Death

"Even if death were to fall upon you today like lightning, you must be ready to die without sadness and regret, without any residue of clinging for what is left behind. Remaining in the recognition of the absolute view, you should leave this life like an eagle soaring up into the blue sky...."

"Karma takes no account of custom; and the karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all... The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God's creatures, and call it "sport"."

"You must give up all feeling of possession. Karma may take from you the things which you like best — even the people whom you love most. Even then you must be cheerful — ready to part with anything and everything."

"You must bear your karma cheerfully, whatever it may be, taking it as an honor that Suffering comes to you, because it shows that the Lords of Karma think you worth helping. However hard it is, be thankful that it is no worse."

"The thunderstorm is a constant phenomenon, raging alternately over some part of the world or the other. Can a single man or creature escape death if all that charge of lightning strikes the earth?"

"Painting the sensual with thy hues divine,—"

"Death is no disgrace."

"Let the dead bury the dead? But, the dead can bury no one."

"When I have folded up this tent And laid the soiled thing by, I shall go forth 'neath different stars, Under an unknown sky."

"Nay, why should I fear Death, Who gives us life, and in exchange takes breath?"

"My friend, there will come one day to you a Messenger, whom you cannot treat with contempt. He will say, "Come with me;" and all your pleas of business cares and earthly loves will be of no avail. When his cold hand touches yours, the key of the counting-room will drop forever, and he will lead you away from all your investments, your speculations, your bank-notes and real estate, and with him you will pass into eternity, up to the bar of God. You will not be too busy to die."

"Fear makes us blind, and we touch each fear with all the avid curiousity of self-interest, trying to make a whole out of a hundred parts, like the blind men with their elephant. We sense the shape. Children grasp it easily, forget it, and relearn it as adults. The shape is there, and most of us come to realize what it is sooner or later: it is the shape of a body under a sheet. All our fears add up to one great fear, all our fears are part of that great fear - an arm, a leg, a finger, an ear. We're afraid of the body under the sheet. It's our body. And the great appeal of horror fiction through the ages is that it serves as a rehearsal for our own deaths."

"If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die."

"Strange—is it not?—that of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too."

"When you and I behind the Veil are past."

"Despite the solace of hypocritical religiosity and its seductive promise of an after-life of heavenly bliss, most of us will do anything to thwart the inevitable victory of biological death."

"Dying is not a crime."

": No one can obtain from the Pope a dispensation for never dying."

"Nemo impetrare potest a papa bullam nunquam moriendi."

"The living wander away, we don't hear from them for months, years—but the dead move in with us to stay. They exhort us to greater faithfulness, forgive us our inertia, comfort us in our agitation."

"Love masters agony; the soul that seemed Forsaken feels her present God again And in her Father's arms Contented dies away."

"Verse, Fame and beauty are intense indeed,But Death intenser – Death is life's high mead."

"They say you only live once, but come to think of it - you only die once as well."

"Trust to a plank, draw precarious breath, At most seven inches from the jaws of death."

"Mors sola fatetur Quantula sint hominum corpuscula."

"From the human standpoint death often appears senseless and severe, but remember that man can only visualize a very narrow sector of the overall Plan, and his perspective must inevitably remain limited. Remember also that the earthly life which has been cut short will, after a longer or shorter spiritual sojourn, be resumed in a new physical vehicle, to continue the experiences planned by the soul."

"There is no 'death'; it is only a question of passing from one level of awareness to another, from physical consciousness to spiritual consciousness. If man could only come to this realization then all fears would vanish. 'Death' is not something to be feared, but on the contrary, in many respects, it is a phase to be welcomed what a wonderful thought for the older person who has been through life's treadmill and experienced its weal and woe, that he can shed the dense physical prison with all its aches and pains and fears, that he can exchange physical life with all its worries, doubts, disappointments and mental strain, for a spell of life in a spiritual body that will no longer tire and be subject to all the earthly troubles..."

"Hence one whose fire is burned out is reborn through the tendencies in mind; according to his thoughts he enters life. But linked by the fire with the Self, this life leads to a world of recompense.--Prashna Upanishad... The above quotation from Prashna Upanishad gives the old doctrine, the same as in Buddhism, that re-birth is due to mind and to the tendencies therein. "Whose fire has burned out" means the fire of life expiring. "According to his thoughts" does not refer to what one wishes to have for rebirth, but to the seeds of thought left in the mind from the thinking of each hour of life; these in a mass make a tendency or many tendencies which on coming out either keep the soul to that family in all modes of thought and act or tend to segregate the soul from the circle into which it was born. "This life leads to a world of recompense," because by the fire of life it is linked to the Self, which being thus bound goes after death to the state where recompense is its portion. The alternation to and fro from one state to another for purposes of compensation is not the attainment of knowledge but the subjection to results eternally, unless the soul strives to find the truth and becomes free, and ceases to set up causes for future births."

"Suicide is a huge folly, because it places the committer of it in an infinitely worse position than he was in under the conditions from which he foolishly hoped to escape. It is not death. It is only a leaving of one well-known house in familiar surroundings to go into a new place where terror and despair alone have place."

"Thou art but gone before, Whither the world must follow."

"Disease generally begins that equality which death completes."

"Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

"Then with no fiery throbbing pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way."

"I am not afraid to kill you for there is no death."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

"You're on your way to meet your maker... Are you ready? No exceptions to the rule; death is promised."

"Death's got to be easy, because life is hard. It'll leave you physically, mentally, and emotionally scarred."

"In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave."

"Duty is weightier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather."

"Melius est bene mori, quam male vivere (...) qui mortem metuit, amittit gaudia vitae; super omnia vincit veritas, vincit, qui occiditur, quia nulla ei nocet adversitas, si nulla ei dominatur iniquitas."

": Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country."

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

"Aequa lege Necessitas Sortitur insignes et imos; Omne capax movet urna nomen."

": Swift death rushes upon us."

"Cita mors ruit."

"Omne capax movet urna nomen."

": We are all compelled to take the same road; from the urn of death, shaken for all, sooner or later the lot must come forth."

"Omnes eodem cogimur; omnium Versatur urna serius, ocius Sors exitura."