Dying declaration

“ The ante-mortem statement, or dying declaration made in view of death, by one injured, as to the cause and manner of the injury, is often receivable in evidence against one charged with causing the death. ”

“ I know it's the custom for scientific people to say that the resignation of the dying is merely part of the general sinking and so is just physical; but they can't prove that. Else why should persons who are condemned to death be just as much resigned to it as the sick and even more exalted? ”

“ I have witnessed many a death bed scene, and have seen the departing spirit cheered and encouraged by the hope of an eternal and happy life; but I have never seen nor heard of an instance where the most devoted advocate of the doctrine of a literal resurrection attempted to use that doctrine for the purpose of consoling or encouraging a dying man. In the halls of religious controversy, this doctrine may be magnified into a question of immense importance; but in the hour of death, and especially from the chamber where the good man dies, it withdraws and stands rebuked. ”

“ You are choosing death where you can choose life, and that is suicide if anything is! Doctor Pieri knows well enough what a good priest would say, and so do I, who have been a nurse for a quarter of a century! If the injury were internal, and if there were a real risk to your life in operating, you would have the right, the moral right, to choose between the danger of dying under ether and the comparative certainty of dying of the injury. ”

“ The victims who were killed at the death of the king, princes, and distinguished chiefs, and were buried with their remains, belonged to the lowest class of society. In certain families the obligation of dying with the different members of such or such a noble house was hereditary, so that at the birth of a child it was known at whose death he must be sacrificed. ”

“ The facts are matter of history: the people died like rotted sheep; and the cause and method of their dying was, in their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died frightened out of their lives, as men have died whose pardon has been proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief that they were going to die? ”

“ But such an implication cannot be allowed to prevail against the express words of the act, which include all estates to which a person should become beneficially entitled upon the death of any person dying after the passage of the act. ”

“ The dead have got a voice, then—a voice that cries to God, that cries for vengeance against those who injure them. Pay, then, thy debts to the dead. Redeem the promise thou hast made to the dying. Fulfil thy duties as an executor or administrator with fidelity and justice. Be exact. It is a dead man thou art dealing with. Do not say, he is dead and cannot speak. Hear what the Law of God saith: "Thou shalt not speak evil of the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind: but thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, because I am the Lord." ”

“ And so in this sense of the words, this exitus mortis, the issue of death, is liberatio in morte, A deliverance in death; Not that God will deliver us from dying, but that hee will have a care of us in the houre of death, of what kinde soever our passage be. ”

“ The laws in all countries have entered into these views; they have so far been willing to console their citizens for the necessity of dying, by giving them the means of exercising their will, even for a long time after their death: this condescension goes to that length, that the dead frequently regulate the condition of the living during a long series of years.
Every thing serves to prove the desire in man of surviving himself. Pyramids, mausoleums, monuments, epitaphs, all shew that he is willing to prolong his existence even beyond his decease. ”

“ My lord, will a dying man be denied the legal privilege of exculpating himself, in the eyes of the community, of an undeserved reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with ambition, and attempting to cast away, for a paltry consideration, the liberties of his country? Why did your lordship insult me? or rather why insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be pronounced? I know, my lord, that form prescribes that you should ask the question ”

“ The little account that appears to have been at any time made of the feelings of the labouring classes, and the burial after dissection, of the poor dying in hospitals, without funereal rites, the almost total omission of any marks of sympathy or respect towards their remains,—cannot but have a most demoralizing effect on the survivors. ”

“ The automatic closing of a dying man's lips on the consecrated wafer proves nothing in favor of the Real Presence, or any other doctrine. And, speaking generally, the evidence of dying men in favor of any belief is to be received with great caution. ”

“ It had lived and died, even as human beings die, as everything dies. If he knelt, cried, prayed that it come to life again—if he threatened, gnashed his teeth—the enormous emptiness would have remained silent, for it will never give up that which has fallen into its hands. Did ever tears or sobs bring a dead man back to life? There is no forgiveness, no mercy, no return—such is the law of cruel death. ”

“ WHATEVER death may be to the dead, to the living it always means a loss. The enforcement of its inexorable decrees reaches humanity in every corner of the globe; and the hearts of all who live bear in painful scars the sad record of its visitations. The widow and the fatherless are always with us ”

“ And I hereby declare I had rather suffer any death the law can inflict. I deem death infinitely preferable to a life of infamy. But the death I suffer for my King gives me vast consolation and honour that I am thought worthy of it. ”

“ Death is a commitment to the prison of the Grave till the Judgement of the Great Day; and then the grand Habeas Corpus will issue to the Earth and to the Sea, to give up their dead: to remove the Bodies, with the cause of their commitment. ”

“ In the admirable liturgy of the churches of England and of Rome, there is a fervent prayer for protection against “battle, murder, and sudden death.” From death uncontemplated, unarranged, unprepared for, may Heaven in mercy deliver us! But if ever ready, as we should be for the inevitable event, the most kindly mode of infliction must surely be that which is most prompt and brief. To die unconsciously, as in sleep, or by apoplexy, or lightning, or overwhelming violence, as in the catastrophe of the Princeton, this is the true Euthanasia. ”

“ SUICIDE, or the killing of one's self, when one's own death is the direct and immediate object of the will, is forbidden by the Fifth Commandment and is grievously sinful. It is the same when death is not the direct object of the will, if some act is done of which the only immediate effect is the destruction of one's own life ”

“ Should reanimation be given the cachet of legal approval during the forthcoming Congressional hearings, then it is clear that a testament forbidding reanimation will reach beyond the grave to bind the dead man's survivors, counsel, and physicians in a conspiracy to abet suicide. ”

“ It is while living that death possesses its sting and anguish. Anyone that seeks tribute from the dying, or from the living for [Pg 71] services on behalf of the dead, is a damnable moral scoundrel and a cunning rascal. ”

“ For, indeed, a glorious death in defence of and for the sake of the preservation of our laws, is a kind of life. "But, indeed, if no advantage is derived from our death, would it not be insanity to perish in addition to what we now have to endure, and this too, while we appear to be ambassadors, so that the calamity appears rather to affect those who have sent us than those who remain? ”

“ Yes, and for your own sake, and for the sake of us old murderers of the years long dead, let as many old things as will die with it. I don't say bury anything alive—that's not my prescription; but ease their righteous death and give them a grave they'll stay in. ”

“ The expressions, he shall die, he shall be cut off from the people, which are so often used in the Mosaic law, embrace three very different significations, which we are accustomed to confound. They indicate the suffering of death as a punishment, civil death, and that premature death, with which an individual is naturally threatened, who departs from those rules which are useful to the nation and to the individual himself. Civil death is the last degree of separation, or excommunication; it is pronounced, as a judicial punishment, by the assembly of the judges. ”

“ You have been like some poor people I have read of in the late storm, buried under the ruins of your own edifice, but whether you were stifled or crushed, killed by a rafter or a brick, nobody can tell. You have died a death so ignoble that it has no name, and the Coroner's verdict is "Found Dead." ”

“ His departure it was meant to hide from the Rittmeisterinn; but the unusual ringing of funeral peals carried his swan-song to her heart; and gradually set the curfew-bell of her life into similar movement. Age and sufferings had already marked out the first incisions for Death, so that he required but little effort to cut her down; for it is with men as with trees, they are notched long before felling, that their life-sap may exude. The second stroke of apoplexy was soon followed by the last; it is strange that Death, like criminal courts, cites the apoplectic thrice. ”

“ Have you ever seen a man that has escaped from the first death? or who had any prospect of it? No; you cannot find a remedy to hinder him from going down to his grave. Has there been any escape for any individual for 6000 years past? Now, if the Lord has been punctual to make every man, woman, and child, suffer the penalty of the first transgression, why should you suppose that you can stand in His presence, and behold the glory of His power, and have everlasting life and happiness, when He has told you that you should be banished therefrom, that the second death should be inflicted upon you? ”

“ Q Since the President strongly supports the death penalty for many who do not want to die or who might be innocent, will he also support death for those who, being terminally ill, yearn to die and ask for a physician's help in death, just as they do a physician's help in birth? ”

“ What sin is it to destroy one's own life, or commit suicide, as this act is called? A. It is a mortal sin to destroy one's own life or commit suicide, as this act is called, and persons who wilfully and knowingly commit such an act die in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of Christian burial. It is also wrong to expose one's self unnecessarily to the danger of death by rash or foolhardy feats of daring. ”

“ If the penalty of the original sin be the eternal separation of body and spirit, how can justice have all its demands, and mercy be shown to the transgressor? There is a way, and how? It is by the introduction of His Only Begotten Son, the Son of His own bosom, the first-born of every creature, holding the birthright over every creation He has made, and holding the keys of salvation over millions of worlds like this; he has a right to come forth and suffer the penalty of death for the fallen sons and daughters of man. ”

“ But no law, of man or nature, can prevent the disgusting effects, and mortifying casualties, and misconstructions of power, which have arisen, and will forever continue to arise, from the miserable practice of burying the dead, in tombs. ”

“ The hastening of death is the voluntary termination of life; and the voluntary termination of life is suicide.
If, then, the fact that death is near and inevitable does not make the voluntary termination of life anything less than suicide, may not the applicability of that word depend upon the motive which prompts such voluntary termination? ”

“ Thereupon Judge Medicine sat in judgment on the case, and substantially charged the jury, twelve Mortal Minds, to find the prisoner Guilty. His Honor sentenced Mortal Man to die for those deeds which the divine law compels him to commit. Thus the lower court construed obedience to the law of Love as disobedience to the law of Life. Claiming to protect a Mortal Man in right-doing, the court pronounced a sentence of death for doing right. ”

“ Yeah, he said that, according to the state law, if a coroner lives more'n twenty miles from the place where a dead body is found, the nearest Justice of the Peace can make the inquisition, as they call it. ”

“ I see a large number of you assembled here, to behold a miserable end of us whom the Law condemns to death for our offence, and for the sake of giving you warning, makes us in our last moments, public spectacles. I submit with the utmost resignation to the stroke of the Law, and I heartily pray Almighty God that the sight of my shameful death, may inspire every one of you with lasting resolutions of leading an honest life. The facts for which both Picken and I die were really committed by us, and consequently the sentence under which we suffer, is very just. ”

“ There are provisions ordained from before the foundation of the world, which take into consideration all these cases; namely, that all the human family who have died without the law or between the dispensations, when there was no divine authority on the earth, shall have a proper chance, by the living acting for the dead ”

“ But what shall we say of him who takes the life which is dearest to him, that is to say, his own; and this not from any disgrace or calamity, but from cowardice and indolence? The manner of his burial and the purification of his crime is a matter for God and the interpreters to decide and for his kinsmen to execute. Let him, at any rate, be buried alone in some uncultivated and nameless spot, and be without name or monument. If a beast kill a man, not in a public contest, let it be prosecuted for murder, and after condemnation slain and cast without the border. ”