Great Throughts Treasury

"In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying in the darkness, and we know no death." - Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe

"Life, not death, is man's misfortune. It is death which gives liberty to the soul and permits it to depart to its own pure abode, there to be free from all calamity." - Eleazar ben Ya'ir

"Death is the crown of life." - Edward Young

"Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death." - Edward Young

"While man is growing, life is in decrease, and cradles rock us nearer to the tomb; our birth is nothing but our death begun." - Edward Young

"Death is the crown of life. Were death denied, poor man would live in vain; to live would not be life; even fools would wish to die." -

"One who longs for death is miserable, but more miserable is he who fears it." - Julius Wilhelm Zinkgräf

"Nothing seems so tragic to one who is old as the death of one who is young, and this alone proves that life is a good thing." - Zoë Akins

"Death is a bridge whereby the lover is joined to the Beloved." - Abd al-Aziz, born Sulayman

"The first sign of love to God is not to be afraid of death, and to be always waiting for it. For death unites the friend to his friend - the seeker to the object which he seeks." - Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali

"The meaning of death is not the annihilation of the spirit, but its separation from the body, and that the resurrection and day of assembly do not mean a return to a new existence after annihilation, but the bestowal of a new form or frame to the spirit." - Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali

"How great a judgment, O rich man, do you draw down upon yourself! The people go hungry, and you close your granaries; the people weep, and you turn your finger-ring about. Unhappy man, who has the power but not the will to save so many souls from death." - Ambrose, aka Saint Ambrose, fully Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

"If we see life’s purpose as the achievement of future goals, several problems arise. If we are mortal, the problem is simply that there will come a time when we have no future. Life would end with meaning unfulfilled, since death would eventually rob us of the future where the purposes for our actions lie." - Julian Baggini

"Life’s meaning has to be found in the living of life itself, and the promise of eventual death is necessary to make any action worthwhile at all." - Julian Baggini

"The time we spend on earth is but one tick of the eternal clock in an unending eternity. We are here in mortality for a brief moment and then on to the next stage of our development. It does not matter how many trials we have in life, just how we handle them. It does not matter how long we live, just how we live. How can we appreciate eternal good health if we have never experienced sickness, pain, or disease? How can we appreciate eternal joy if we have never experienced disappointment, hardship, or failure? How can we appreciate living forever if we have never known death?" - Phil Batchelor

"If men but saw the hand of death impending over their heads, even food would give no joy, much less the deeds that are not right." - Bhoja NULL

"Every unkindness to another is a little Death in the Divine Image; nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood." - William Blake

"Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death." - Omar Bradley, fully Omar Nelson Bradley

"Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life." - Adele Brookman

"A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow." - Charles Hendrickson Brower

"Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God." -

"Mindfulness is the way to deathlessness, inattentiveness the way to death. Those who are diligently attentive do not die, those who are thoughtless are as if dead already." -

"That which makes the difference between one man and another – between the weak and the powerful, the great and the insignificant – is energy, invincible determination, a purpose once formed and then death or victory." -

"If heaven is our country, what is the earth but a place of exile? If the departure out of the world is but an entrance into life, what is the world but a sepulchre? What is a continuance in it but an absorption in death?" -

"Just as life is defined as biological change and death as its lack, so meaning in life is characterized by the application of stable patterns to changing circumstances and the replacing of old patterns of understanding with new and exploratory ones. Meaning is found in the losing of it, the searching after it, and in the finding of it again. The meaning in your life is in flux and is to be found in the flux (the flow) of meaning, which is therefore itself a source of meaning in your life. All this does require, however, the developing of a tolerance for ambiguity, of a willingness to accept the inevitability of change and the precariousness of your present vision, and of an openness to the unending richness of your experience of the world in its manifold variety and diversity." - Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter

"In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts." - Carlos Castaneda, fully Carlos César Salvador Arana Castaneda

"The fact that we cannot see our friends or communicate with them after the transformation, which we call death, is no proof that they cease to exist." - Walter Dudley Cavert

"Any man who says he is not afraid of death is a liar." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

"Only faith in a life after death in a brighter world where dear ones will meet again - only that and the measured tramp of time can give consolation." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

"Is there any doctrine of immortality that can say anything more simple yet definitive about man’s fate after death? He has come from God and returns to God. From the very beginning, man is bound up with God; and this bond continues to exist, unaffected by death which befalls the body only. God’s creation of man’s spirit, then, must be understood as a principle whose consequence is immortality." - Hermann Cohen

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more - the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort - to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires - and expires, too soon, too soon - before life itself." - Joseph Conrad

"Until a man realizes sin as the death of his own higher self and as a rebellion against the law of his true happiness, there is no true conversion of heart towards the higher life." - Father Cuthbert

"I hold the view that death is rather like changing one’s clothes when they are torn and old. It is not an end in itself. Yet death is unpredictable – you do not know when and how it will take place." -

"To my mind, there are two things that, in life, you can do about death. Either you can choose to ignore it, in which case you may have some success in making the idea of it go away for a limited period of time, or you can confront the prospect of your own death and try to analyze it and, in so doing, try to minimize some of the inevitable suffering that it causes. Neither way can you actually overcome it." -

"The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom." -

"Both the young and the old, both the wise and the foolish, end up in death." - Dhammapada NULL

"Life and death are nothing but the mind. Years, months, days, and hours are nothing but the mind. Dreams, illusions, and mirages are nothing but the mind. The bubbles of water and the flames of fire are nothing but the mind. The flowers of the spring and the moon of the autumn are nothing but the mind. Confusions and dangers are nothing but the mind." - Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature…. in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?" -

"There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever. What man's mind can create, man's character can control." - Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein

"We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death." - Albert Einstein

"Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him." - W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester

"Death is a great adventure, but none need go unconvinced that there is an issue to it. The man of faith may face it as Columbus faced his first voyage from the shores of Spain. What lies across the sea he cannot tell; but his special expectations all may be mistaken; but his insight into the clear meanings of present facts may persuade him beyond doubt that the sea has another shore." -

"Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death." - James W. Fowler III

"Death itself is what makes life meaningful." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Perhaps the gods are kind to us, by making life more disagreeable as we grow older. In the end, death seems less intolerable than the manifold burdens we carry." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Why is it that only upon death, and at the funeral, we fully rejoice in the glory of each person’s life and capture the true spirit of love?" - G. W. F. NULL

"Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"We do not know whether it is good to live or to die. Therefore, we should not take delight in living, nor should we tremble at the thought of death. We should be equiminded towards death. This is the ideal. It may be long before we reach it, and only a few of us can attain it. Even then, we must keep it constantly in view, and the more difficult it seems of attainment, the greater should be the effort we put forth." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu