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Finality Quotes

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Finality Quotes

“Unless death is made a lesson for the living, the life lived is wasted. Why should life come into existence only to be destroyed? One dies and another is born—for what? A few miserable hours of life—then oblivion! With this recognition of the finality of death, no one should willingly withhold acts that would bring benefits, joy or happiness to others. In death, the hesitant act can no longer be performed—the word of praise is as impossible as yesterday's return. What perversity justified inflicting pain, suffering and death upon others who have done no wrong? If death ends all, why fight while we are living? Why shorten life with unnecessary pain and suffering? How futile are the petty problems of individuals, with their hates and jealousies, when all vanish with death? All the prayers in the world cannot wipe out one injustice. Every wrong is irreparable. The dead cannot forgive. All the tears and sighs are of no avail. Forgiveness cannot be granted when lips cannot move. Praise cannot be heard when ears cannot hear; joy cannot be experienced when the heart no longer beats; and the happiness of an affectionate embrace can no longer be felt when arms are limp and the eyes are forever closed.”

LifePainDeathJoySufferingTearsForgivenessPraiseEmbraceInjusticeWrongFiniteOblivionFinality
Book:An Atheist Manifesto
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“And this love between Henry and Fora . . . at first, it was a small, uncertain thing, like the glow of the morning sunos the horizon. And then it was its own wild animal, bucking against the world and anything that threatened it, so hot it could burn and sometimes did. And then it was quiet, as quiet as a snowfall, covering everything, certain of its place, even as it was certain it could not last forever.”

LoveDeathEmotionEverythingLiving Life To The FullestFinality
Book:The Game of Love and Death
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“There is a faltering scream, or something that sounds like a scream. There is a sound that I cannot or have never been able to identify: a sound that's not human or is more than human, the sound of lives being extinguished but also the sound of material things breaking. It's the sound of things falling from on high, an interrupted and somehow also eternal sound, a sound that didn't ever end, that kept ringing in my head from that very afternoon and still shows no sign of wanting to leave it, that is forever suspended in my memory, hanging in it like a towel on a hook. That sound is the last thing heard in the cockpit of Flight 965.”

DeathDespairAnguishFinality
Book:The Sound of Things Falling
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“In the frame of the human, maybe too human, order of the world, which the New Age Enlightenment set as the horizon of the future, there is no more space for any superhuman justification, nor for any superhuman construction of the human existence. The enlightened man freed himself of every divine tutelage, he radically diverged from every mythic restriction. Moreover, he finally understood his finality, learned to view his finality not as a blemish, but as that of which he can be proud.”

ExistenceHumanEnlightenmentExistentialismFinality
Author:Mihailo Đurić
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“After a great blow, or crisis, after the first shock and then after the nerves have stopped screaming and twitching, you settle down to the new condition of things and feel that all possibility of change has been used up. You adjust yourself, and are sure that the new equilibrium is for eternity. . . But if anything is certain it is that no story is ever over, for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, and it isn't the game that is over, it is just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day.”

ChangeCrisisShockResolutionFinalityFluidityLife EventsUnexpected Changes
Book:All the King's Men
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“But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus this so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life.”

WayWritingArtLyingValuesTurnsImaginationNaturalKnowingModernWalkingDespairDevilDirectDifficultyDetailsSensesNosesFixedWorks Of ArtNot KnowingImpossibilityModern LifeLiftingScrutinyGood WritingFinality
Book:Kora in Hell: Improvisations
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“If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.”

IfsMindProblemWould BePoliticalGreaterFeetUniversalRemainsPyramidsSuffrageFinalityUniversal Suffrage
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
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“A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental when the poem is good, or embarrassing or absurd when it is bad and he is not permitted to say how the good poem is good, and may never know how the bad poem is bad. It is better to write about other people's poetry.”

PeopleKnowsWantWritingMayKnow HowSuccessfulParticularPoetAbsurdEmbarrassingRemarksFinality
Author:Randall Jarrell
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“If time is treated in modern physics as a dimension on a par with the dimensions of space, why should we a priori exclude the possibility that we are pulled as well as pushed along its axis? The future has, after all, as much or as little reality as the past, and there is nothing logically inconceivable in introducing, as a working hypothesis, an element of finality, supplementary to the element of causality, into our equations. It betrays a great lack of imagination to believe that the concept of "purpose" must necessarily be associated with some anthropomorphic deity.”

IfsShouldBelieveWellsLittlesRealityPastPurposeImaginationSpaceModernPossibilityElementsConceptsPhysicsTreatedDimensionsBetrayIntroducingHypothesisEquationsDeitiesAxesFinalityCausalityModern Physics
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“Homo religiosus invents religious symbols, which he venerates and worships to save him from facing the finality of his death and dissolution. He devises paradise fictions to provide succor and support... In acts of supreme self-deception, at various times and in various places he has been willing to profess belief in the most incredible myths because of what they have promised him.”

Has BeensSelfBeliefReligiousFictionSupportAtheismWillingWorshipIncrediblesVariousPositive AtheismMythSupremeSymbolsDeceptionParadiseSelf DeceptionDissolutionFinality
Author:Paul Kurtz
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