DEATH / DYING

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

Death comes when the purpose of living is fulfilled; death shows what the reason for living was.
Khemetic Saying
Temt Tchaas: Egyptian Proverbs , Muata Ashaya Ashby, ed.

We don't know yet about life, how can we know about death?
Kongfuzi
c. 551-c. 479 BCE, Chinese Philosopher, Educator, Political Theorist

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Epicurus
341-270 BCE, Greek Philosopher
"Letter to Menoeceus"

Death twitches my ear. "Live," he says, "I am coming."
Virgil
70-19 BCE, Roman Poet

You must be willing to die in order to live.
Yoruba (Southern Nigeria) Saying

A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.
Seneca
c. 4 BCE-65 CE, Roman Philosopher, Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Rhetorician, Statesman

The worst evil of all is to leave the ranks of the living before one dies.
Seneca

The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
Publilius Syrus
c. 42 BCE, Roman Writer

The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.
Lucian
c. 120-200, Syrian-Greek Writer

The person who fears death either fears the total loss of all consciousness or the onset of new sensations. But if you have no consciousness, you will not feel any pain, and if you acquire new sensations, you will just be a different kind of living creature and so will not cease to live.
Marcus Aurelius
121-180, Roman Emperor, Stoic Philosopher
The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius , Mark Forstater, tr., 2000

We need to look at the nature of death, and look at it objectively without the emotional baggage we carry about it. We will then find it to be merely a process of Nature. And anyone afraid of a process of Nature is a child.
Ibid.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
Ibid.

You must realize that what
is at stake here does not
reside in words and phrases:
it is like sparks from struck flint,
like the brilliance of flashing lightning.
However you manage to deal with this,
you cannot get around
losing your body and life.
Yunmen Wenyan
864-949, Chinese Chan Master, Founder of the Yunmen School

Everyone's death is of the same quality as himself:
to the enemy of God, an enemy;
to the friend of God, a friend.
Your fear of death in fleeing from it
is really your fear of yourself.
Pay attention, dear soul!
Jalaluddin Rumi
1207-1273, Afghani-Turkish Sufi Mystic, Poet
"Fear of Yourself," Mathnawi III, 2537-2538
The Pocket Rumi Reader , Kabir Helminski, ed., 2001

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Leonardo da Vinci
1452-1519, Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Scientist

Die while you're alive
And be absolutely dead.
Then do whatever you want:
it's all good.
Bunan
1603-1676, Japanese Gatekeeper, Zen Master
in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry , Stephen Mitchell, tr. & ed., 1989

Against his will he dieth that hath not learned to die. Learn to die and thou shalt learn to live, for there shall none learn to live that hath not learned to die.
- The Book of the Craft of Dying >
Medieval Text

To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us … let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death … We do not know where death awaits us; so let us await it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
Montaigne
1533-1592, French Essayist, Moralist

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
Francis Bacon
1561-1626, English Philosopher, Essayist, Politician
Essays , 1625

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
William Shakespeare
1564-1616, English Poet, Dramatist, Actor
Julius Caesar , II.ii

Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it.
Shakespeare
Macbeth , I.iv

Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all.
Shakespeare
King Lear , V.ii

Fear not that you may die; instead, fear that you will reach death and realize that you have never truly lived.
Anonymous

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.
John Donne
1572-1631, English Poet
in Julia Cameron, Transitions: Prayers and Declarations for a Changing Life , 1999

He that lives to forever, never fears dying.
William Penn
1644-1718, English Quaker, Founder of the State of Pennsylvania

Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.
Voltaire
1694-1778, French Philosopher, Dramatist, Poet, Historian, Writer, Critic
(on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan)

Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good.
William Mitford
1744-1827, English Historian

Often the real test of courage is not to die, but to live.
Vittorio Alfieri
1749-1803, Italian Poet

Death – the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.
Walter Scott
1771-1832, Scottish Writer, Historian

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not; this gives us no concern – why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?
William Hazlitt
1778-1830, English Writer, Critic

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.
Hazlitt

After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.
Arthur Schopenhauer
1788-1860, German Philosopher
Prerga and Paralipomena , 1851

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804-1864, American Writer
American Notebooks

Now comes the mystery.
Henry Ward Beecher
1813-1887, American Cleric, Lecturer, Editor, Writer

The tragedy of a man's life is what dies inside of him while he lives.
Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Social Critic

Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
Walt Whitman
1819-1892, American Poet, Writer
"Song of Myself," Leaves of Grass , 1855

Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is to work diligently while the day lasts. The best preparation for death is life.
George MacDonald
1824-1905, Scottish Writer, Poet, Preacher

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" – a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
Mark Twain
1835-1910, American Writer, Humorist, Journalist

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.
Henry Van Dyke
1852-1933, American Cleric, Writer

And now I am even dying beyond my means.
Oscar Wilde
1856-1900, Irish Poet, Dramatist, Critic, Wit
alleged last words while sipping champagne on his deathbed

To die will be an awfully big adventure.
J. M. Barrie
1860-1937, Scottish Dramatist, Writer

Once I give form to my thought, I must free myself from it. For the time being, it seems to me that I want absolute freedom to create new forms for new ideas. I am sure physical death has the same meaning for us – the creative impulse of our soul must have new forms for its realization. Death can continue to dwell in the same sepulcher, but life must unceasingly outgrow its dwelling-place; otherwise the form gets the upper hand and becomes a prison.
Rabindranath Tagore
1861-1941, Indian Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, 1913 Nobel Laureate
Letters to a Friend

Nature, body, and mind go to death, not we; we never go nor come.
Vivekananda
1863-1902, Indian Guru, Writer
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 1984-1987 , 7:70

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colors of life in all their purity.
George Santayana
1863-1952, Spanish/American Philosopher, Writer

Science says: "We must live," and seeks the means of prolonging, increasing, facilitating and amplifying life, of making it tolerable and acceptable, wisdom says: "We must die," and seeks how to make us die well.
Miguel de Unamuno
1864-1936, Spanish Philosopher

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell
1872-1970, English Philosopher, Mathematician, Essayist, Social Reformer, 1951 Nobel Laureate

I am convinced that it is hygienic – if I may use the word – to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive, and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
Carl Jung
1875-1961, Swiss Psychologist, Theorist

The call of death is the call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.
Herman Hesse
1877-1962, German-Swiss Writer, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic, 1946 Nobel Laureate
in Julia Cameron, Transitions: Prayers and Declarations for a Changing Life , 1999

Everything is alive … there is nothing dead, it is only we who are dead. If we become alive for a moment, we shall feel that everything is alive, that all things live, think, feel and can speak to us.
P. D. Ouspensky
1878-1947, Russian Journalist, Writer, Lecturer
A New Model for the Universe , 1934

Death destroys a man, but knowledge of death saves him.
E. M. Forster
1879-1970, English Writer, Essayist, Literary Critic
Where Angels Fear to Tread

You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? …
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
Khalil Gibran
1883-1931, Lebanese Poet, Mystic, Painter
The Prophet , 1923

No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humaneness.
Hermann Broch
1886-1951, Austrian/American Writer
The Spell , 1987

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1889-1951, Austrian/British Philosopher

Most people die at the last minute; others 20 years beforehand, some even earlier. They are the wretched of the earth.
Louis Celine
1894-1961, French Writer, Physician
Journey to the End of Night , 1932

He who perceives death perceives a sense of the human comedy, and quickly becomes a poet.
Lin Yutang
1895-1976, Chinese Writer, Dramatist, Translator
The Importance of Living , 1937

To live before death is to live with death; which means that one is living in a timeless world. One is living a life in which everything that one acquires is constantly ending, so that there is always a tremendous movement, one is not fixed in a certain place. This is not a concept. When one invites death, which means the ending of everything that one holds, dying to it, each day, each minute, then one will find – (not "one" there is then no oneself finding it, because one has gone) – then there is that state of a timeless dimension in which the movement we know as time, is not. It means the emptying of the content of one's consciousness so that there is no time; time comes to an end, which is death.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
1895-1986, Indian Philosopher, Writer
The Wholeness of Life , 1978

We start dying the moment we are born. Death is woven into life, and everything that lives and grows lives towards its own death and from the death of the things it outgrows. This is all part of an unconscious, everlasting, and painless process of change. The growth of the ego that determines, holds fast, and circles fixed points makes it harder, however, to move on and make room for the new. Happy the man or woman who knows how to leave things behind! But one day death in the real sense approaches. This is something more than the dying involved in every change. It means growing through and beyond this literal dying – the ultimate growing-beyond-self.
Karlfried Durckheim
1896-, German Psychologist, Philosopher
The Call for the Master , Vincent Nash, tr., 1989

Since death's face changes with the eyes that look at it, it is our own maturity and mentality that determine whether we see it as a threat to life, mercilessly cutting it short, or as something that is part of life and yet points beyond it to another life, in which the familiar yields to the unknown, or perhaps to an Absolute beyond time and change.
Ibid.

The fear of death is the fine for accepting the identity of the body as a separate entity in the total functioning.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
1897-1981, Indian Shopkeeper, Vedanta Teacher

Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
Bertolt Brecht
1898-1956, German Dramatist, Poet

Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one.
Vladimir Nabokov
1899-1977, Russian/American Writer, Poet, Translator, Critic

In nature, there is less death and destruction than death and transmutation.
Edwin Way Teale
1899-1980, American Naturalist
Circle of the Seasons

When I was analyzing I observed clearly that the fear of death was in proportion to not-living. The less a person was in life, the greater the fear. By being alive I mean living out of all the cells, all the parts of one's self. The cells which are denied become atrophied, like a dead arm, and infect the rest of the body. People living deeply have no fear of death.
Anaïs Nin
1903-1977, French/American Writer
The Diaries of Anais Nin , Vol. II

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by loving.
Nin

Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, nor actual difficulty in our life.
Shunryu Suzuki
1905-1971, Japanese Zen Master
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind , 1970

The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life's joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure – fearlessness and achievement.
Joseph Campbell
1904-1987, American Mythologist, Educator, Writer

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
Dag Hammarskjold
1905-1961, Swedish Diplomat

The goal in life is to die young – as late as possible.
Ashley Montagu
1905-1999, British/American Anthropologist, Biologist

The distraction of human life to the war against death, by the same inevitable irony, result's in death's dominion over life. The war against death takes the form of a preoccupation with the past and the future, and the present tense, the tense of life, is lost.
Norman O. Brown
1913-, American Philosopher

Death is the epitome of the truth that in each moment we are thrust into the unknown. Here all clinging to security is compelled to cease, and wherever the past is dropped away and safety abandoned, life is renewed. Death is the unknown in which all of us lived before birth. Nothing is more creative than death, since it is the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that "I" cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting it go, he finds it.
Alan Watts
1915-1973, British/American Philosopher, Writer
The Wisdom of Insecurity , 1951

You never die because you were never born; you've just forgotten who you are.
Watts

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
Norman Cousins
1915-1990, American Editor, Humanitarian, Writer

If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.
James Baldwin
1924-1987, African-American Writer, Dramatist, Poet, Civil Rights Activist

Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time … It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.
Leo Buscaglia
1924-1998, American Educator, Writer

Death is always close by. And what's important is not to know if you can avoid it, but to know that you have done the most possible to realize your ideas.
Frantz Fanon
1925-1961, Martiniquan Psychoanalyst, Social Theorist

If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.
Yukio Mishima
1935-1970, Japanese Writer
"How to Read Hagakure," Mishima on Hagakure , 1977

The encounter with death begins at birth, not when we are actually sick and dying … If sickness, old age, and death are unfortunate, then certainly, so is birth.
Issan Dorsey
1933-1990, American Female Impersonator, Zen Abbot
in David Schneider, Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey , 1993, 2000

What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?
Audre Lorde
1934-1992, African-American Poet, Writer, Lesbian-Feminist Activist
The Cancer Journals , 1980

If you are mindful of death, it will not come as a surprise – you will not be anxious. You will feel that death is merely like changing your clothes. Consequently, at that point you will be able to maintain your calmness of mind.
Dalai Lama
1935-, Tibetan Leader, 14th Dalai Lama, Teacher, Writer
A Policy of Kindness , Sidney Piburn, ed., 1990, 1993

It is death that provides life with all its meaning.
M. Scott Peck
1936-, American Psychiatrist, Writer
The Road Less Travelled , 1978

If we can live with the knowledge that death is our constant companion, then death can become our "ally," still fearsome but continually a source of wise counsel … When we shy away from death, the ever-changing nature of things, we inevitably shy away from life.
Ibid.

When we realize that … our body is already broken, that indeed we are already dead, then life becomes precious and we open to it just as it is, in the moment it is occurring … How little fear can interpose, how little doubt can estrange us. When you live your life as though you're already dead, life takes on new meaning. Each moment becomes a whole lifetime, a universe unto itself.
Stephen Levine
1937-, American Writer, Counselor
Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying , 1982

Death or the process of dying seems to be accompanied by a sense of expanding beyond oneself, of dissolving out of form, of melting into the undifferentiated … For a few moments, awareness shines more brilliantly than a thousand suns and there is the experience of the one reality out of which all creation arises.
Ibid.

Machines will never be able to give the thinking process a model of thought itself, since machines are not mortal. What gives humans access to the symbolic domain of value and meaning is the fact that we die.
Régis Debray
1940-, French Writer

Death, we say is the equivalent of an empty, lifeless void. Yet nothing in the whole of modern physics justifies this view. The void is charged with invisible potentials just waiting to happen. Matter cannot come to nothing; it can only be transmuted into energy, and vice versa. Even from a materialistic point of view, then, there can never be an end to ourselves – only a transmutation.
Larry Dossey
1940-, American Physician, Writer
"Healing and Modern Physics: Exploring Consciousness and the Small-Is-Beautiful Assumption," in Alternative Therapies , 1999 July

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now!
Joan Baez
1941-, American Folksinger, Songwriter, Social Activist
Daybreak

Once you're dead, you're made for life.
Jimmy Hendrix
1942-1970, African-American Rock Musician, Songwriter

Death does not necessarily diminish us, it also deepens our awareness of what it means to be alive.
Brian Patten
1946-, British Poet
Grave Gossip

I live my life even now as if I could die this evening. Your priorities are different when you live your life constantly aware that death is stalking you. You don't waste your time in trivia or mundane things, or get upset by people. You are much more loving and compassionate.
Deepak Chopra
1947-, Indian/American Physician, Writer
in A&U , 2001 April

Death results in simply a different form of belonging to the community. It is a lesson from nature that change is the norm, that the world is defined by eternal cycles of decline and regeneration … Death is not a separation but a different form of communion, a higher form of connectedness with the community, providing an opportunity for even greater service.
Malidoma Some
1956-, Burkina Fasso Dagara Shaman, Writer
The Healing Wisdom of Africa , 1999

Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.
Julie Burchill
1960-, British Writer, Journalist
in The Independent , 1989 December 5

Good strong people get cancer, and they do all the right things to beat it, and they still die. That is the essential truth that you learn. People die. And after you learn it, all other matters seem irrelevant.
Lance Armstrong
1971-, American Cyclist
It's Not About the Bike , 2000

I never think he is quite ready for another world who is altogether weary of this.
- Hugh Hamilton

Death gives value, and in a sense almost infinite value, to our lives, and makes more urgent and attractive the task of using our lives to achieve something for others … which apparently embodies more or less what is called the meaning of life.
Karl R. Popper
Philosopher
in Karl R. Popper & John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain , 1981

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.
- A. Sachs

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