Life and death

“ What had we to fear from dying? Had we not more to fear from living? At that came thought of my love and the tumult against life was quieted. I, too, like other mortals, had reason, the best of reason, to fear death. ”

“ Were death denied, poor man would live in vain;
Were death denied, to live would not be life;
Were death denied, even fools would wish to die.
Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign!
Spring from our fetters; fasten in the skies ”

“ Oh! for a thousand tongues to declare the truths which are now fast dawning upon my bewildered mind! Death, the great leveller, need have no more terrors for us, for it has been conquered by the Great Spirit, in giving us a never-ending life in the glorious spheres of immortal bliss. ”

“ Life like a moment passed seemed then to be;
⁠A transient dream this raiment that it wore;
While spelled my hand out its mortality
⁠Made certain all that had seemed doubt before:
Proved — O how vaguely, yet how lucidly! —
⁠How much death does; and yet can do no more. ”

“ What a solemn, quaking stride is the stride into eternity! What a difference between ideas of death in the days of health, and on the brink of the grave! And how shall I show myself worthy of longer life? By learning better to die. ”

“ After all, was it worth while to seek Death, when Death had already whispered that the little one was to be his own so soon, and had stealthily removed all but the last barriers that guarded her own poor life? ”

“ And Life replied:
“Sorrow, unceasing struggle, disappointment;
after these
Darkness and silence.” The Soul said unto Death:
“What dos thou offer me?” And Death replied:
“In the beginning what Life gives at last.”
Turning to Life: “And if I live and struggle?”
“Others shall live and struggle after thee
Counting it easier where thou hast passed.” ”

“ Was not death infinitely more lovely and noble than such a life? A life of barren routine, without inner meaning, without any real significance. How sordid life was, how it was a terrible shame to the soul, to live now! How much cleaner and more dignified to be dead! ”

“ Ah! ’tis on a tiny space of earth thou art creeping through life—a pigmy soul carrying a dead body to its grave.
“Let death put thee upon the consideration both of thy body and thy soul: what an atom of all matter hath been distributed to thee; what a little particle of the universal mind. Turn thy body about, and consider what thing it is, and that which old age, and lust, and the languor of disease can make of it. ”

“ If Fate so rules, that I should feel
The miseries of a widow's life,
Can man's device the doom repeal?
Unequal seems to be a strife,
Between Humanity and Fate;
None have on earth what they desire;
Death comes to all or soon or late ”

“ Mejnour, I see here, for the first time, how majestic and beauteous a thing is death! Of what sublime virtues we robbed ourselves, when, in the thirst for virtue, we attained the art by which we can refuse to die! When in some happy clime, where to breathe is to enjoy, the charnel-house swallows up the young and fair; when in the noble pursuit of knowledge, Death comes to the student, and shuts out the enchanted land which was opening to his gaze,—how natural for us to desire to live; how natural to make perpetual life the first object of research! ”

“ I had made but one step into paradise and a hidden duty compelled me to retrace it, and to enter upon a path the goal of which was Death!
Death has but few terrors for the crushed and broken spirit, but how heavy and icy is his hand when it grasps the heart which has just begun to live and revel in the joys of life. ”

“ If Death itself had passed by they would not have glanced after it with greater awe. For until then Death had been known unto the dead only and life unto the living and there had been no bridge between the twain. ”

“ If I read them rightly, I’ve told you only an old, old truth in saying that there should be no such word as death, or grief for it among the living. We’ve only to lift the veil of Death to see the face of Life—a wonderful, shining face with no pain in its smile. ”

“ Life is its state of action, and the store Of all events is aggregated there 545 That variegate the eternal universe; Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, That leads to azure isles and beaming skies And happy regions of eternal hope. Therefore, O Spirit! ”

“ What a strange thing it is—this balancing between death and life—standing on the edge of the grave, and turning, first to look into its approaching darkness, and then back on the familiar and pleasant world, yet with a certain downward progress, and no hope of life, beyond the day over your head! ”

“ Then, when body and soul are fitted for the change, there comes what ordinary mortals call death; and the pure being closes his eyes, to awake forthwith in his original glory from the sleep which mortals call life. ”

“ Must all men die? Can none at all escape death? Do rich men likewise die, and leave their riches for others? Do princes also fall and die like one of their people? Can you then escape it? You do not think so. You know death is as sure as if you felt it already: as if you was now gasping for life, sweating and trembling in those last pangs, till the soul started off from the quivering lips, into the boundless ocean of eternity.
2. And are you to be judged? How is this to be? Why, the Son of God shall come in his glory, and all his holy angels with him ”

“ Who can tell but that this which we call life is really death, from which what we call death is an awakening? From this vantage ground of thought the human soul comes to look without dread upon the termination of this terrestrial existence. ”

“ If death be death, have passed into the past;
If death be life, live, though their semblance dies.
Hope and high faith inviolate of distrust
Shone strong as life inviolate of the grave
Through each bright word and lineament serene. ”

“ There is no Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death. She is not dead,—the child of our affection,— But gone unto that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection, And Christ himself doth rule. ”

“ Now for the first time I am able to understand death as a natural process, and to comprehend the individual existence of the soul, its independence of the body and of life, its personality, its survival, and its obvious position in the universe. ”

“ At Fortune’s caprices, the whims of Chance,
To reflect that, if added, years will not,
Whatever the number, affect one jot
The accounts between life and death.
No strife
Can be, infinite Death with finite Life.
What that called “Death”? A sea beyond, before;
Boundless, everlasting; no port, no shore.
And “Life”? An accident. Whether at birth it fall,
Or in a thousand years, concerns not Death at all!
[121]
Earth’s Decay Bk. II. vv. 1145-1175
Ah! ”

“ Here the eternal problems grow,
And with each day are solved and done,
When some spent life, like melting snow,
Breathes forth its essence to the sun.
As death is, life is—without end;
Wrong with right mingles, joy with pain;
Forbid two meeting streams to blend,
'Twere not more hopeless, nor more vain.
Though Death with Life, though Wrong with Right,
Are bound within the scheme of things,
Yet can our souls, on soaring wings,
Gain to a loftier purer height,
Where death is not, nor any life,
Nor right nor wrong, nor joy nor pain ”

“ Even the worm begotten of death, springing from corruption, we name Life in matter; making Life a product of death and death a product of Life. When will the age awake to reason on being, as fairly as on other subjects. ”

“ Some men are daily dying; some die ere they have learned how to live; and some find their truest account in revealing the mysteries of both life and death,—even while they themselves perish in the act of revelation, as is most wonderfully done in the remarkable volume now before the reader,—as, alas! ”

“ For the very terror of death lies not in the sad accidents of mortality, the stiffened and corrupting form, the dim eye, the dreadful pageantry—over that we can triumph; but it is the blank cessation of all that we know of life, the silence of the mind that loved us, the irreparable wound. ”

“ I am almost ashamed to say, that I believe the souls of the dead in some way reënter and pervade the souls of the living: so that life is always the life of living creatures, and death is always our affair. ”

“ And, as we stand there, death seems a very little thing. What really matters is the life with its moral quality, its personal characteristics, its intense and vivid charm, its individual experiences, its personal story ”

“ In such a way Each human flees himself—a self in sooth, As happens, he by no means can escape; And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes, Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail. Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then, Leaving all else, he'd study to divine The nature of things, since here is in debate Eternal time and not the single hour, Mortal's estate in whatsoever remains After great death. And too, when all is said, What evil lust of life is this so great Subdues us to live, so dreadfully distraught In perils and alarms? one fixed end Of life abideth for mortality ”

“ How the death-thought sometimes springs like a beast of prey from its ambush upon youth when life is most intense and how it blights, sears, stings, and wounds but nevertheless charms and fascinates! Here is the first of all dualisms, the greatest of all contrasts, and the most universal of all conflicts. ”

“ Consequently, our paths do not meet; and I was wrong in sending you to mourn. They look on life as a huge tumour from which death sets them free. All the same they know not where they were before birth, nor where they will be after death. ”

“ Contact with death even in its least terrible shape, is solemn and appalling. How much more awful is it to reflect on this near vicinity to the dying—to men in full health and vigour, in the flower of youth or the prime of life, with all their faculties and perceptions as acute and perfect as your own ”

“ UPON DEATH. Strictly speaking, the sojourn which we make on earth, in the days of our flesh and which we call life, is rather death than life, since "every moment leads us from the cradle to the grave." ”

“ Death, which we contemplate as the King of Terrors, threatening us with his uplifted dart, and destined to drag us away from the stage of life, bright with its tawdry tinsel, and its garish splendour, came to her in softer and more kindly guise. ”

“ Who bid it welcome, and are glad when they can find the grave and see themselves stepping into it. If the miseries of this life can prevail, contrary to nature, to make death itself desirable, shall not much more the hopes and prospects of a better life, to which death is our passage, make it so, and set us quite above the fear of it? ”

“ Nature, that begat us, expels us, and a better and a safer place is provided for us. And what is death but a ceasing to be what we were before? ”

“ Life brought strife and bitterness,
Death brings kind forgetfulness:
Life brought never-ending woes,
Death brings endless calm repose;
Life was one long martyrdom,
Death all ills hath overcome ”

“ Is not the mighty mind, that son of heaven!
By tyrant life dethroned, imprison’d, pain’d?
By death enlarged, ennobled, deified? 457
Death but entombs the body; life the soul. ”

“ Then we have (not to dwell on a matter already spoken of) a peculiar privilege in the peculiar{205} loveliness which the image of Death assumes to us. In our long leisure, all sweet and soothing associations of rest,—of relief from anxiety and wearing thought,—of re-entrance upon society,— (a society how sanctified!) —of the realisation of our best conceptions of what is holy, noble, and perfect,—all affections, all aspirations gather round the idea of Death, till it recurs at all our best moments, and becomes an abiding thought of peace and joy. ”

“ and the more I live, the more I dread death, even while I abhor life. Such an enigma is man--born to perish--when he wars, as I do, against the established laws of his nature. ”

“ And here 'tis observable how the same act of man is made the condition both of his life and death: ‘put forth thy hand and pull and eat and die,’ or ‘put forth thy hand and pull and eat and live for ever.’ 'Tis not to be conceived that there was any physical virtues in either of these Trees whereby to cause life or death ”

“ Chuse any life, but the life of God and heaven, and you chuse death; for death is nothing else but the loss of the life of God. The creatures of this world have but one life, and that is the life of this world: this is their one life, and one good. Eternal beings have but one life, and one good ”

“ Diogenes.
Read it.
Plato. (reads.)
"Sayest thou not that death is the opposite of life, and that they spring the one from the other?" "Yes." "What springs then from the living?" "The dead." "And what from the dead?" "The living." "Then all things alive spring from the dead." ”

“ Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. ”

“ As, at the approach of death, the powers of the mind rally, and the mortal, faint and feeble, with but a few sparks of decaying life within him, arouses to a sense of his condition, and puts forth all his energies, to meet the hour of parting with earth and turning his face to heaven ”

“ Some of their solutions of the problem, though dressed out in all the beauty of exquisite language and poetic imagery, singularly resemble the rude guesses of savages. So little, it would seem, do the natural powers even of the greatest minds avail to pierce the thick veil that hides the end of life.
The problem of death is one of universal interest. ”