Death

"Men in great suffering are very apt to look first at the very worst of themselves and their lives, and afterward, toward the very best. And such - as the Hindus, Egyptians, and some of the Greeks taught - is the case after the death of the body. The soul, alone with its memories, struggles first to free itself from those most disturbing... The notions about heaven and hell, with which the people of "Christian" nations are more or less familiar, are probably the crude remains of earlier and more philosophical ideas. If we consider hell and heaven to be states of mind instead of places, it is easy to see the reason for such ideas. For each man, in the course of his normal living, enters periodically into states of great happiness and great unhappiness, and further more, while he is in them, he is apt to forget everything else. The mind, in other words, builds its own world. Is it so strange, then, to imagine that after the death of the body this same process may continue, in an even more intense degree, since no physical interruptions are possible?"

"Those who have "died" may logically be thought of as still existing, in one of these two states. Each state will last just as long as the nature of the person demands. Those who tired easily from psychological strain during life might require a long period of mental readjustment, while those who seemed to have the energy at all times to enter vigorously into even the most difficult experiences might be ready to be born again on earth in a much shorter time. The great philosopher Plato wrote an allegory in the last book of his Republic about souls making themselves ready to come back to earth again. Each one, he said, had a choice as to when and where to be born, but that choice must always be in accord with the soul's capacities and needs. So it is really a matter of being drawn naturally to the environment best suited to the soul, as provided by parents, family, and nation."

"All our times have come Here but now they're gone Seasons don't fear the reaper Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain... we can be like they are Come on baby... don't fear the reaper Baby take my hand... don't fear the reaper We'll be able to fly... don't fear the reaper Baby I'm your man..."

"Death is never trivial: it is solemnity, it is mystery."

"Physical death, so much a preoccupation in the death world, is less mortifying than what is peddled as life."

"When I lived, I provided for every thing but death; now I must die, and am unprepared."

"Beyond the shining and the shading I shall be soon. Beyond the hoping and the dreading I shall be soon. Love, rest and home— Lord! tarry not, but come."

"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection."

"Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."

"In the midst of life we are in death."

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away."

"Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts."

"Here. Astride the top of nothingness, I suddenly receive the call of death. Who, in passing, tells me that it’s nothing. Nothing more than the absence of the word itself. Nothing more, and simply nothingness."

"'Mid youth and song, feasting and carnival, Through laughter, through the roses, as of old Comes Death, on shadowy and relentless feet Death, unappeasable by prayer or gold; Death is the end, the end. Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet Death as a friend!"

"Oh! death will find me, long before I tire Of watching you; and swing me suddenly Into the shade and loneliness and mire Of the last land!"

"A little before you made a leap in the dark."

"The thousand doors that lead to death."

"We all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all disease."

"Pliny hath an odd and remarkable Passage concerning the Death of Men and Animals upon the Recess or Ebb of the Sea."

"O Earth, so full of dreary noises! O men, with wailing in your voices! O delved gold, the waller's heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God makes a silence through you all, And "giveth His beloved, sleep.""

"For I say, this is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest."

"The grand perhaps."

"Fear Death? – to feel the fog in my throat,The mist in my face."

"The drama of death has always seemed to me the truest element in life."

"Sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

"All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom."

"So he passed over and all the trumpets sounded For him on the other side."

"How immense is being, when you thought yourself dead!"

"the great death waits to gather me in its stars."

"Dying visions of angels and Christ and God and heaven are confined to credibly good men. Why do not bad men have such visions? They die of all sorts of diseases; they have nervous temperaments; they even have creeds and hopes about the future which they cling to with very great tenacity; why do not they rejoice in some such glorious illusions when they go out of the world?"

"Die Todten reiten schnell."

": The dead ride swiftly."

"But, oh! fell Death's untimely frost, That nipt my flower sae early."

"There is only rest and peace In the city of Surcease From the failings and the waitings 'neath the sun, And the wings of the swift years Beat but gently o'er the biers Making music to the sleepers every one."

"They do neither plight nor wed In the city of the dead, In the city where they sleep away the hours."

"We wonder if this can be really the close, Life's fever cooled by death's trance; And we cry, though it seems to our dearest of foes, "God give us another chance.""

"Timor mortis morte pejor."

": The fear of death is worse than death."

"Friend Ralph! thou hast Outrun the constable at last!"

"Heaven gives its favourites — early death."

"Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown."

"Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns!"

""Whom the gods love die young," was said of yore."

"Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep."

"Oh, God! it is a fearful thing To see the human soul take wing In any shape, in any mood!"

"Down to the dust! — and, as thou rott'st away, Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay."

"Nothing, indeed, can be more deserving of our admiration than the conduct of the Christian martyrs, who cheerfully submitted to an ignominious death, inflicted by the most atrocious torments, rather than deny their faith even by the mere performance of an apparently insignificant rite of Paganism."

"But this we may positively state, that nobody has made any progress in the school of Christ unless he cheerfully looks forward to the day of his death and to the day of the final resurrection."

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

"Brougham delivered a very warm panegyric upon the ex-Chancellor, and expressed a hope that he would make a good end, although to an expiring Chancellor death was now armed with a new terror."