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Death And Dying Quotes

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Death And Dying Quotes

“You are a cool cemetery. You have the sinner’s grave You have the saint’s earth colliding You have all the beds narrow as a knife; as if a rally of tombstones to defend death. But you can’t really postpone the inauguration of my burial, can you? From the poem - Few Words to Cemetery”

“The impeccable watchmaker geared the noble self to suffer. The ineluctable part of being human is perpetual sorrow, grief, and misery. Suffering is part of living. Life begins joyously and regretfully ends in tragedy. The cold realities of the world triumphantly crush each one of us. Between birth and death is comedic conjugation, the haunting prelude to the end of the self.”

“Quick spinning seasons Where everything speeds Achingly open spaces Free for next year’s trees Identities distilled To essence Sapping slowly Dissolving memory Hinting of patiently Waiting eternity All living things decay They cannot stay. Be Carefully To gain your Salvation Cleave The bonds That bind. Reflect, refract The undying light Though we may grieve There is no staying grief We are life’s loves Labours lost That leaf Then leave”

“I never thought before how strange the notion of a transplant list is. The only list I've ever really given thought to were grocery lists and to-do lists, lists of homework assignments and list of clothes I wanted to buy before school started. I never thought there was such a thing as a list of names, people waiting for new faces. People waiting for someone else to die.”

“They laid me down again while somebody fetched a stretcher. As soon as I knew that the bullet had gone clean through my neck I took it for granted that I was done for. I had never heard of a man or an animal getting a bullet through the middle of the neck and surviving it. The blood was dribbling out of the comer of my mouth. ‘The artery's gone,’ I thought. I wondered how long you last when your carotid artery is cut; not many minutes, presumably. Everything was very blurry. There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed that I was killed. And that too was interesting—I mean it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well. I had time to feel this very vividly. The stupid mischance infuriated me. The meaninglessness of it! To be bumped off, not even in battle, but in this stale comer of the trenches, thanks to a moment's carelessness! I thought, too, of the man who had shot me—wondered what he was like, whether he was a Spaniard or a foreigner, whether he knew he had got me, and so forth. I could not feel any resentment against him. I reflected that as he was a Fascist I would have killed him if I could, but that if he had been taken prisoner and brought before me at this moment I would merely have congratulated him on his good shooting. It may be, though, that if you were really dying your thoughts would be quite different.”

“What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifle's rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers, nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells, And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes, Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall, Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each, slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.”

“They lived in rural Michigan in the pre-automobile age, and for the most part they had never been fifty miles away from the farm or the dusty village streets; yet once, ages ago, they had been everywhere and had seen everything, and nothing that happened to them thereafter meant anything much. All that was real had taken place when they were young; everything after that had simply been a process of waiting for death, which did not frighten them much -- they had seen it inflicted in the worst possible way on boys who had not bargained for it, and they had enough of the old-fashioned religion to believe without any question that when they passed over they would simply be rejoining men and ways of living which they had known long ago.”

“The brisk night had put a good chill into the concrete floor, and Mussolini’s corpse had stayed nice and cool throughout the night. His decomposition state had been arrested, and all the flies had flown away to other places. After two men dug his grave the next morning, they buried Benito Mussolini in the Musocco Cemetery on the north side of town. — Watering Cans”

“Do you know how hard it is to kill something? Nothing wants to die. Things cling to their lives against all hope, even when it's hopeless. It's like the end is always there, you can't escape it. But things try so, so hard not to cross that finish line. So when they finally do, everything's been stripped away, their bodies and happiness and hope. Things just don't know when to die, I wish they did. I wish my friends had known that, sort of anyway. But I'm glad they tried, that's part of being human right? Part of being any living thing. You hold onto life until it gets ripped away from you, even if it gets ripped away in pieces, you just hold on.”

“I watch Ethan try to connect the dots in his head, And suddenly his face falls into a sad smile. "Oh," he says. And that's all. I walk over to him, my bare feet sinking into the sand as I trudge along. He's grinning at me now, but it's not the usual plastered-on smile he usually has. This one is somehow more authentic. When I'm within a few feet of him, he holds his arms out. "You're going to be such a good leader," he says. "I'm so proud of you, Five." I embrace Ethan. His arms fold around me as he pats me on the back. He lets out a long, slow sigh and then starts to say something. I cut him off before he can get the words out. I can't stand to hear him say another thing. "Ethan, I'm really sorry about this. But it's for the best." I can feel his body clench as the blade slips out of my forearm sheath and into his back. It slides between his ribs-a lucky shot- then retracts back into my hoodie sleeve. It's over in an instant. I step away from him. He stands frozen, probably in shock. There's a deep spot of read blooming across the right side of his chest where the blade must have broken the skin. Blood drops down from the hidden wrist sheath, running over my right hand before falling from my fingertips to the sand. "It's over," I murmur, more to myself than to Ethan. He's probably not paying much attention to what I have to say. Tears are welling in his good eye, but I don't know if they're for me or for himself. He blinks once and then falls to the beach with a soft thud.”

“To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. I've thought a lot about death recently, the finality of it, the argument ending in mid-air. One of us hadn't finished, why did the other one go? And why without warning? Even death after long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm.”

“There’s no need to look so glum,’ my mother says. ‘Cheer up a little, won’t you?’ When my mother gives an order, it’s best to follow without question. Lorraine Halliday is a woman the winds and tides obey. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, swallowing down my emotion. ‘I’ll be stronger.’ ‘I should think so. These things happen when you get old, Tom. I’m no spring chicken, you know.’ ‘You’re sixty-four,’ I say. My mother considers this for a moment. ‘Well, I feel old.”

“We cannot fight or conquer our feelings of grief, anger, pain, or loss. Just like we cannot fight or conquer nature. We yield to it — we know that storms, be it in the desert, heart or at sea, will eventually pass. It is the same with life. Just please have the courage to fight for your life at the lowest moments. It will get better, I promise. Whatever storm you are going through in your life right now, know that you are not alone in it and know that it will eventually pass...”

“The mean-spirited, unpredictable cancer beast had changed all of our lives. There were unspoken details of our life before cancer. Now, only the stark reality of life after cancer remained. I was acutely aware that, regardless of the treatment’s outcome, we were bound in a race against time. A relentless clock, damnably ticking away, measured the fleeting seconds of Xuan’s life. Its insistent rhythm served as a re- minder of our finite journey. Though it may have momentarily paused, the clock would invariably resume its steady wind down toward zero.”

“There are things we know in this world without explanation, like a sixth sense that ties us to all other living things—that root of our DNA from which we all share, which warns us and enlightens us. It informs us what death looks like, no matter what species we are. When my father fell asleep, I knew he had not died—not technically—but I knew he was gone. He would never wake up.”