Death

"Ei kysy kuolema tullessaan, että joko lähtee mielit vae jiämäänkö oes haluttanna. (Savonia) (SMS)"

"Surm jala all iga päev. (EVS)"

"Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein, Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein."

"There is no music more for him: His lights are out, his feast is done; His bowl that sparkled to the brim Is drained, is broken, cannot hold."

"Death must be an evil — and the gods agree; for why else would they live for ever?"

"Day's lustrous eyes grow heavy in sweet death."

"Hushed in the alabaster arms of Death, Our young Marcellus sleeps."

"Death aims with fouler spite At fairer marks."

"Some people think that we are stuck in physical reality like flies in flypaper or victims in quicksand, so that each motion we make only worsens our predicament and hastens our extinction. Others see the universe as a sort of theater into which we are thrust at birth and from which we depart forever at death. In the backs of their minds people with either attitude will see a built-in threat in each new day; even joy will be suspect because it, too, must end in the body's eventual death. I used to feel this way. When I fell in love with Rob, my joy served to double the underlying sense of tragedy I felt, as if death mocked me all the more by making life twice as precious. I saw each day bringing me closer to a total extinction that I could hardly imagine, but which I resented with growing vehemence."

"Sleep that no pain shall wake, Night that no morn shall break, Till joy shall overtake Her perfect peace."

"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own."

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."

"One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater."

"I hope that Allah will not make me immortal, for death is his greatest gift to any true believer."

"It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free."

"An uneasy rhythm of life is more life like than an easy death."

": I am going to seek a great perhaps; draw the curtain, the farce is played."

"O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far stretchèd greatness, all the pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and covered it all over with those two narrow words, Hic jacet!"

"But death we are, and death have always been."

"The imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality."

"The struggles, the disillusions, and the enmities of life are a part of daily experience. Either death should bring compensating oblivion, or it should throw the mantle of charity over our frailties."

"Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas."

": I go to see the sun for the last time."

"I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar With angels blest; but even from angelhood I must pass on: all except God doth perish. When I have sacrificed my angel-soul, I shall become what no mind e'er conceived. Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence Proclaims in organ tones, To Him we shall return."

"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."

"Out of the chill and the shadow, Into the thrill and the shine; Out of the dearth and the famine, Into the fulness divine."

"Yes [death has become a taboo]. Today people want to avoid the subject and hide the deaths that happen around them. It is as if the world were a hotel where the dead usually disappear at night, without any guest being able to notice their presence. While movies and television address death, they do not touch the fundamental point of finitude. The deaths are false, the good guys get shot and come back to life. It's another way of treating death as unreal."

"Death is the inventor of God."

"We may have years, we may have hours, but sooner or later, we push up flowers."

"Death makes sad stories of us all."

"I am death, not taxes. I turn up only once."

"It is the lot of man but once to die."

"Teach him how to live, And, oh! still harder lesson! how to die."

"Sunt aliquid Manes: letum non omnia finit, Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos."

"Withdrawn into the peace of this desert, along with some books, few but wise, I live in conversation with the deceased, and listen to the dead with my eyes."

"Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée."

"Et l'avare Achéron ne lâche pas sa proie."

": And greedy Acheron does not relinquish its prey."

"Sorry about your Uncle Fred, but hey, sometimes you end up dead. Did somebody bonk him in the head? Did somebody pump him full of lead? What the...? Are they trying to be humorous? Betcha glad it wasn't you instead."

"Fort Belle, Elle Dort."

"Der lange Schlaf des Todes schliesst unsere Narben zu, und der kutze des Lebens unsere Wunden."

": The long sleep of death closes our scars, and the short sleep of life our wounds."

"However dreary we may have felt life to be here, yet when that hour comes — the winding up of all things, the last grand rush of darkness on our spirits, the hour of that awful sudden wrench from all we have ever known or loved, the long farewell to sun, moon, stars, and light — brother man, I ask you this day, and I ask myself humbly and fearfully, "What will then be finished? When it is finished, what will it be? Will it be the butterfly existence of pleasure, the mere life of science, a life of uninterrupted sin and self-gratification, or will it be, 'Father, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do?'""

"Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully — not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their hearts — watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with."

"And so, you see, simplicity Requires that our lot Be that we exit, when we must, With only what we brought."

"Those that he loved so long and sees no more, Loved and still loves—not dead, but gone before, He gathers round him."

"It has been commonly observed that blood, wounds, cries and groans, the preparations for painful operations, and everything which directs the senses towards things connected with suffering, are usually the first to make an impression on all men. The idea of destruction, a more complex matter, does not have so great an effect; the thought of death affects us later and less forcibly, for no one knows from his own experience what it is to die; you must have seen corpses to feel the agonies of the dying. But when once this idea is established in the mind, there is no spectacle more dreadful in our eyes, whether because of the idea of complete destruction which it arouses through our senses, or because we know that this moment must come for each one of us and we feel ourselves all the more keenly affected by a situation from which we know there is no escape."

"Je m'em vais voir le soleil pour la dernière fois."

"Death is the privilege of human nature, And life without it were not worth our taking: Thither the poor, the pris'ner, and the mourner Fly for relief, and lay their burthens down."

"On the contrary, death is the ultimate fairness; rich and poor, young and old, all are equal in death."