Quotes about Death
Death. The end of sense-perception, of being controlled by our emotions, of mental activity, of enslavement to our bodies.
— Marcus Aurelius
Fear of death is fear of what we may experience. Nothing at all, or something quite new. But if we experience nothing, we can experience nothing bad. And if our experience changes, then our existence will change with it—change, but not cease.
— Marcus Aurelius
Let death surprise rue when it will, and where it will, I may be a happy man, nevertheless. For he is a happy man, who in his lifetime dealeth unto himself a happy lot and portion. A happy lot and portion is, good inclinations of the soul, good desires, good actions.
— Marcus Aurelius
Death is such as generation is, a mystery of nature; a composition out of the same elements, and a decomposition into the same;
— Marcus Aurelius
Consider each individual thing you do and ask yourself whether to lose it through death makes death itself any cause for fear.
— Marcus Aurelius
When near his death, being asked by the tribune for the watchword, he said, Go to the rising sun, for I am setting.
— Marcus Aurelius
Did not he, then, who, if he had died at that time, would have died in all his glory, owe all the great and terrible misfortunes into which he subsequently fell to the prolongation of his life at that time?
— Cicero
Immortality,' said Crake, ' is a concept. If you take 'mortality' as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then 'immortality' is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal. Edit out the fear, and you'll be...
— Margaret Atwood
All Creatures know that some must die That all the rest may take and eat; Sooner or later, all transform Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat. But Man alone seeks Vengefulness, And writes his abstract Laws on stone; For this false Justice he has made, He tortures limb and crushes bone. Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? Oh, if Revenge did move the stars Instead of Love, they would not shine.
— Margaret Atwood
Anything that suffers and dies instead of us is Christ; if they didn't kill birds and fish they would have killed us. The animals die that we may live, they are substitute people, hunters in the fall killing the deer, that is Christ also. And we eat them, out of cans or otherwise; we are eaters of death, dead Christ-flesh resurrecting inside us, granting us life. Canned Spam, canned Jesus, even the plants must be Christ.
— Margaret Atwood
A great fear came over me, and my body went entirely cold, and I stood as if paralyzed with fear; for I knew that the horse was no earthly horse, but the pale horse that will be sent at the Day of Reckoning, and the rider of it is Death; and it was Death himself who stood behind me, with his arms wrapped around me as tight as iron bands, and his lipless mouth kissing my neck as if in love. But as well as the horror, I also felt a strange longing.
— Margaret Atwood
Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say.
— Margaret Atwood