The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity--and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive. -- Nietzsche, 75 Aphorisms
There is no cure for birth and death other than to enjoy the interval. -- George Santayana
...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings. -- Sogyal Rinpoche
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. -- Redd Foxx
Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy.'
Today is the last day of your life, so far.
A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin where he would go after he died.
Hakuin answered "How am I supposed to know?"
"How do you know? You're a Zen master!" exclaimed the samurai.
"Yes, but not a dead one," Hakuin answered. -- Zen mondo
Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. -- Francis Bacon
Do not seek death; death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment. -- Dag Hammarskjold
Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. -- Epicurus
A man is born gentle and weak.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.
Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.
-- Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching (76, trans. Gia-Fu Feng)
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. -- Irish saying (?)
Why did she have to go? ... I'm crying for me, not for her. ... Grannie's all right. She's gone to her Long Home. ... I'm so cold, ... It's not outside, it's winter inside. Cold as death. ... She was a part of me. Part of me died with her. -- Rebecca, about her grandmother (from: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks)
Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going --
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
-- Kozan Ichikyo
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