death

"Underneath this sable herse Lyes the subject of all verse."

"Not even your Britain's groans can pierce The leaden silence of your hearse."

"On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent herses shall besiege your gates."

"Dido, my deare, alas! is dead, Dead, and lyeth wrapt in lead. O heavie herse!"

"This was, at the beginning of the 2000s, the only way that the Tibetans, who remained in their country, found to protest against the Chinese occupation and atrocities: self-immolation by pouring gasoline all over the body and then dropping a match. This sacrifice, reminiscent of that of Buddhist monks in Vietnam who protested the American presence, captured the imagination of the world and embarrassed the Chinese. Dolma Tsering, a member of the Tibet Parliament in Exile, notes: “Chinese propaganda gives the image of a Tibet bathed in happiness, with a bright future. The fact that 149 people have set themselves on fire since 2009 is a sign that something is wrong. »"

"From Buckever hither were above 200 Munaries' [minar, pillar], with heads mortered and plaistered in, leaveinge out nothing but their verie face, some 30, some 40, some more some lesse. This was Abdula Ckauns exploit (whoe is now Governour of Puttana), by the kings Order. For this way was soe pestered with Rebbells and Theeves, that there was noe passinge; soe that the Kinge sent Abdulla Ckaun, with 12,000 horse and 20,000 foote to suppresse them, whoe destroyed all their Townes', tooke all their goods, their wives and children for slaves, and the cheifest of their men, causeing their heads to bee cutt of and to be immortered as before [depicted]. To the Munares of dead mens heads made bv Abdulla Ckaun ['Abdullah Khan ] are added since our comeinge this way by Furzand Ckaun [Farzand Khan] about 60 more with 35 or 40 heads a peece, lately killed. Neere Etaya [Etawa] there was a new Munare a makeinge with a great heape of heads lyeing by them, ready to bee immortered."

"The beautiful coconut trees which once graced the gardens surrounding the city of Madura, have been cut down by these intruders, and in place of these, we have gruesome substitutes in the form of iron sula, which are adorned with garlands of decapitated human heads strung together."

"How many infidels' heads have you caused to be cut off? He said, 'There would be 200,000 heads so that there might be two rows of minarets of heads from Agra to Patna."

"An order was given to set up a pillar of pagan heads on the ... hill between which and our camp the battle had been fought. (...) About 1000 men, women and children were made prisoner ; there as also great slaughter, and a pillar of heads was raised."

"Mounds were made of the bodies of the slain, pillars of their heads."

"Not a week passed without the spilling of much Muslim blood and the running of streams of gore before the entrance of his palace. This included cutting people in half, skinning them alive, chopping off heads and displaying them on poles as a warning to others, or having prisoners tossed about by elephants with swords attached to their tusks."

"Strike them on their foreheads to tear them apart and over the necks to cut them off, and cut off their limbs, hands and feet."

"As the same Muhammadan diarist records after a visit to Vrindavan: 'Wherever you gazed you beheld heaps of the slain; you could only pick your way with difficulty, owing to the quantity of bodies lying about and the amount of blood spilt. At one place that we reached we saw about two hundred dead children lying in a heap. Not one of the dead bodies had a head. The stench and effluvium in the air were such that it was painful to open your mouth or even to draw breath.'"

"Now when you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks until, when you have subdued them, then make fast the bonds, and afterward either generosity or ransom until the war lays down its burdens. That, and if Allah willed, he could have punished them, but so that he may test some of you by means of others. And those who have been killed in the way of Allah, he does not make their actions useless."

"When thy Lord inspired the angels, (saying): I am with you. So make those who believe stand firm. I will throw fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then smite the necks and smite of them each finger."

"It happened that a man would go to strike at the neck of an unbeliever and his head would fall off before his sword was able to get there."

"Of course they embalm’d you! Yet not so sweet Were aloes and nard, as the youthful glow Which Amenti stole when the small dark feet Wearied of treading our world below."

"They told me, Francis Hinsley, they told me you were hung With red protruding eye-balls and black protruding tongue. I wept as I remembered how often you and I Had laughed about Los Angeles and now ’tis here you’ll lie; Here pickled in formaldehyde and painted like a whore, Shrimp-pink incorruptible, not lost nor gone before."

"If you're born to be hanged then you'll never be drowned."

"And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!"

"Bill Stein: Howdy, folks, howdy. This is your old friend, Bill Stein, bringing you a jerk-by-jerk description of the triple hanging of the Mushroom Murder Mob. This broadcast is coming to you from Hangemall Prison. We’re at the gallows site, and it’s a beautiful day for a hanging."

"O little did my mother think When first she cradled me, That I would turn a rovin’ boy And die on the gallows tree."

"What, still alive at twenty-two, A clean, upstanding chap like you? Sure, if your throat ’tis hard to slit, Slit your girl’s, and swing for it.Like enough, you won’t be glad, When they come to hang you, lad: But bacon’s not the only thing That’s cured by hanging from a string."

"Quick? I thought of the Austrian executioners who had hung on to the legs of their strangling prisoner to finish the job, until I brought them the British method."

"He does not die a death of shame On a day of dark disgrace, Nor have a noose about his neck, Nor a cloth upon his face, Nor drop feet foremost through the floor Into an empty space.He does not sit with silent men Who watch him night and day; Who watch him when he tries to weep, And when he tries to pray; Who watch him lest himself should rob The prison of its prey.He does not wake at dawn to see Dread figures throng his room, The shivering Chaplain robed in white, The Sheriff stern with gloom, And the Governor all in shiny black, With the yellow face of Doom.He does not rise in piteous haste To put on convict-clothes, While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes Each new and nerve-twitched pose, Fingering a watch whose little ticks Are like horrible hammer-blows.He does not know that sickening thirst That sands one’s throat, before The hangman with his gardener’s gloves Slips through the padded door, And binds one with three leathern thongs, That the throat may thirst no more.He does not bend his head to hear The Burial Office read, Nor, while the terror of his soul Tells him he is not dead, Cross his own coffin, as he moves Into the hideous shed.He does not stare upon the air Through a little roof of glass: He does not pray with lips of clay For his agony to pass; Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek The kiss of Caiaphas."

"And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself."

"We have been rinsed and laundered by the rain, And by the sunlight dried and blackened too. Magpie and crow have plucked our eyeballs twain And cropped our eyebrows and the beards we grew."

"They hanged him as a beast is hanged: They did not even toll A requiem that might have brought Rest to his startled soul, But hurriedly they took him out, And hid him in a hole.They stripped him of his canvas clothes, And gave him to the flies: They mocked the swollen purple throat, And the stark and staring eyes: ..."

"... Now when they had tidied all the room, They led the women from the well-built hall Between the round-house and the sacred fence About the court, and penned them in a strait Whence there was no escape. Then to the others First spake the wise Telemachus: ‘Now never by a clean death let me take These women’s lives, who on my head have poured Disgrace, and on my mother, and were used To lie beside the suitors.’ Upon the word he tied to a great column The cable of a blue-prowed ship, and slung it About the round-house, stretching it high up So that the feet of none might touch the ground. And, as when thrushes with long wings, or doves Dash right into a snare set in a thicket, When they are making for their rest, and ’tis A cruel bed that takes them, so the women Held in a row their heads, and round the necks Of all were nooses cast, that they might die A death most piteous. With their feet they writhed A little while—not long."

"He that unburied lies wants not his hearse, For unto him a tomb's the Universe."

"Gilded tombs do worms infold."

"Some of the followers of certain Mohammedan sects work all their lives to have a big tomb built for them when they die. I know sects among whom as soon as a child is born, a tomb is prepared for it; that is among them the most important work a man has to do and the bigger and the finer the tomb, the belter off the man is supposed to be."

"I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tombs of the Capulets."

"And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie; That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."

"Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound."

"The harm inflicted by the suicide upon himself must be the deprivation of possible future experiences (keep in mind that sacred harms, such as religious harm, belong under different moral foundations). However, by committing suicide, a person affirms that, in his evaluation, the expected future gains from living are not worth the expected costs. Many people intuitively support this line of thinking when it comes to people dying of a terminal illness. But why would people dying of a terminal illness be the only people miserable enough to rationally want to die? Hope is not necessarily rational. Prohibiting suicide amounts to substituting one’s own (poorly informed) judgment for the suicide’s own (immeasurably better informed) judgment of the degree to which his life is worth living."

"The most commonly cited harm inflicted by suicide is the harm to the surviving friends and relatives. What, exactly, does that harm consist of? Certainly, it is not merely the fact that the person has died. Everyone dies eventually; suicides are not unique in this. Our surviving family and friends must eventually come to terms with all of our deaths. The only special harm attributable to the suicide is that he has died early, depriving the survivors of an expected period of his company and support—specifically, that period between the time of suicide and the time he would have otherwise died. During that time, the lover or spouse no longer enjoys the affection of the suicide; the relative no longer enjoys his visits and presents and sidewalk-shoveling; the friend no longer enjoys his opinions and companionship; the parent may no longer hope for grandchildren. The problem is that little of this “company and support” (and reproductive capacity) is morally obligatory. A person may, without committing a moral wrong by modern standards, leave his spouse due to irreconcilable differences or move away from his friends and relatives to pursue a career or refuse to have children. Providing our company is a voluntary act, and we are under no moral obligation to do so. The company and support of a person is best viewed as a privilege, not a right."

"They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person."

"There exists a right by which we take a man's life but none by which we take from him his death: this is mere cruelty."

"Over the years, the way in which society views the taking of one’s own life has varied enormously. Suicide has not always been seen as the act of a sick and depressed person. In ancient Greece, Athenian magistrates kept a supply of poison for anyone who wanted to die. You just needed official permission. For the Stoics of ancient times, suicide was considered an appropriate response, if the problems of pain, grave illness or physical abnormalities became too great. With the rise of Christianity, however, suicide came to be viewed as a sin (a violation of the sixth commandment). As Lisa Lieberman writes in her book Leaving You, all of a sudden ‘the Roman ideal of heroic individualism’ was replaced ‘with a platonic concept of submission to divine authority’."

"All I ask of persons to whom any form of euthanasia is morally repugnant is tolerance and understanding of the feelings of others who want the right to choose what happens to their bodies in a free society. To every person their own way of death."

"In quixotically trying to conquer death doctors all too frequently do no good for their patients’ “ease” but at the same time they do harm instead by prolonguing and even magnifying patients’ dis-ease."

"Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death."

"If suicide is a crime, only cowardice can drive us to it. If it is not a crime, both prudence and courage should lead us to rid ourselves of existence when it becomes a burden. If that time comes, suicide is our only way to be useful to society—setting an example which, if imitated, would preserve to everyone his chance for happiness in life, and effectively free him from all risk of misery."

"I shall argue that although suicide is always tragic (because it always involves serious costs), we ought to be less judgmental about it, whether psychiatrically or morally, than people usually are. Suicide is sometimes a reasonable—even the most reasonable— response to a particular human’s predicament (rather than to the human predicament in general)."

"Suicide is sometimes morally wrong, and it is sometimes the consequence of psychological problems. However, it is not always susceptible to such criticism. If we step back from our powerful survival instinct and our optimism bias, ending one’s life may seem much wiser than continuing to live, particularly when the burdens of life are considerable. Moreover, it would be indecent to condemn those who, having deliberated carefully about the matter, decide that they no longer wish to endure the burdens of a life to which they never consented. They ought to take the interests of others, especially family and friends, into account. This is particularly true of those (such as spouses and children) to whom obligations have been voluntarily undertaken. The presence of such connections and obligations will trump lesser burdens, morally speaking. However, once the burdens of life reach a certain level of severity (determined, in part, by the relevant person’s own assessment of his life’s value and quality), it becomes indecent to expect him to remain alive for the benefit of others."

"If your pet is dying in pain, you will be condemned for cruelty if you do not summon the vet to give him a general anaesthetic from which he will not come round. But if your doctor performs exactly the same merciful service for you when you are dying in pain, he runs the risk of being prosecuted for murder. When I am dying, I should like my life to be taken out under a general anaesthetic, exactly as if it were a diseased appendix. But I shall not be allowed that privilege, because I have the ill-luck to be born a member of Homo sapiens rather than, for example, Canis familiaris or Felis catus. At least, that will be the case unless I move to a more enlightened place like Switzerland, the Netherlands or Oregon. Why are such enlightened places so rare? Mostly because of the influence of religion."

"All our obligations to do good to society seem to involve doing something in return: I get the benefits of society, so I ought to promote its interests. But when I withdraw myself altogether from society, can I still be obliged to serve it? And even if our obligations to do good did last for ever, they certainly have some limits; I am not obliged to do a small good to society at the expense of a great harm to myself; so why should I prolong a miserable existence because of some trivial advantage that the public may perhaps receive from me? Suppose I am old and unwell: can’t I lawfully resign from whatever jobs I have, and spend all my time coping with these calamities and doing what I can to reduce the miseries of my remaining years? If so, why isn’t it lawful for me to cut short these miseries at once by suicide, an action that does no more harm to society? Now try three other suppositions. Suppose that I am no longer able to do any good for society, or that I am a burden to society, or that my life is getting in the way of some other person’s being much more useful to society. In such cases it must be not only lawful but praiseworthy for me to take my own life. And most people who are at all tempted to commit suicide are in some such situation; those who have health, or power, or authority, usually have better reason to be on good terms with the world."

"Suicide can often be consistent with self-interest and with one’s duty to oneself; this can’t be questioned by anyone who accepts that age, sickness, or misfortune may make life a burden that is even worse than annihilation. I don’t believe that anyone ever threw away his life while it was worth keeping. Our natural horror of death is too great to be overcome by small motives. It may happen that a man takes his own life although his state of health or fortune didn’t seem to require this remedy, but we can be sure that he was cursed with such an incurable depravity or depression as must poison all enjoyment and make him as miserable as if he had been loaded with the most grievous misfortunes."

"Owing to the severity of the crash, 62 of the 183 bodies were never positively identified. The victims included 166 Polish citizens and 17 Americans."