With how little pride a Christian believes himself united to God, with how little abasement does he rank himself with the worms of earth. What a way is this to receive life and death, good and evil.
'T is not the whole of life to live, Nor all of death to die.
No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.
Unconsciousness belongs to pure unmixed life; consciousness, to a diseased mixture and conflict of life and death; unconsciousness is the sign of creation; consciousness, at best, that of manufacture. So deep, in this existence of ours, is the significance of mystery.
Night is the time to weep, To wet with unseen tears Those graves of memory where sleep The joys of other years.
I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty. There are some ten thousand religious sects — each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain — which doesn't strike me as something to lament. Accepting the essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of intransigent belief. And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why — which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive.
Christ's teaching is plainly that as He is the Son of God so we are His brothers. His conception of man is a new one, and as that is new, so must His conception of God be new. He lifts up humanity, and brings deity near to humanity, and He expresses their inseparable nature and their separate existences by the best simile which the world supplies, that of Father and Son. He claims no more for Himself than He claims for us. His only excellence is that which is due to Himself--His having been the first to find the Father, and become again His Son, and His having remained in life and death more one with the Father than any one of those who professed to believe in Him, and to follow His example.
Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.
Great men do not play stage tricks with the doctrines of life and death; only little men do that.
If we live on this earth only, if our thoughts are hemmed in by the narrow horizon of this life, then we lose indeed those whom death takes from us. But it is death itself which teaches us that there is a Beyond, we are lifted up and see a new world, far beyond what we had seen before. In that wide world we lead a new and larger life, a life which includes those we no longer see on earth, but whom we cannot surrender. The old Indian philosophers say that no one can find the truth whose heart is attached to his wife and children. No doubt perfect freedom from all affections would make life and death very easy. But may not the very love which we feel for those who belong to us, even when they are taken from us, bring light to our eyes, and make us see the truth that, by that very love, we belong to another world, and that from that world, however little we can here know about it, love will not be excluded. We believe what we desire--true--but why do we desire? Let us be ourselves, let us be what we are meant to be on earth, and trust to Him who made us what we are.
Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves by Jesus Christ alone. We know life and death by Jesus Christ alone. Apart from Jesus Christ we know not what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.
In a matter of life and death don't trust even your mother; she might mistake a black bean= (used in voting) =for a white one.
What a marvel life seems to be the older we grow! So far from becoming more intelligible, it becomes a greater wonder every day. One stands amazed, and everything seems so small--the little one can do so very small. One ought not to brood too much, when there is no chance of light, and yet how natural it is that one should brood over life and death, rather than on the little things of life.
You must accustom yourself more and more to the thought that here is not our abiding city, that all that we call ours here is only lent, not given us, and that if the sorrow for those we have lost remains the same, we must yet acknowledge with gratitude to God the great blessing of having enjoyed so many years with those whom He gave us, as parents, or children, or friends. One forgets so easily the happy years one has had with those who were the nearest to us. Even these years of happiness, however short they may have been, were only given us, we had not deserved them. I know well there is no comfort for this pain of parting: the wound always remains, but one learns to bear the pain, and learns to thank God for what He gave, for the beautiful memories of the past, and the yet more beautiful hope for the future. If a man has lent us anything for several years, and at last takes it back, he expects gratitude, not anger; and if God has more patience with our weakness than men have, yet murmurs and complaints for the life which He measured out for us as is best for us, are not what He expected from us. A spirit of resignation to God's will is our only comfort, the only relief under the trials God lays upon us, and with such a spirit the heaviest as well as the lightest trials of life are not only bearable, but useful, and gratitude to God and joy in life and death remain untroubled.
Beyond this vale of tears There is a life above, Unmeasured by the flight of years; And all that life is love.
Howbeit, this one thing, son, I assure you on my faith, that if the parties will at hands call for justice, then, all were it my father stood on the one side, and the devil on the other, his cause being good, the devil should have right. [To a son-in-law, reported by Nicholas Harpsfield in his The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More, Knight, Sometime Lord High Chancellor of England, Written in the Time of Queen Mary by Nicholas Harpsfield , in Roper & Harpsfield, Live of Saint Thomas More . London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1969, p. 83.]
half-done, n.: This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the difference between life and death. You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the man, "Let me have a nice half-done." Worth the trouble, wasn't it? -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
"Life and death are seldom logical." "But attaining a desired goal always is." -- McCoy and Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2821.7
The weariest and most loathed worldly life, / That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment / Can lay on nature, is a paradise / To what we fear of death.
Physical religion, beginning in a belief in agents behind the great phenomena of nature, reached its highest point when it had led the human mind to a belief in one Supreme Agent or God, whatever his name might be. It was supposed that this God could be implored by prayers and pleased by sacrifices. He was called the father of gods and men. Yet even in his highest conception, he was no more than what Cardinal Newman defined God to be. 'I mean by the Supreme Being,' he wrote, 'one who is simply self-dependent, and the only being who is such. I mean that he created all things out of nothing, and could destroy them as easily as he made them, and that, in consequence, he is separated from them by an abyss, and incommunicable in all his attributes.' This abyss separating God from man remains at the end of Physical Religion. It constitutes its inherent weakness. But this very weakness becomes in time a source of strength, for from it sprang a yearning for better things. Even the God of the Jews, in His unapproachable majesty, though He might be revered and loved by man during His life on earth, could receive, as it were, a temporary allegiance only, for 'the dead cannot praise God, neither any that go down into darkness!' God was immortal, a man was mortal; and Physical Religion could not throw a bridge over the abyss that separated the two. Real religion, however, requires more than a belief in God, it requires a belief in man also, and an intimate relation between God and man, at all events in a life to come. There is in man an irrepressible desire for continued existence. It shows itself in life in what we may call self-defence. It shows itself at the end of life and at the approach of death, in the hope of immortality.
"Not long ago in Petersburg a young man of eighteen, hardly more than a boy, who carried on a small business as a costermonger, went in broad daylight into a moneychanger's shop with an ax, and with extraordinary, typical audacity killed the master of the shop and carried off fifteen hundred roubles. Five hours later he was arrested, and, except fifteen roubles he had already managed to spend, the whole sum was found on him. Moreover, the shopman, on his return to the shop after the murder, informed the police not only of the exact sum stolen, but even of the notes and gold coins of which that sum was made up, and those very notes and coins were found on the criminal. This was followed by a full and genuine confession on the part of the murderer. That's what I call evidence, gentlemen of the jury! In that case I know, I see, I touch the money, and cannot deny its existence. Is it the same in the present case? And yet it is a question of life and death.
Mors janua vit?=--Death is the gate of life.
During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he spent after he was wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new principle of eternal love revealed to him, the more he unconsciously detached himself from earthly life. To love everything and everybody and always to sacrifice oneself for love meant not to love anyone, not to live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with that principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more completely he destroyed that dreadful barrier which--in the absence of such love-- stands between life and death. When during those first days he remembered that he would have to die, he said to himself: "Well, what of it? So much the better!"
One should never think of death. One should think of life: that is real piety.
The love of God is commanded in the whole of Deuteronomy, Deut. xxx. 19: "I call heaven and earth to witness that I have set before you death and life, that you may choose life, and that you may love God, and obey him, for God is your life."
There's no life that couldn't be immortal if only for a moment. Death always arrives by that very moment too late. In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door. As far as you've come can't be undone.
When all the blandishments of life are gone, / The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.
It will be a great consolation for us at the hour of death to know that we are to be judged by Him whom we have loved above all things during life.--ST. TERESA.
Ubi idem et maximus et honestissimus amor est, aliquando pr?stat morte jungi quam vita distrahi=--Where there exists the greatest and most honourable love, it is sometimes better to be joined in death than separated in life.
What we do for ourselves during life is more certain than all the good we expect others to do for us after death.--ST. GREGORY THE GREAT.
Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.
Every loss which we incur leaves behind it vexation in the memory, save the greatest loss of all, that is, death, which annihilates the memory, together with life.
Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.
And also the two worlds. The creation of a new heaven and a new earth, a new life, a new death, all things double, and the same names remaining.
"Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel friendship for you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and death. I say it with my hand on my heart!" said he, striking his chest.
God has taught us that death is not so terrible as it appears to most men--it is but a separation for a few short days, and then, too, eternity awaits us.
I want to break out — to leave this cycle of infection and death. I want to be taken in love: so taken that you and I, and death, and life, will be gathered inseparable, into the radiance of what we would become...
We watch'd her breathing through the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro.
Das Leben ist nur ein Moment, der Tod ist auch nur einer=--Life is but a moment, death also is but another.
The Image of Christ that is forming within us--that is life's one charge. Let every project stand aside for that. "Till Christ be formed," no man's work is finished, no religion crowned, no life has fulfilled its end. Is the infinite task begun? When, how, are we to be different? Time cannot change men. Death cannot change men. Christ can. Wherefore PUT ON CHRIST. The Changed Life, p. 62.
The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and death less terrible.
Sorrow is an enemy, but it carries a friend's message within it too. All life is as death; and the tree Igdrasil, which reaches up to heaven, goes down to the kingdom of hell; and God, the Everlasting Good and Just, is in it all.
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!
The great world for which we live seems to me as good as the little world in which we live, and I have never known why faith should fail, when everything, even pain and sorrow, is so wonderfully good and beautiful. All that we say to console ourselves on the death of those we loved, and who loved us, is hollow and false; the only true thing is rest and silence. We cannot understand, and therefore we must and can trust. There can be no mistake, no gap, in the world-poem to which we belong; and I believe that those stars which without their own contrivance have met, will meet again. How, where, when? God knows this, and that is enough.
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.
There are in the history of a man only three epochs, his birth, his life, and his death; he is not conscious of being born; he submits to die; and he forgets to live.
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.
Fortem posce animum mortis terrore carentem, / Qui spatium vit? extremum inter munera ponat / Natur?=--Pray for a strong soul free from the fear of death, which regards the final period of life among the gifts of Nature.
The pain of life but sweetens death; the hardest labor brings the soundest sleep.--_Albert Smith._
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
As long as God wills it we must learn to bear this life, but when He calls us we willingly close our eyes, for we know it is better for us there than here. When so many whom we loved are gone before us, we follow gladly; and the older we become here, the more one feels that death is a relief. And yet we can thankfully enjoy what is still left us on earth, even if our hearts no longer cling to it as formerly.
A useless life is an early death.
Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.
On entre et on crie, / Et voila la vie! / On crie et on sort, / Et voila la mort!=--We come and cry, and that is life; we cry and go, and that is death.
"I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle, with refined politeness; "I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter--_his_ daughter? We have lost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!"
As one gets older death seems hardly to make so wide a gap--a few years more or less, that is all--meantime we know in whose hands we all are, that life is very beautiful, but death has its beauty too.
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
I 'm weary of conjectures,--this must end 'em. Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me: This in a moment brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die. The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Le mort est le dernier trait du tableau de la vie=--Death is the finishing touch in the picture of life.
I had some great things and I had some bad things. The best and the worst... In other words, I had a life.
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 mysterious all this suffering is, particularly when it produces such prostration that it must lose all that elevating power which one knows suffering does exercise in many cases. It seems sometimes as if a large debt of suffering had to be paid off, and that some are chosen to pay a large, very large sum, so that others may go free. We have our own burden to bear, but it is a burden that seems to make other things easy to bear--it strengthens even when it seems to crush. But how could one bear that complete prostration of all powers which must make death seem so much preferable to life. And yet life goes on, and people care about a hundred little things, and break their hearts if they do not get them.
The life of a fool is worse than death.
Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents.
Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over; One thing unshaken stays: Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover; Whereby decays Each thing save one thing: — mid this strife diurnal Of hourly change begot, Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal, And changes not.
Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are, and what this life is for. At the center humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul.
Knowledge by suffering entereth, / And life is perfected by death.