Death And Dying Quotes - Page 4

Dying has a funny way of making you see people, the living and the dead, a little differently. Maybe that's just part of the grieving, or maybe the dead stand there and open our eyes a bit wider.

Deep down a broken heart, all the sadness one can bear is misery.

As mortal humans we are born with a death sentence anyway, so what difference does a little poison make? Why not take a chance you will survive the ordeal and make something significant of your life?..." p330

If something's worth getting upset about, then there must be something worth getting happy about. And if something's worth getting happy about, then there must be something that matters. But there isnt!.. In a few years you'll all be dead and forgotten and diddly-squat, nothing, so you might just as well start getting used to it!

Small said, "But what about when we are dead and gone, will you love me then, does love go on?"…Large (replied) "Look at the stars, how they shine and glow, some of the stars died a long time ago. Still they shine in the evening skies, for you see…love like starlight never dies…

What is it that dies? A log of wood dies to become a few planks. The planks die to become a chair. The chair dies to become a piece of firewood, and the firewood dies to become ash. You give different names to the different shapes the wood takes, but the basic substance is there always. If we could always remember this, we would never worry about the loss of anything. We never lose anything; we never gain anything. By such discrimination we put an end to unhappiness. (118-119)

There's death and life, you see. We all shine on. A leaf, a star, a song, a laugh. Notice the little things, because somebody is reaching out to you. ...Somebody loves you.

If only humans could die like the autumn leaves, with a splash of beauty and the promise of another season.

My body weeps to livewhen you make me believe that someday I will be deadsoul sleepless in graveyard's bed

Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Help me to understand, what my grief has prevented me from seeing - within.

Dream-start with dream. Start tonight-become who you want-dream big!" He became animated at this point, "No money needed for dreams. Dreams are free.

If you lived a good life, you either lived to save or died to save… that which must be saved and kept. Your life would never be meaningless. Not even for a moment.

The tragedy of life is not death, but fearing to live, allowing parts of us to wilt and die instead of flower and rejoice.

If I die today, will you remember me tomorrow?The love I'm leaving behind, will you care to borrow? From a snake-shed-skin or from the sky unknownIn all living and the dead I'll dwell to groan

The erruption of feelings & emotions that follows a near-death exerience, or any event that causes us to stop & look deeply at the reality of our lives, is ripe with the potential for insight & clarity.

I've been to the other side...You're dead there, too.

Warm summer sun, shine brightly here, Warm Southern wind, blow softly here, Green sod above, lie light, lie light, Good night, dear heart; good night, good night.

Childbirth is nothing. Death is mighty. The 0 to our 1. There is nothing in the world like it. But there is nothing in it that is not like the world.

You cannot conceive of the depths of my sorrow, Campbell Maria Cooper." Alicia brought her fist to her mouth and her other hand to the rail of the bed and took a deep breath before she continued. "I will never be the same when you are gone. Things for me will be dim and gray and flat. But there is one thing that will keep me going, Campbell, and that is the belief in my connection to you. This thing. This crazy enmeshed love feeling that I have is real. Like this cup is real. Or this phone is real. And it will not just go away when you do. Okay? Wherever you are going, you will be connected to me by this thing, and you will never, ever be alone, okay? I want you to know that.

We are so afraid of the idea of having to die… that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn…

He’d seen a lot of bizarre items left at gravesides, like a carton of eggs, a pair of reading glasses, a bag of licorice, smooth stones, a spoon.

Death is a misery.

But why was the room suddenly becoming so dark? It was the middle of the afternoon. With a supreme effort Giuseppe Corte, who felt himself paralyzed with a strange lethargy, looked at the clock on the nightstand beside the bed. It was 3:30. He turned his head in the other direction and saw that the shutters, in obedience to some mysterious command, were closing slowly, blocking the passage of light.

Life is beautiful. Death is astonishing.And love is the just breaths taken in between

Dreams, just dreams, it's all illusion

The ending shouldn't determine the meaning of anything, a story or a life. Logically, I don't think it can--didn't Heidegger say something to that effect? That the meaning of all our moments cannot be contingent upon an end-point over which we have no control? That if we are happy right now, that means something, even if we die tomorrow? Narrative integrity is overrated. I don't need to know that the story of my life has a happy ending to enjoy it. A good thing, too, because I hear all the characters die in the end.

I don't want my life to be defined by what is etched on a tombstone. I want it to be defined by what is etched in the lives and hearts of those I've touched.

He watches the sun out of the world and the stars into it and sometimes I wonder if he watches the sun come up again. Is it hard to sleep when you know you are almost at the end? Do you not want to miss a moment, even those that would otherwise seem dull and unremarkable?

Last Comforts” was born when one nagging question kept arising early in my journey as a hospice volunteer. Why were people coming into hospice care so late in the course of their illness? That question led to many others that rippled out beyond hospice care. Are there better alternatives to conventional skilled nursing home operations? How are physicians and nurses educated about advanced illness and end-of-life care? What are more effective ways of providing dementia care? What are the unique challenges of minority and LGBT people? What is the role of popular media in our death-denying culture? What has been the impact of public policy decisions about palliative and hospice care? tThe book is part memoir of lessons learned throughout my experiences with patients and families as a hospice volunteer; part spotlight on the remarkable pathfinders and innovative programs in palliative and late-life care; and part call to action. I encourage readers – particularly my fellow baby boomers -- not only to make their wishes and goals clear to friends and family, but also to become advocates for better care in the broader community.

In her room death would come as a friend, a friend with cool gentle hands . . .

I haven’t been able to pray with the same unquestioned simplicity of hope since Dustin passed. My childhood ended the day my brother died. The naive hope that a miracle would save him, that he would one day walk, that a disease was a blessing in my family – that hope died with him.

We cry for ourselves, don't we? Not for the dead. The dead are past caring.

I don't want to die, Buddy.' She put her head on his chest. 'I know this cancer probably won't kill me. But I think about dying all the time. I dream about it. What do you think? Do I get to see Pat on the other side, or do I just lie there in the dirt forever?'...Buddy wrapped his arms around her and drew her close. 'I think dead is dead,' he said softly, near her ear. 'But that's not so bad. I think of it as following. Following the rest of them...My mother and father. Your sister. Your mom. But not just them. All of them. All of us. People...Maybe it's just a way to feel less lonesome about the whole thing, but I think of dying as a path we all go down separately at first, but eventually, together.

If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

When I reflect on the stories of death supported by hospice care and contrast it with our story depicting an absence of support, I find myself dealing with envy and anger. I have channeled those emotions into this book with the hope that hearing our story might give someone else a chance to create a better ending to the life of a loved one.

We die a day at a time

It is no use dying, before one does.

It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.

Life has to end," she said. "Love doesn't.

Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, Or all the elements by scruples, I know not, Nor greatly care. - Shoot. Shoot!Of all deaths, the violent death is best;For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast,The pain, once apprehended, is quite past.

I went to a foot specialist recently and she said:"You've broken a bone, it's healed funny.""What can you do?""Not much."She strapped me up though and that's the reason my foot is hurting, because the strapping gave me cramp.When I'm about to die I'm going to head ti a swamp so I topple in when the time comes. In 50,000 years when they dig me up, pretty well preserved, the scientists will have to work out what sort of life I led from my bone structure, teeth and whatnot. Maybe I'll be clutching a Felt record or something to give them a clue. They'll look at my foot and say: "This man broke a bone and it's healed funny." And they'll look at the Felt record, analysing the grooves with a Groove Analyser and they'll say: "He was obviously in an indie band and one day the pressure got too much, and he booted a wall." And they wouldn't be far from the truth, those crazy scientists.

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty. But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.

We all emerge into this material soup, mix about with the meat and potatoes of life, and then slip away, back to the primordial germination whence we came. Nascence is a strange business: we forget what we were doing only to come forth and continually forget what we were doing perpetually over the course of a lifetime, until it is time to quit this plane through some unseen and ethereal vomitorium, and presumably forget that we had forgotten all over again.

The world slides, the world goes, and death makes equal the rich and the poor

Seventy years of life is nothing in front of a single day of death

Perhaps we meet our heaven at the start and not the end of life.

Death is the destroyer and giver of sense.

It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.

It is well nigh impossible to talk to anyone about death, I find. Most people seem deeply embarrassed. It is like when I was a girl and nobody could talk about sex. We all did it, but nobody talked about it! We have now grown out of that silly taboo, and we must grow out of our inhibitions surrounding death. They have arisen largely because so few people see death any more, even though it is quite obviously in our midst. A cultural change must come, a new atmosphere of freedom, which will only happen if we open our closed minds.

Is this what it's like? he wondered. When you're about to die? One hand stretched back to someone who cares for you, the other reaching for a place you can't see.

After you die, a rare friend or family member may carry your memory throughout life. Most will forget you. As if you were never here.

The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead.

Kiernan told me-" Tears I hadn't even felt coming on suddenly began streaming down my cheeks. I had to swallow a sob before I could continue. "He told me he was sorry for-for loving me. He was s-sorry because," a deep breath helped me regain some of my waning control, "he didn't want to hut me. His biggest fear was the pain he'd cause those he cared about after he was gone. But I think we can all agree that knowing Kiernan for even a single day was worth a lifetime of grief

Dying was misery. Death was that period at the end of the sentence.

That night, he laid in his bed thinking about all the possibilities. They came like waves in his mind. At first they came slow, then gradually built up speed, cresting into full on dreams, until finally, they broke onto the shore with all of their reality. First dreams, then nightmares.

Dry fingers of decaying branches protruded upward, above what was left of the canopy of green. They rattled like skeletal bones, grasping for a final breath from the last silvery clouds of evening that slowly drifted by.

This will be Great Mam's last spring. Her last June apples. Her last fresh roasting ears from the garden.

Love doesn’t die with death. Love is like liquid; when it pours out, it seeps into others’ lives. Love changes form and shape. Love gets into everything. Death doesn’t conquer all; love does. Love wins every single time. Love wins by lasting through death. Love wins by loving more, loving again, loving without fear.

oh. she heard it too-no waters coursing, canyon empty, sun soundless- and the beast your life nowhere hiding (p. 103)