Be thou faithful unto death.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
How different life might be, if in our daily intercourse and conversation we thought of our friends as lying before us on the last bed of flowers--how differently we should then judge, and how differently we should act. All that is of the earth is then forgotten, all the little failings inherent in human nature vanish from our minds, and we only see what was good, unselfish, and loving in that soul, and we think with regret of how much more we might have done to requite that love. It is curious how forgetful we are of death, how little we think that we are dying daily, and that what we call life is really death, and death the beginning of a higher life. Such a thought should not make our life less bright, but rather more--it should make us feel how unimportant many things are which we consider all-important: how much we could bear which we think unbearable, if only we thought that to-morrow we ourselves or our friends may be taken away, at least for a time. You should think of death, should feel that what you call your own is only lent to you, and that all that remains as a real comfort is the good work done in this short journey, the true unselfish love shown to those whom God has given us, has placed near to us, not without a high purpose.
Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.
2. A God humbled to the cross. It was necessary that Christ should suffer and enter into glory, that he should conquer death by death. Two advents.
(_Translation by Darius Lyman. The numbers are those of the translator._) As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
Ein machtiger Vermittler ist der Tod=--Death is a powerful reconciler.
Je n'ai point d'ennemis que ceux de l'etat=--I have no enemies whatever but those of the state. _Richelieu to his confessor on his death-bed._
All religions speak about death during this life on earth. Death must come before rebirth. But what must die? False confidence in ones own knowledge, self-love and egoism. Our egoism must be broken.
~Parting.~--In every parting there is an image of death.--_George Eliot._
It is better to die once than live always in fear of death.
Guerre a mort=--War to the death.
Even if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, so Voltaire said … Perhaps that is true, and indeed the mind of man has always been fashioning some such mental image or conception which grew with the mind's growth. But there is something also in the reverse proposition: even if God exist, it may be desirable not to look up to Him or to rely upon Him. Too much dependence on supernatural forces may lead, and has often led, to loss of self-reliance in man, and to a blunting of his capacity and creative ability. And yet some faith seems necessary in things of the spirit which are beyond the scope of our physical world, some reliance on moral, spiritual, and idealistic conceptions, or else we have no anchorage, no objectives or purpose in life. Whether we believe in God or not, it is impossible not to believe in something, whether we call it a creative life-giving force, or vital energy inherent in matter which gives it its capacity for self-movement and change and growth, or by some other name, something that is as real, though elusive, as life is real when contrasted with death.
Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend.
Omnes una manet nox, / Et calcanda semel via lethi=--One night awaits us all, and the path of death must once be trodden by us.
Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells That the wind sways above a ruined shrine. Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine. Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod. They shall not live who have not tasted death. They only sing who are struck dumb by God.
Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.
It brings no solace to the unspiritual man to be told he is mistaken. To say he is self-deceived is neither to compliment him nor Christianity. He builds in all sincerity who raises his altar to the UNKNOWN God. He does not know God. With all his marvellous and complex correspondences, he is still one correspondence short. Natural Law, Death, p. 161.
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear (believe the aged friend), Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,-- How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run \x97 and often in the short one \x97 the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.
Madame fut douce envers la mort, comme elle l'etait envers tout le monde=--She was gentle towards death, as she was towards every one.
Love is strong as death. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.
Les plus grands hommes d'une nation sont ceux qu'elle met a mort=--The greatest men of a nation are those whom it puts to death.
Life by life and love by love We passed through the cycles strange, And breath by breath and death by death We followed the chain of change. Till there came a time in the law of life When o’er the nursing sod, The shadows broke and soul awoke In a strange, dim dream of God.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
Nemo impetrare potest a papa bullam nunquam moriendi=--No man can ever obtain from the Pope a dispensation from death.
There are some who sin through frailty, or through the force of some violent passion. They desire to break these chains of death; if their prayer is constant they will be heard.--ST. ALPHONSUS.
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours! We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum. No soldier's paid to kick against His powers. We laughed, — knowing that better men would come, And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
For it is not to be doubted that this life endures but for an instant, that the state of death is eternal, whatever may be its nature, and that thus all our actions and all our thoughts must take such different courses according to the state of that eternity, as to render it impossible to take a single step with sense and judgment, save in view of that point which ought to be our end and aim.
I know no evil death can show, which life / Has not already shown to those who live / Embodied longest.
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days! None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise.
The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
Quid est somnus gelid? nisi mortis imago?=--What is sleep but the image of cold death?
We must learn to live two lives--this short life here on earth with its joys and sorrows, and that true life beyond, of which this is only a fragment or an interruption. When we enter into that true life, we shall find what we cannot find here, we shall find what we have lost here. If only so many things did not seem so irregular, so unnatural. The death of young children before their parents. We love them better because we know we can lose them--that is true--but yet it is a hard lesson to learn.
Ipsa quidem virtus sibimet pulcherrima merces (Virtue herself is her own fairest reward).--SILIUS ITALICUS (25?-99): _Punica, lib. xiii. line 663._ The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hands on kings.
While man is growing, life is in decrease; And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb. Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
Would that loving Father begin such a work in us as is now going on, and then destroy it, leave it unfinished? No, what is will be; what really is in us will always be; we shall be because we are. Many things which are now will change, but what we really are we shall always be; and if love forms really part of our very life, that love, changed it may be, purified, sanctified, will be with us, and remain with us through that greatest change which we call death. The pangs of death will be the same for all that, just as the pangs of childbirth seem ordained by God in order to moderate the exceeding joy that a child is born into the world. And as the pain is forgotten when the child is born, so it will be after death--the joy will be commensurate to the sorrow. The sorrow is but the effort necessary to raise ourselves to that new and higher state of being, and without that supreme effort or agony, the new life that waits for us is beyond our horizon, beyond our conception. It is childish to try to anticipate, we cannot know anything about it; we are meant to be ignorant; even the _Divina Commedia_ of a great poet and thinker is but child's play, and nothing else.... No illusions, no anticipations; only that certainty, that quiet rest in God, that submissive expectation of the soul, which knows that all is good, all comes from God, all tends to God.
Hor? / Momento cita mors venit, aut victoria l?ta=--In a moment of time comes sudden death or joyful victory.
There is only one god and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: “Not today.
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
Who ran Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all.
Can storied urn or animated bust / Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? / Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust, / Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Judge before friendship, then confide till death, / Well for thy friend, but nobler far for thee.
When death is certain, it is best to sacrifice oneself for a good cause.
Defining philosophy as “an activity, attempting by means of discussion and reasoning, to make life happy,” he believed that happiness is gained through the achievement of moral self-sufficiency (autarkeia) and freedom from disturbance (ataraxia). The main obstacles to the goal of tranquillity of mind are our unnecessary fears and desires, and the only way to eliminate these is to study natural science. The most serious disturbances of all are fear of death, including fear of punishment after death, and fear of the gods. Scientific inquiry removes fear of death by showing that the mind and spirit are material and mortal, so that they cannot live on after we die: as Epicurus neatly and logically puts it: “Death…is nothing to us: when we exist, death is not present; and when death is present, we do not exist. Consequently it does not concern either the living or the dead, since for the living it is non-existent and the dead no longer exist” (Letter to Menoeceus 125). As for fear of the gods, that disappears when scientific investigation proves that the world was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, that the gods live outside the world and have no inclination or power to intervene in its affairs, and that irregular phenomena such as lightning, thunder, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes have natural causes and are not manifestations of divine anger. Every Epicurean would have agreed with Katisha in the Mikado when she sings: But to him who’s scientific There’s nothing that’s terrific In the falling of a flight of thunderbolts! So the study of natural science is the necessary means whereby the ethical end is attained. And that is its only justification: Epicurus is not interested in scientific knowledge for its own sake, as is clear from his statement that “if we were not disturbed by our suspicions concerning celestial phenomena, and by our fear that death concerns us, and also by our failure to understand the limits of pains and desires, we should have no need of natural science” (Principal Doctrines 11). Lucretius’ attitude is precisely the same as his master’s: all the scientific information in his poem is presented with the aim of removing the disturbances, especially fear of death and fear of the gods, that prevent the attainment of tranquillity of mind. It is very important for the reader of On the Nature of Things to bear this in mind all the time, particularly since the content of the work is predominantly scientific and no systematic exposition of Epicurean ethics is provided.25 Epicurus despised philosophers who do not make it their business to improve people’s moral condition: “Vain is the word of a philosopher by whom no human suffering is cured. For just as medicine is of no use if it fails to banish the diseases of the body, so philosophy is of no use if it fails to banish the suffering of the mind” (Usener fr. 221). It is evident that he would have condemned the majority of modern philosophers and scientists.
Man, forget not death, for death certainly forgets not thee.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the spirit= (of death, that is, and of life), =he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Contra malum mortis, non est medicamen in hortis=--Against the evil of death there is no remedy in the garden.
Knowledge by suffering entereth, / And life is perfected by death.
Trust in God! What He does is well done. What we are, we are through Him; what we suffer, we suffer through His will. We cannot conceive His wisdom, we cannot fathom His love; but we can trust with a trust stronger than all other trusts that He will not forsake us, when we cling to Him, and call on Him, as His Son Jesus Christ has taught us to call on Him, 'Our Father.' Though this earthly form of ours must perish, all that was good, and pure, and unselfish in us will live. Death has no power over what is of God within us. Death changes and purifies and perfects us, Death brings us nearer to God, where we shall meet again those that are God's, and love them with that godly love which can never perish.
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?
_Misery._--The one thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, yet this itself is the greatest of our miseries. For this it is which mainly hinders us from thinking of ourselves, and which insensibly destroys us. Without this we should be weary, and weariness would drive us to seek a more abiding way out of it. But diversion beguiles us and leads us insensibly onward to death.
It is the most painful work I know looking through the papers and other things belonging to one who is no more with us. How different everything looks to what it did before. There is one beautiful feature about death, it carries off all the small faults of the soul we loved, it makes us see the true littleness of little things, it takes away all the shadows, and only leaves the light. That is how it ought to be; and if in judging of a person we could only bring ourselves to think how we should judge of them if we saw them on the bed of death, how different life would be! We always judge in self-defence, and that makes our judgments so harsh. When they are gone how readily we forget and forgive everything, how truly we love all that was lovable in them, how we blame ourselves for our own littleness in minding this and that, and not simply and truly loving all that was good and bright and noble. How different life might be if we could all bring ourselves to be what we really are, good and loving, and could blow away the dust that somehow or other will fall on all of us. It is never too late to begin again.
The final preparation . . . for the inheriting of Eternal Life must consist in the abandonment of the non-eternal elements. These must be unloosed and dissociated from the higher elements, And this is effected by a closing catastrophe--Death. Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 248.
I believe that Jesus never complained but on this single occasion, but then he complained as if he could no longer restrain his extreme sorrow. "My soul is sorrowful, even unto death."
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Take this to heart: Owe no man anything. So shalt thou secure a peaceful sleep, an easy conscience, a life without inquietude, and a death without alarm.--VEN. LOUIS DE GRANADA.
Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.
For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.
I dreamt the past was never past redeeming: But whether this was false or honest dreaming I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.
Fraternite ou la Mort=--Fraternity or death. _The watchword of the first French Revolution. Fr._
We need no great elevation of soul to understand that here is no true and solid satisfaction, that all our pleasures are but vanity, our evils infinite, and lastly that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly and within a few years place us in the dread alternative of being for ever either annihilated or wretched.
It is the key of obedience that opens the door of paradise. Jesus Christ has confided that key to His vicar, the Pope, Christ on earth, whom all are obliged to obey even unto death.--ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA.
Verachtung ist der wahre Tod=--The true death is being treated with contempt.
The unworn spirit is strong; life is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in death.
Man makes a death which nature never made.--_Young._
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.
The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death.
He who has taken his stand, who has drawn a boundary line, sharp and deep, about his religious life, who has marked off all beyond as for ever forbidden ground to him, finds the yoke easy and the burden light. For this forbidden environment comes to be as if it were not. His faculties falling out of correspondence, slowly lose their sensibilities. And the balm of Death numbing his lower nature releases him for the scarce disturbed communion of a higher life. So even here to die is gain. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 199.
We don’t have to do anything at all to die. We can hide in a cupboard under the stairs our whole life and it’ll still find us. Death will show up wearing an invisible cloak and it will wave a magic wand and whisk us away when we least expect it. It will erase every trace of our existence on this earth and it will do all this work for free. It will ask for nothing in return. It will take a bow at our funeral and accept the accolades for a job well done and then it will disappear. Living is a little more complex.
IT WAS A FIGHT TO THE DEATH, and I felt great.
Without Jesus Christ man must be plunged in vice and misery; with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery, in him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from him is nought but vice and misery, error and darkness, death and despair.
L'art de vaincre est celui de mepriser la mort=--The art of conquering is that of despising death.
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death, / To break the shock blind Nature cannot shun, / And lands thought smoothly on the farther shore.
_Diversion._--Men, unable to remedy death, sorrow, and ignorance, determine, in order to make themselves happy, not to think on these things.
We do not picture the possessor of this carnal mind as in any sense a monster. We have said he may be high-toned, virtuous, and pure. The plant is not a monster because it is dead to the voice of the bird; nor is he a monster who is dead to the voice of God. The contention at present simply is that he is DEAD. Natural Law, Death, p. 159.
The sorrows of death compassed me.
Sometimes death is natural, a mercy that puts an end to suffering. But all too often it comes as an assassin, full of senseless cruelty and lacking any vestige of compassion.
The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development — whether psychological or material — one must pass on to the actual realization.
Instead of the piteous and frightful figure of Death, stepping whip to hand by the peasant's side in the field, ... place there a radiant angel, sowing with full hands the blessed grain in the smoking furrow.
Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
Oh, but I don't abide by your time frame, giant," Reyna said. "A Roman does not wait for death. She seeks it out, and meets it on her own terms.
Les haines sont si longues et si opiniatres, que le plus grand signe de mort dans un homme malade, c'est la reconciliation=--The passion of hatred is so long-lived and obstinate a malady, that the surest prognostic of death in a sick man is his desire for reconciliation.
And Daisy? I know you’re scared, but you are a brave, ballsy woman. You can handle anything. Remember that old John Wayne quote? Something along the lines of courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.
There's a whole industry of conservatives saying, "Ah, it's those damn liberals," and a whole group of liberals saying, "It's all those damn conservatives."
He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled,-- The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress, Before decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.
It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death
The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire.--_Thackeray._
Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.