuit, comme ça la mer les emporterait au loin et nous resterions à regarder les feux qui disparaissent à l'horizon de la vie. - Les cimetières existent parce que savoir que le mort est dans un endroit précis est une consolation. - D'accord, mais quel autre endroit pourrait être plus précis que le cœur ?

Certainty. Life's last and kindest gift.

Celui qui a le courage de s'élever embrasse d'un seul coup d'oeil toute sa vie. Et aussi toute sa mort.

[Charlie is dying:] After what seemed a long while, but hadn’t been, Marsh gave Paulette’s hand a warm and caring squeeze. “They’re here for him,” she said. But their heavenly visitors didn’t take him right away. They had to make room for the chaos of modern medical urgencies. To get out of the way of well-trained professionals who had dedicated their lives to holding back Heaven. Choppers are just as noisy and turbulent as we imagine them to be. One tore in over the hills and shattered every bit of peace Charlie otherwise could have lost himself into. In an instant the Med-Evac team was all over him. In the midst of that blatant orchestrated chaos Paulette fought to find her peace, and to hold him inside it. “Hang on, buddy,” techs kept telling him. “Don’t go leaving us now. You just hang in there.” But they didn’t understand, Paulette thought. It was his time. The chopper made a horrible racket carrying him off. Marsh, Paulette, and Ailana held their peace as its winds whipped their world into a froth. Harve’s face twisted with something that might conceivably have been rage. Then, all of a sudden, the birds sang, as though someone had given them a cue. “So that’s what it’s like,” Marsha said, very softly. “The afterlife. “My God, it’s so beautiful.

Character isn't something you talk about; it's something you show through your actions-through your every day habits.

character isn’t something you talk about; it’s something you show through your actions—through your every day habits.

Childbirth is nothing. Death is mighty. The 0 to our 1. There is nothing in the world like it. But there is nothing in it that is not like the world.

Children love to fight and rarely think about death. They are the perfect soldiers.

Chip, she’s gone,” and he said, “I thought I’d feel her looking down on us, but you’re right. She’s just gone

Cancer is never a lethal disease If your strength of mind wants it to freeze Death will arrive, but it loves to wait When living in hope is never too late

Christopher was wearing a suit and adorned make-up. As long as I had known him, he never wore a suit or make-up. The look of him defenseless to his appearance saddened me.

Concha would cry when she found out I was dead, she should have no taste for life for months afterward. But I was still the one who was going to die. I thought of her soft, beautiful eyes. when she looked at me something passed her to me. But I knew it was over: if she looked at me now the look would stay in her eyes, it wouldn't reach me. I was alone

Charlie started crying, in the convulsive, soundless way that men do. "Don't you understand," he said after composing himself, "that's a funeral dirge for the first wave." We all thought about that, the many lives lost before we even opened our eyes this morning.

Couples swayed and embraced to the beat as the singer's vocals soared above a group of confused teenagers and twenty-something's.

Curley's wife lay with a half-covering of yellow hay. And the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face. She was pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young. Now her rouged cheeks and reddened lips made her seem alive and sleeping very lightly. The curls, tiny little sausages, were spread on the hay behind her head and her lips were parted

Darkness is but a door, scary not because it opens, but out of fear that it will never close

Dave learned that Death is the opposite of peace: it’s struggle, it’s ugly, it’s horrific, it’s dirty. And ultimately, Death is emptiness.

DEATH A woman who dreams of death Is sitting in her room alone While the clouds and the stars That once saw the quiet fumes Of war Reach out to grasp one another And stifle that fire But the distinct forms And multitudes In blurs Takeoff racing in the earthen boundaries Never counting The parts they killed As they were air-driven Within the velvet cores of her galaxy

Could it be that heaven is just a creation of our insane belief that we are some how.. so fucking special. When the truth is we’re just equal to every other creation that lives, breathes and ultimately dies.

Death could be waiting for him, but he wasn’t afraid. Whether it be sooner or later, he welcomed the inevitability with open arms.

Death descended like a theatrical storm over the Drakensberg Mountains, stranding me while it ran its course.

Death has a terrible habit of cutting straight through every careful line you’ve drawn between your present and your future.

Christianity Life sentence with a death penalty and full pardon

Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can layabout it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide-and-seek and think that no one can see them.

Death can come slow. Death can come quick. If you've got one last breath, you better make the most of it.

DEATH IS A PROFOUND LESSON IN TRUTH: We grow to understand more about it from childhood until the day we must cross the mystic chasm and abandon the land of the living.

Death is the final destination of every man.

Death is the great incorruptible corruptor

Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.

Death is easy, living difficult.

Death is like an oasis; the eternal vacation of life.