A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer lives are based on the labors of other people, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. – Albert Einstein
A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy. – Ludwig Wittgenstein
A samurai lives in death. – Yamamoto Tsunetomo
A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. – Emily Dickinson
Accepting that death is absolutely safe. It is like taking off a tight shoe. – Pat Rodegast
All the people we kill – they’re always people who tell us to live together in harmony and to love one another. Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, John Lennon – they all said Let’s live together peacefully and – BAM! – dead. Apparently we’re not ready for that. – George Carlin
Be absolute for death; either death or life shall thereby be the sweeter. – Shakespeare
Death does not concern us. As long as we exist, death is not there. Once it does come, we no longer exist. – Epictetus
Death is always in the here and now; it can never happen in the future. Can you die in the future? You can die only in the present. No one has ever died in the future. – Rajneesh
Death is just infinity closing in. – Jorge Luis Borges
Death is not an event in life. – Ludwig Wittgenstein
Death is not in the nature of things. It is the nature of things. – Unknown
Die in your thoughts every morning and you will no longer fear death. – Hagakure
Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
For a long time I have been preparing myself for the exercise which consists, for the poet, in simulating death. – Jean Cocteau
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live. – Jean Cocteau
I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you’d have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it’s a kind of blessing. It’s certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you’re going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. … It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, à la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears. – Terence McKenna
I am a teacher of life and a vague student of death. – Pablo Neruda
I have now made a habit of being prepared in all affairs of life for the worst. As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me but is indeed very soothing and consoling, and I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that, young as I am, I may not live to see another day. Yet not one of all my acquaintances could say that in my company I am morose or disgruntled. For this blessing I daily thank my creator. – Johann Amadeus Mozart
I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by. – Scott Adams
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened. – Winston Churchill
I wonder if, before we were born, we were as afraid of life as we are now of death. – Jay Williams
If death can fly, just for the love of flying, what might not life do, for the love of dying? – Malcolm Lowry
If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs. – Muriel Spark
If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness. – Ludwig Wittgenstein
If the butterflies in your stomach die, send yellow death announcements. – Yoko Ono
If you love something well enough, grandmother Archa told Helen when the weakness was upon her, you will die for it. For when we love with all our might, our silly little selves are already dead, and we have no more fear of dying. Would you die for your music? Helen asked. And her grandmother said: I believe I already have. – William Kennedy
If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in doing so, you did not encounter new images, new linguistic fields. – Ludwig Wittgenstein
If you die, it is not my death. – Georges Bataille
It is impossible to experience one’s own death objectively and still carry a tune. – Woody Allen
It is not the failed relationships which influence our life. They influence our death. – Anais Nin
Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead on us. – Plotinus
Learn to breathe deeply. Really taste food when you eat. When you sleep, really sleep. Be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Be alive. You will be dead soon enough. – Ernest Hemingway
Life is a banquet. The tragedy is that most people are starving to death. – Anthony de Mello
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds, it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing. – Anaïs Nin
Man is snapped off like a reed in the canebrake. The comely young man, the pretty young woman, all too soon in their prime, death abducts them! – Gilgamesh
Now all my teachers are dead except silence. – W.S. Merwin
One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time. – Carl Sagan
Peace will come with tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire but will offer no reward when her false idols fall and cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating between the king and the queen of swords. – Bob Dylan
Poetry will rob me of my death. – Rene Char
Security is a kind of death. – Tennessee Williams
See, there’s bravery in this world. There’s 6.5 billion people curled up like fists protesting death – but every breath we breathe has to be given back. A 9-year-old boy taught me that. – Shane Koyczan
The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation … has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion … 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
The primary question about life after death is not whether it is a fact, but even if it is, what problems that really solves. – Ludwig Wittgenstein
The temporal immortality of the soul of man, that is to say its eternal survival also after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive forever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. – Ludwig Wittgenstein
The thing to remember is that each time of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas when you’re dead it’s hard to find the light switch. – Woody Allen
The war saved my life. I don’t know what I would have done without it. Now I should have the chance to be a decent human being, for I’m standing eye to eye with death. – Ludwig Wittgenstein
There are so many little dyings that it doesn’t matter which of them is death. – Kenneth Patchen
Those who live in fear die a thousand deaths. – George Patton
To be blessed in death, one must learn to live. To be blessed in life, one must learn to die. – Word-masters
To live several lives, you must die several deaths. – Francoise Giroud
Why are you afraid of death? Where you are, death is not. Where death is, you are not. What is it that you fear. – Epicurus
You can find something better than death anywhere. – Brothers Grimm
