For men and women alike, this journey is a the trajectory between birth and death, a human life lived. No one escapes the adventure. We only work with it differently.

Natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own lives, or the care of others to preserve them, don't secure 'em a moment. This, divine providence and universal experience does also bear testimony to.

The present state is short and transitory; but our state in the other world, is everlasting.

He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.

A] right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.

So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.

Why should I fear death If I am, Death is not If death is, I am not Why should I fear that which could not exist when I do?

There is nothing dreadful in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.

It's a great thing learning how to die.

Death tends to change people's focus and priorities—at least for a time. After the war deaths of several Bonhoeffer cousins, the younger members of the family would often lie in bed at night and talk about death and eternity. Do you spend much time thinking about eternity? Should a person concentrate on life after death, or is it better to keep one's focus solely on this life and what can be accomplished now?

The whole of world history there is always only one really significant hour—the present...

Fundamentally we feel that we really belong to death already, and that every new day is a miracle.