c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I want to stay," and then, more weakly, "Need some more sun."A fly from a batch of seaweed lands on a white, bony thigh. She doesn't slap at it. It doesn't go away."But there's no sun, dude." I tell her.I start to walk away. So what, I mutter under my breath. When she wants to come in, she will. Imagine a blind person dreaming. I head back up toward the house. Wonder if Griffin will stick around, if Mona made reservations for dinner, if Spin will call back. "I know what the word dead means," I whisper to myself as softly as I can because it sounds like an omen.
— Bret Easton Ellis
Do you know how wizards like to be buried?""Yes!""Well, how?"Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs."Reluctantly.
— Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
What we call life...is the combination of the Five Aggregates, a combination of physical and mental energies. These are constantly changing; they do not remain the same for two consecutive moments. Every moment they are born and they die. 'When the Aggregates arise, decay and die, O bhikkhu, every moment you are born, decay, and die.' This, even dow during this life time, every moment we are born and die, but we continue. If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or a Soul behind them after the non-functioning of the body?
— Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada
Death, he felt, was only a kind of warning rather than a desperate and permanent end.
— László Krasznahorkai
Every subject's duty is the King's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore, should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were no sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive the day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.
— William Shakespeare, Henry V
A place where something so terrible had happened shouldn't continue to exist in the world
— Ron Rash, Serena
Wenn ich es mir aussuchen könnte, würde ich am liebsten bei einem Flugzeugabsturz sterben. Aber auf gar keinen Fall im Bett. Vielleicht mit Ines, oder mit Frau Sprengel, auf dem Linienflug nach Südamerika. Das rechte Triebwerk ist mit einem kaum hörbaren Knall explodiert und zieht eine endlose Feuerschleppe hinter sich her, als wir gerade über dem offenen Meer sind. Die Passagiere kreischen, einige ganz Doofe betteln die Stewardess um Fallschirme an. Ich lege meine Lektüre aus der Hand, beuge mich zu Ines, und sage, ich hatte noch gar nicht zu Ende gelesen. Und Ines sagt, gut, dass wir nicht das teure Hotel gebucht haben. Und wir schauen uns an und wissen, dass wir uns verstanden haben in diesem Leben. Durch das kleine runde Fenster rast die Wasseroberfläche auf uns zu, die bei dieser Geschwindigkeit härter ist als Beton, und ich halte Ines fest und flüstere ihr etwas in Ohr, solange ich noch flüstern kann und solange sie noch ein Ohr hat.
— Wolfgang Herrndorf
Die before you die and find that there is no death.
— Eckhart Tolle
If I lived by some code, my actions would become predictable. The enemy would take advantage of this and I’d be killed. An honorable death doesn’t exist. Death is death. But it’s funny that survival and revenge require the same thing: no honor codes, no supposed higher principles to aspire to, no mercy
— Frank Beddor, Seeing Redd
He saw it for the first time: on the day he died he would be wearing unmatching socks, there would be unanswered e-mails, and in the hovel he called home there would still be shirts missing cuff buttons, a malfunctioning light in the hall, and unpaid bills, uncleared attics, dead flies, friends waiting for a reply and lovers he had not owned up to.
— Ian McEwan, Solar
There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.
— Tahir Shah, House of the Tiger King: The Quest for a Lost City
I think about the Old Ones, that they have a past but no history. I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it’s not that very inevitability that inspires us to take photographs and make scrapbooks and tell stories. That that’s how we humans find our way to immortality. This is not a new thought; I’ve had such thoughts before. But I have a new thought now. That that’s how we find our way toward meaning. Meaning. If you’re going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots.
— Franny Billingsley, Chime
How easy is murder when one calls it by a different name? How much easier is it for the conscience to condone “reaping” than “killing”—and when one knows that death isn’t the end, does it stop the killing hand for fear of retribution, or does it simply make it easier to kill, because, if life continues, how can murder be murder at all?
— Neal Shusterman
You're the right colour for the Angel of Death, Mister Cale. But a little short.' 'I could cut your head off and stand on it. Then I'd be taller.
— Paul Hoffman
Boys play with death as though it were a game, cutting their teeth on daggers.
— Sheri S. Tepper, The Gate to Women's Country
When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death.
— Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
That's the source of the meditation on death I've carried in my heart all my life.
— Susan Sontag
I was no longer troubled when he pulled out a machete in a crowded bar, tried to pick up schoolgirls, or threatened to scalp us, then rip off our heads and scoop out our brains.
— Tahir Shah, House of the Tiger King: The Quest for a Lost City
In the world of the Machiguenga, sadness could be equated with anger, and anger was a perilous emotion, by which a foreigner could lose his life.
— Tahir Shah, House of the Tiger King: The Quest for a Lost City
Not that there seems to be any appropriate place to bury someone, but these municipal cemeteries, or any cemetery at all for that matter, like the ones by the highway, or the ones in the middle of town, with all these bodies with their corresponding rocks - oh it's just too primitive and vulgar, isn't it? The hole, and the box, and the rock on the grass? And we glamorize this process, feel it fitting and dramatic, austerely beautiful, standing there by the hole as we lower the box. It's incredible. Barbaric and base.
— Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Let us pray now for the future dead. Though we do not yet know their names, we know that there shall be far too many of them.
— Seth Grahame-Smith
Keats was getting a reputation just when he was too ill to appreciate it or build on it: his country was taking notice of him just when he would have to leave it.
— Jude Morgan, Passion: A Novel of the Romantic Poets
But, Aunt... I don't want to go to the grave site set aside for me a few years ago at the ancestral grave site. I don't want to go there. When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death. It was sunny, and I liked the pine tree that stood bent but tall, but remaining a member of this family even in death would be too much and too hard. To try to change my mind, I would sing and pull weeds, sitting there until the sun set, but nothing made me feel comfortable there. I lived with this family for over fifty years; please let me go now.
— Kyung-Sook Shin
I looked at him on the bed. He coughed once and a trail of brownish dead blood came out of his mouth and ran down the side of his chin. Then he stopped breathing. And I thought, I'll make sure I never end up here, either.
— Sebastian Faulks, Engleby
What did she care what became of this world when her loved ones were dead and gone?
— Allie Burke, Amber Passion
I don't want to die, but I don't want to be the only one to live, either. When I was sitting alone last night, I kind of figured maybe that's how Jesus felt.
— Dean Briggs, The Most Important Little Boy In The World - A Novel -
She had been born with a different name, to a woman with laughing eyes and warmly whispered words of love who’d died degraded and afraid on a misty Irish morning.
— C.S. Harris, When Gods Die
I have read of the great wars of ages past, and men slaughtered by the tens of thousands. And we give but fleeting consideration to their deaths, for it is our nature to banish such thoughts.
— Seth Grahame-Smith
Shriveled apple cores stood side by side on the window sill, a long row of them with their seed chambers bitten open and the pointed sees scattered on the floor. The brown, discolored remnants of their flesh bore the imprint of his grandfather's teeth. That was the image This was left with, the one that ever since was the first to recur when he thought of his dead grandfather: shriveled apple cores on the sill of a window that looked out onto an overgrown garden.
— Hansjörg Schertenleib, A Happy Man
you can pass a football,you can gas,but you yourself cannot just pass~cam after lilly's mother informs her that lilly has passed
— Wendy Wunder
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering – for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Put a man on the brink of the abyss and - in the unlikely event that she doesn't fall into it - he will become a mystic or a madman... Which is probably the same thing!
— Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An epic search for truth
A dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter what you love or owe. And it's too late to ask him for his absolution. He has beaten you all ways.
— John le Carré, Our Game
Ölüyorum tanrımBu da oldu işte.Her ölüm erken ölümdürBiliyorum tanrım.Ama, ayrıca, aldığın şu hayatFena değildir...Üstü kalsın...
— Cemal Süreya, Sevda Sözleri
I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.
— Jonathan Safran Foer
That which is alive hath known death, and that which is dead can never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit life is naught and death is naught. Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.
— H. Rider Haggard, She
A sea of red lights, and I slow down. My job now is to gather everyone together and tell them we have to let her go. I won't tell anyone over the phone, because I didn't like hearing the news from the doctor that way. I have maybe a week to handle the arrangements, as the doctor said, but the arrangements are overwhelming. How do I learn how to run a family? How do I say goodbye to someone I love so much that I've forgotten just how much I love her?
— Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants
Nothing was working, and my friend was dead, and I didn't want to look at that.
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
Before me floats an image, man or shade,Shade more than man, more image than a shade;For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-clothMay unwind the winding path;A mouth that has no moisture and no breathBreathless mouths may summon;("Byzantium")
— W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
A man must be prepared to face life, as well as death, there's no escape from either.
— Ellis Peters, Dead Man's Ransom
Why should I be sad? Everyone has to die. If you have a body, it's too late to cry. It's only funerals I can't stand.
— Rachel Klein, The Moth Diaries
DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. WHAT THINGS SEEM TO BE MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE.-Death
— Terry Pratchett, The Truth
Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.
— Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice
All of these teeth had once been in real, live people. They had talked and smiled and eaten and sang and cursed and prayed. They had brushed and flossed and died. In English class, we read poems about death, but here, right in front of me was a poem about death too.
— Gabrielle Zevin, All These Things I've Done
Flaxfield died on a Friday which was a shame, because he always ate a trout for dinner on Friday, and it was his favourite.
— Toby Forward, Dragonborn
It seems like our town has closed down these days leading up to the funeral. Old people still sit on their porches and talk, but their conversations aren't sprinkled with laughter anymore. Since the new, little kids haven't played outside, as if their moms are afraid someone might snatch them out of their yards and send them off to war.
— Kimberly Willis Holt, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town
why we fear death... life is more scary.....
— Raheel Habib
I have a theory that as human beings get older, chemicals are released into the brain to prepare us for the end. Sort of like how the nurse lubes your ass up before the anus-cam. It makes the whole thing a lot easier to swallow. Easier, not enjoyable.
— Kris D'Agostino, The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac
Sometimes I think about dying. And then I wonder about going to hell. And then I think that if and when I go there, the place will be completely organized and run by lost souls, with a council and a works committee and an ethics panel, and I'll feel right at home.
— Charles Sheffield
I think she might at least have waited till the funeral was over,' said Amanda in a scandalized voice.'It's her own funeral, you know,' said Sir Lulworth; 'it's a nice point in etiquette how far one ought to show respect to one's own mortal remains.' ("Laura")
— Saki, The Complete Saki
If she was going to die, Marla didn't want to know about it.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
As Master Nathaniel jogged leisurely along his thoughts turned to the Farmer Gibberty, who many a time must have jogged along this path, in just such a way, and seen and heard the very same things that he was seeing and hearing now.Yes, the Farmer Gibberty had once been a real living man, like himself. And so had millions of others, whose names he had never heard. And one day he himself would be a prisoner, confined between the walls of other people's memory. And then he would cease even to be that, and become nothing but a few words cut in stone. What would these words be, he wondered.
— Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist
There's a bug inside you. Growing in you, eating everything you've forced yourself to forget, everything you don't want to think about. Your bug will decide your fate one day. And... chances are, you will die because of it.
— Kouhei Kadono, Boogiepop at Dawn
The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It's as if someone has dumped rubies from heaven. Soon they will land on the plants in search of bollworm eggs. But right now they are magic-red ribbons flying over our heads, weaving against the pink sky, dancing up there with Mozart.
— Kimberly Willis Holt, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town
Iam not scared of death because I don'twant to live this useless life.
— Raffid
The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, blank eyes, and stiff bodies, which, when not unnaturally shrunken, were unnaturally swollen, had always intolerably affected him. He felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy which was something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities - his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of reselltment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence - was altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side - a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of that which he was ever ready to encounter. ("A Tough Tussle")
— Ambrose Bierce, Ghost Stories
You are unwilling to pay that price, even knowing that the consolation prize is not only to learn every philosophy that has ever existed, but ones which have not yet been conceived? Even knowing that if you do not accept, you will soon cease to learn anything at all?"Raimund tilted his head, still staring into my eyes, and I knew he must see the tears filling them, though I held them back from falling."My friend," he whispered, "do you really believe your own words, I wonder? Your pain makes me think you know that death is not the end of learning, but only the beginning.
— Krisi Keley, Pro Luce Habere Volumes 1 and 2 Combined Edition
There was a pretty young woman I used to see pegging out sheets and I worried that she would grow old there and that no one would know how beautiful she was. And maybe she would die without ever having really lived.
— Sebastian Faulks, Engleby
The human mind is so limited it can only build an arbitrary heaven — and usually the physical comforts they endow it with are naively the kind that can be perceived as we humans perceive — nothing more. No: perhaps I will awake to find myself burning in hell. I think not. I think I will be snuffed out. Black is sleep; black is a fainting spell; and black is death, with no light, no waking.
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
She was afraid to suggest to him that to most people, nothing "happens." That most people merely live from day to day until they die. That, after he had been dead a year, doubtless fewer than five people would think of him oftener than once a year. That there might even come a year when no one on earth would think of him at all.
— Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha
It is said that men condemned to death are subject to sudden moments of elation; as if, like moths in the fire, their destruction were coincidental with attainment.
— John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
He'd fought hard, Lida told me, as if there was another way to fight.
— John Green
Every evening, I died, and every evening, I was born.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death.
— Thomas Bernhard, The Loser
And I can promise you something, because it was a thing I saw many years later - a vision in the book thief herself - that as she knelt next to Hans Hubermann, she watched him stand and play the accordion. He stood and strapped it on in the alps of broken houses and played the accordion with kindness silver eyes and even a cigarette slouched on his lips. The bellows breathed and the tall man played for Liesel Meminger one last time as the sky was slowly taken away from her.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
No longer mourn for me when I am deadThan you shall hear the surly sullen bellGive warning to the world that I am fledFrom this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell;Nay, if you read this line, remember notThe hand that writ it; for I love you so,That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,If thinking on me then would make you woe.
— William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets
Life is a struggle, from the agonies of birth to the railing against death. Devour or be devoured. The law of the wild.
— David Gemmell, Dark Moon
Death... The moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
— David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
I take this continent with me into the grave.
— Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
The moon fled eastward like a frightened dove, while the stars changed their places in the heavens, like a disbanding army.'Where are we?' asked Gil Gil.'In France,' responded the Angel of Death. 'We have now traversed a large portion of the two bellicose nations which waged so sanguinary a war with each other at the beginning of the present century. We have seen the theater of the War of Succession. Conquered and conquerors both lie sleeping at this instant. My apprentice, Sleep, rules over the heroes who did not perish then, in battle, or afterward of sickness or of old age. I do not understand why it is that below on earth all men are not friends? The identity of your misfortunes and your weaknesses, the need you have of each other, the shortness of your life, the spectacle of the grandeur of other worlds, and the comparison between them and your littleness, all this should combine to unite you in brotherhood, like the passengers of a vessel threatened with shipwreck. There, there is neither love, nor hate, nor ambition, no one is debtor or creditor, no one is great or little, no one is handsome or ugly, no one is happy or unfortunate. The same danger surrounds all and my presence makes all equal. Well, then, what is the earth, seen from this height, but a ship which is foundering, a city delivered up to an epidemic or a conflagration?''What are those ignes fatui which I can see shining in certain places on the terrestrial globe, ever since the moon veiled her light?' asked the young man.'They are cemeteries. We are now above Paris. Side by side with every city, every town, every village of the living there is always a city, a town, or a village of the dead, as the shadow is always beside the body. Geography, then, is of two kinds, although mortals only speak of the kind which is agreeable to them. A map of all the cemeteries which there are on the earth would be sufficient indication of the political geography of your world. You would miscalculate, however, in regard to the population; the dead cities are much more densely populated than the living; in the latter there are hardly three generations at one time, while, in the former, hundreds of generations are often crowded together. As for the lights you see shining, they are phosphorescent gleams from dead bodies, or rather they are the expiring gleams of thousands of vanished lives; they are the twilight glow of love, ambition, anger, genius, mercy; they are, in short, the last glow of a dying light, of the individuality which is disappearing, of the being yielding back his elements to mother earth. They are - and now it is that I have found the true word - the foam made by the river when it mingles its waters with those of the ocean.' The Angel of Death paused. ("The Friend of Death")
— Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Ghostly By Gaslight
Who embalms the Undertaker when he dies?
— Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
In Egypt: Under no conditions, under threat of death could anyone kill a cat. People were exceuted for even killing a cat accidentally. And when a cat died, the whole family, and probably their closest friends, went into mourning, the measure of their personal loss signalled by their shaving off their eyebrows.
— Roger A. Caras, A Celebration Of Cats
Love, marriage, divorce, infidelity... life was the same here as anywhere else, wasn't? She realized now wrong she'd been; the pali wasn't a headstone and Kalaupapa wasn't a grave. It was a community like any other, bound by ties deeper than most, and people here went to their deaths as people did anywhere: with great reluctance, dragging the messy jumble of their lives behind them.
— Alan Brennert, Moloka'i
How many hopes and dreams are trapped within these bones? How many wonders lie never to be discovered? This is what war is. Desolation, despair and loss. There are no victors.
— David Gemmell, Dark Moon
The day that I left my home, I had prayed that my children would forget me. I wanted to spare them the pain of remembering. But that night, as I crouched in the white mist, waiting, I knew more than anything that I wanted them to remember, I wanted desperately to go on living in someone's memory. If we are not remembered, we are more than dead, for it is as if we had never lived.
— Karen Maitland, Company of Liars
By reading quotes i realized that some of them containing simple words, but this simple words could change our lives.how if we read the holy Quran That has the best words , it will change our lives and Our death .Thank God that I was born Muslim
— Abood Dweik
I once feared death. It is said that death begins with the absence of life. And life begins when death is no longer feared. I have stared death in the eye and survived.
— Cheryl Kaye Tardif, Whale Song
The Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse did not weep, however - it was not their custom. Their faces, a little less caustic than usual at least, expressed a gentle satisfaction at death's impartiality.
— Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
As I apologized to her a flicker of panic raced through me and then faded away. There wasn't enough life left in me to panic. I'd made a mistake and I was dying. Apparently not even a Speck afterlife was available to me. I'd simply stop being. Apparently I hadn't died correctly. Oops.
— Robin Hobb, Renegade's Magic
Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seatin this distracted globe. Remember thee?
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The two friends went on and on toward the sierra, at times keeping the highway, at times. deviating from it.Whenever they passed through a town or a hamlet, the slow peal of bells tolling the death-knell announced to our hero that the Angel of Death was not losing his time; that his arm reached to every part of the world, and that, though Gil felt it now weighing upon his breast like a mountain of ice, none the less did it scatter ruin and desolation over the entire surface of the earth.As they went, the Angel of Death related many strange and wonderful things to his protege.The foe of history, he took pleasure in scoffing at its pretended utility, in disproof of which he narrated many facts as they had actually occurred, and not as they are recorded on monuments and in chronicles.The abysses of the past opened before the entranced imagination of Gil Gil, revealing to him facts of transcendent importance concerning the fate of man and of empires, disclosing to him the great mystery of the origin of life and the no less great and terrible mystery of the end to which we, wrongly called mortals, are progressing, and causing him, finally, to comprehend, by the light of this sublime philosophy, the laws which preside at the evolution of cosmic matter, and its various manifestations in those ephemeral and transitory forms which are called minerals, plants,animals, stars, constellations, nebula, and worlds. ("The Friend Of The Death")
— Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Ghostly By Gaslight
His will to live was waning, and it made him almost transparent, as though rather than dying, he might just disappear one day, leaving behind only a vague scent of regret.
— Ian Morgan Cron, Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me: A Memoir. . . of Sorts
Very well, but - who are you?' again asked Gil Gil, in whom curiosity was beginning to get the better of every other feeling.'I told you that when I first spoke to you - I am your friend. And bear in mind that you are the only being on the face of the earth to whom I accord the title of friend. I am bound to you by remorse! I am the cause of all your misfortunes.''I do not know you,' replied the shoemaker.'And yet I have entered your house many times! Through me you were left motherless at your birth; I was the cause of the apoplectic stroke that killed Juan Gil; it was I who turned you out of the palace of Rionuevo; I assassinated your old house-mate, and, finally, it was I who placed in your pocket the vial of sulfuric acid.'Gil Gil trembled like a leaf; he felt his hair stand on end, and it seemed to him as if his contracted muscles must burst asunder.'You are the devil!' he exclaimed, with indescribable terror.'Child!' responded the black-robed figure in accents of amiable censure, 'what has put that idea into your head? I am something greater and better than the wretched being you have named.''Who are you, then?''Let us go into the inn and you shall learn.'Gil hastily entered, drew the Unknown before the modest lantern that lighted the apartment, and looked at him with intense curiosity.He was a person about thirty-three years old; tall, handsome, pale, dressed in a long black tunic and a black mantle, and his long locks were covered by a Phrygian cap, also black. He had not the slightest sign of a beard, yet he did not look like a woman. Neither did he look like a man... ("The Friend of Death")
— Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Ghostly By Gaslight
O comportamento ritual não só revela realidades práticas e mundanas, é também um teatro vivo da psicologia colectiva e uma das mais ricas expressões da ideologia e crenças - mentalidade - de uma sociedade. Afinal de contas, como os antropólogos notaram, a religião é mais do que um padrão de relações sociais: é uma expressão da capacidade humana para imaginar a estrutura da sociedade. O ritual religioso não é apenas construção cultural: é uma forma de cognição que constrói modelos de realidade e paradigmas de comportamento. E dentro deste processo pelo qual a realidade é definida, o ritual da morte joga um papel central.
— Victor Turner
We have a long distance to travel,' said the Angel of Death to our friend Gil, as soon as they had left the Villa. 'I will order my chariot.' And he struck the ground with his foot. A hollow rumbling, like that which precedes an earthquake, sounded under the ground. Presently there rose round the two friends an ash-colored cloud of vapor, in the midst of which appeared a species of ivory chariot, resembling the chariots we see in the bas-reliefs of antiquity.A brief glance would have sufficed (we will not disguise the fact from out readers) to show that the chariot was not made of ivory, but solely and simply of human bones polished and joined together with exquisite skill, but retaining still their natural form.The Angel of Death gave his hand to Gil and they ascended the chariot, which rose into the air like the balloons of the present day, but with the difference that it was propelled by the will of its occupants. ("The Friend of Death")
— Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Ghostly By Gaslight
When they had ended their prayers, the Angel of Death recovered his loquacity and his gayety and ascending the chariot again, preceded by Gil Gil, spoke as follows.'The village you see on that mountain is Gethsemane. In it was the Garden of Olives. On the other side you can distinguish an eminence crowned by a temple which stands out against a starry sky - that is Golgotha. There I passed the greatest day of my existence. I thought I had vanquished God himself - and vanquished he was for some hours. But, alas! on that mount, too, it was that three days later I saw myself disarmed and my power brought to naught on the morning of a certain Sunday. Jesus had risen from the dead. There, too, took place on the same occasion my great single combat with Nature. There took place my duel with her, that terrible duel (at the third hour of the day, I remember it well), when, as soon as she saw me thrust the lance of Longinus in the breast of the Saviour she began to throw stones at me, to upturn the cemeteries, to bring the dead to life, and I know not what besides. I thought poor Nature had lost her senses.'The Angel of Death seemed to reflect for a moment... ("The Friend of Death")
— Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Ghostly By Gaslight
Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains [heaven]. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.
— C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It's busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn't have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward.
— Wendy Webb, The Tale of Halcyon Crane
Smrt je preseljenje iz kuće u kuću. To nije nestanak već drugo rođenje. Kao što prsne ljuska jajeta kad se pile potpuno razvije, tako dođe vrijeme da se rastave duša i tijelo. Smrt je nužnost u neizbježnosti prelaska u drugi svijet, u kome čovjek dostiže svoj puni uspon.
— Meša Selimović, Death and the Dervish
My mother used to say that rain here pours like a blessing, like a thick veil that parts to reveal the bride's face. But nearly every day, when this rain parted, it revealed a long line of soldiers, like you, like death, marching toward us, and we would scatter with a practiced silence and hide.
— Mia Kirshner, I Live Here
So this is it ⎯ what cost me all that time. A man who turned out to be old, a house that turned out to be empty.
— Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
I seem to walk on a transparent surface and see beneath me all the bones and wrecks and tentacles that will eventually claim me: in other words, old age, incapacity, loneliness, death of others & myself...
— Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
If I had my life to live over again, I would form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is not another practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life.
— Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
Yes, King Edward VI lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them worthily.
— Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
I died on a bitter cold night. Beneath a black sky and a bruised winter moon, I tried to fly, hoping my arms might act as wings.
— Jennifer Archer, Through Her Eyes
A man's death makes everything certain about him. Of course, secrets may die with him. And of course, a hundred years later somebody looking through some papers may discover a fact which throws a totally different light on his life and of which all the people who attended his funeral were ignorant. Death changes the facts qualitatively but not quantitatively. One does not know more facts about a man because he is dead. But what one already knows hardens and becomes definite. We cannot hope for ambiguities to be clarified, we cannot hope for further change, we cannot hope for more. We are now the protagonists and we have to make up our minds.
— John Berger
He was a dying man looking down on the surgeons trying to save him.
— John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
I'm a survivor, " I said. But I didn't think that claim would carry much weight in an obituary.
— Tobias Wolff, The Night in Question
One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the same day as we do ourselves.
— Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
Via the conduit of a wild dog pack, she has now made the ultimate Gift to her fellow Creatures, and has become part of God's great dance of proteins.
— Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood
It seemed to me an odd view to take - rather as if one should protest that one didn't LIKE the idea of dying or being born. I preferred the notion of finding out first how it would be, and then doing what one could about the parts of it one disliked most.
— John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids
[Death] is a safety-device because, once Man has fallen, natural immortality would be the one utterly hopeless destiny for him.
— C.S. Lewis, Miracles
If last night proved anything, it's that life is a strong drink served up in an extremely short - and fragile - shot glass.
— Samantha Sotto, Before Ever After
لقد عرف كيف يموت ، كما عرف كيف يعيش
— Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could not even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of death.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
he [Llewelyn Powys] has always in mind the great touchstone Death & consequently life is always judged as how far it fits us, or compensates us, for ultimately dying.
— Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
Our favorite games were killing.Our favorite books were death.It had been beaten into us:God is love.Not the parched face and gnarledcapes across a stick body; jitteringin the nude sky, we couldn't seetrying to touch usfor the blood in our eyes.
— Joseph Bathanti, This Metal
...The typhoon of madness that swept through the country [of Rwanda] between April 7 and the third week of May accounted for 80 percent of the victims of the genocide.That means about eight hundred thousand people were murdered during those six weeks, making the daily killing rate at least five times that of the Nazi death camps. The simple peasants of Rwanda, with their machetes, clubs, and sticks with nails, had killed at a faster rate than the Nazi death machine with its gas chambers, mass ovens, and firing squads. In my opinion, the killing frenzy of the Rwandan genocide shared a vital common thread with the technological efficiency of the Nazi genocide--satanic hate in abundance was at the core of both.
— John Rucyahana, The Bishop of Rwanda: Finding Forgiveness Amidst a Pile of Bones
There is such a tremendous need for spiritual guidance for those who are facing death, as a patient or with a loved one. Emotions and grief flood everyone involved. There are so many unknown factors. Many times doctors can predict what may happen physically, but no one can truthfully answer the big questions for us, questions like, What is dying like? Will it hurt? What is going to happen to me after I die? Is God going to be there waiting for me? Is God going to be angry at how I lived my life? These questions and fears clearly need to be addressed spiritually and not brushed aside.
— Megory Anderson, Sacred Dying: Creating Rituals for Embracing the End of Life
One death apiece is plenty.
— Marty Rubin
That was magic, sweetest.” The witch flexed her fingers, wriggled them in front of her. “Did she think it a wave of the hands? A slip of the tongue?” A kiss upon her skin. She could see the woman reaching out and taking her in hand, kissing each finger as though they were her possessions. Then it was gone. Charlotte blinked. The woman had not stirred. “Not all things are so simple. I was he and he was me and I took your poison into myself, and made it his. All things join beneath the earth. I burned, then so did he. More will burn. Come hair or wool, more will burn.
— Chris Galford, The Hollow March
Even corpses had purpose, or could be given one. A man could make himself an island his entire life, only to have reason itself laid about him, a fabricated existence. Identity became relative, history nonexistent. As they said, dead men told no tales.
— Chris Galford, The Hollow March
The adjacent shores resounded with the alternate shouts of the sons of liberty and the groans of their parting spirits.
— William Apess, On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot
The process of dying is a difficult one, with many fears and anxieties, but it is also a very mysterious and wondrous process. It involves both the body and the soul in the greatest transition we are ever called to make. When I sit vigil with those who are at the edge of death, moments away from crossing over, I am constantly in awe of the process happening in front of me, one that each one of us must eventually go through.
— Megory Anderson, Sacred Dying: Creating Rituals for Embracing the End of Life
I once asked a rabbi in a large congregation which prayers he used with the dying. "You mean the Mourner's Kaddish?" he asked, referring to the prayer recited on behalf of the deceased. "No," I replied. "I mean the prayers said when a person is actually dying." "Oh," he replied. "I don't know. I've never seen anyone die." He had been a congregational rabbi for almost twenty years. "I only get called when it's time to do the funeral," he explained. Clearly there is much to learn within our traditional religious communities.
— Megory Anderson, Sacred Dying: Creating Rituals for Embracing the End of Life
Did you know that 'I told you so' has a brother,Jacob?" she asked cutting me off. "His name is 'Shut the hell up'.
— Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn
All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.
— Sarah Dessen, Just Listen
And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.
— Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.")
— A.A. Milne, If I May
What a curious power words have.
— Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
To conquer frustration, one must remain intensely focused on the outcome, not the obstacles.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
— Winston S. Churchill
Head up, heart open. To better days!
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
In quoting others, we cite ourselves.
— Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
— Marlene Dietrich
People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory.
— Karl Lagerfeld
See the world as it is, not as you wish it would be
— E. Lockhart, We Were Liars
I see all of you, Rhys. And there is not one part that I do not love with everything I am.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin
Create your own style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.
— Anna Wintour
The sky is not my limit...I am.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.
— Karl Lagerfeld
The woman is the most perfect doll that i have dressed with delight and admiration.
— Karl Lagerfeld
I want everyone to wear what they want and mix it in their own way. That, to me, is what is modern.
— Karl Lagerfeld
Love, too, was just a question of time
— Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym
A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker is willing to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition.
— James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
...we're dealing with two devils who both want to rule hell.
— Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray
My God,' he gasped, 'you're fun to kiss.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.
— Anaïs Nin
Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.
— Karl Lagerfeld
Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.
— Blaise Pascal
She was born to be free, let her run wild in her own way and you will never lose her.
— Nikki Rowe
It's such a silly little thing, the heart.
— Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story
Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step.
— Karl Lagerfeld
Cael, come on. Stop licking the dude. That's gross."Letty let out a snort. "Please, like you don't lick dudes.""That's different," Dex explained with a grimace. "None of those dudes were Ash. Besides, last time I checked, Ash was allergic to nuts.
— Charlie Cochet, Hell & High Water
Love what is simple and beautiful. These are the essentials.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Tao of Emerson the Tao of Emerson
Each time you say hello to a stranger, your heart acknowledges over and over again that we are all family.
— Suzy Kassem
Love spiritually, not strategically.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Tough love may be tough to give, but it is a necessity of life and assurance of positive growth.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
You don't need to climb a mountain to know that it's high.
— Paulo Coelho, Aleph
If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Though mountains melt and oceans burn,The gifts of love shall still return.
— Rosamund Hodge, Cruel Beauty
the best part waspulling down theshadesstuffing the doorbellwith ragsputting the phonein therefrigeratorand going to bedfor 3 or 4days. and the next bestpartwasnobody evermissedme.
— Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Déjà vu is more than just that fleeting moment of surprise, instantly forgotten because we never bother with things that make no sense. It show that time doesn't pass. It's a leap into something we have already experienced and that is being repeated.
— Paulo Coelho, Aleph
…the sad part is, that I will probably end up loving you without you for much longer than I loved you when I knew you.Some people might find that strange.But the truth of it is that the amount of love you feel for someone and the impact they have on you as a person, is in no way relative to the amount of time you have known them.
— Ranata Suzuki
A good man will never harm or oppress another. A good man will share his last morsel of food with others in need, and die of hunger when he no longer has any food -- instead of cheat or steal from others to survive. Selflessness. Humility. Truthfulness. These are the three marks of an honorable man.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
He can’t take his eyes off the stars, but I can’t take mine off his face.
— Amie Kaufman, This Shattered World
Wild woman are an unexplainable spark of life. They ooze freedom and seek awareness, they belong to nobody but themselves yet give a piece of who they are to everyone they meet. If you have met one, hold on to her, she'll allow you into her chaos but she'll also show you her magic.
— Nikki Rowe
Thought before word, never word before thought.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem