This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Have you ever considered how dreadful it would be if our lives had no appointed end but went on forever? Can you imagine that as far as the eye can see into the future we should remain enmeshed in all the desires and troubles of this life and that all the ensuing envy, hatred and malice, our own and other people’s should continue to pile up undiminished? If you have ever considered how intolerable the burden of our life would be without the understood certainty that it has an appointed end, you know that death comes to all, even the most fortunate, not as an enemy but as a deliverance.
Death | Enemy | Envy | Future | Life | Life | Malice | People | Troubles |
The glories of our blood and state are shadows, not substantial things; there is no armor against fate; death lays his icy hand on kings, sceptre and crown must tumble down, and in the dust be equal made with the poor crooked scythe and spade.
The most important and the concluding stage in the life of a man is death. It does not mean passing away and extinction of life, but returning home to the divine world and being taken up again into the social and divine unity of mythical primeval time. Death is a passage into a new existence, the transition to a new and true life. It is thus an event of the same kind as birth, initiation, and marriage, and it is not only the most important of all of these stages of life, but receives the fullest and the most detailed ceremonial expression: all the other stages reach their culmination and final conclusion in this.
Birth | Death | Existence | Important | Life | Life | Man | Marriage | Time | Unity | World |
Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell
If death is one mystery, life is another, greater one… We can only fee awe before a mystery that both is what we are and surpasses our understanding.
All ceremonies of transition, such as birth... marriage and death correspond very closely with each other in that on every occasion they repeat the drama of primeval creation.
Who sees variety and not the unity wanders on from death to death.
Teresa of Avila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL
Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; and there is only one glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing.
Care | Death | Eternal | Glory | Life | Life | Nothing | Soul | Will |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
I believe that the true welfare of man lies in the fulfillment of the Will of God; and that His will consists in men loving each other, and therefore behaving toward others as they desire that others should behave with them. I believe that the meaning of life of every man, therefore, lies only in the increase of love in himself; that this increase of love leads the individual man in this life toward greater and greater welfare; that after death it gives the greater welfare the more love there be in the man; and that, at the same time, more than anything else, it contributes to the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, i.e., to an order of life where the discord, deceit, and violence which now reign will be replaced by free agreement, truth, and brotherly love between men.
Death | Deceit | Desire | Earth | Fulfillment | God | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Men | Order | Time | Truth | Will | God |
Wealth and honor, benefits and blessings shall enrich my life; poverty and failures, grief and anxiety shall help fulfill it. In my life, I will serve heaven and earth; in death I will find peace.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Blessings | Death | Earth | Grief | Heaven | Honor | Life | Life | Peace | Poverty | Wealth | Will |
Elie Wiesel, fully Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
The opposite of death is not life, it’s indifference.
Death | Indifference | Life | Life |
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
Body | Death | Fear | God | Individual | Reflection | God |
The moment of near despair is quite often the moment that precedes courage rather than resignation. In a sense, with the back to the wall and no exit but death or acceptance, the options narrow to one.
Acceptance | Courage | Death | Despair | Resignation | Sense |