A beautiful death is for people who have lived like animals to die like angels.
We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that
hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any
connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this
afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.
Boy, when you are dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell, when I do die, somebody
has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a
goddamn cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday and all
that crap. Who wants flowers when you are dead? Nobody.
But what is all this fear of and opposition to oblivion? What is the matter with the
soft darkness, the dreamless sleep?
Man dies of cold, not of darkness.
A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
Go away, I'm trying to die. . . I'm tired of the world, and the world is evidently tired
of me. . .
There's no such thing as death. Life is only a dream and we're the imagination of
ourselves.
Do you want to die tonight? With a life like yours you know it's only right.
If one cannot control his life, will he be driven to control his death?
Why dost thou fear thy last day? It contributes no more to thy death than does every other
day. The last step does not cause the lassitude: it declares it. All days journey toward death;
the last arrives there.
Everything she touches changes. Change is te essence of life, the nature of all reality.
Dawn breaks, and we change the world, and the world changes us. We dance the dance of daylight.
Night falls, and our conscious minds rest. But the life of the deep mind goes on: reliving,
integrating, dreaming, moving, and changing in realms shadowy to our waking selves, but nontheless
real. We dance the dance of darkness.
In like matter, we are born to dance the dance of life; but when that ends and out living
personas rest, the life of the spirit goes on in other realms. We dance the dance of death.
The human animal dances wildest on the edge of the grave.
No one dies for anything anymore. All the dying is done. I wouldn't die for Ireland or
the faith. I might die for my mother, but that's all.
Everyone dies, it just a matter of when.
The license said you had to stick around until I was dead. But if you're tired of
looking at my face, I guess I already am.
One morning when I was in the wood something happened which was nothing less than a
transformation of myself and the world, although I 'believed' nothing new. I was looking at a
great, spreading, bursting oak. The first tinge from the greenish yellow buds was just visible.
It seemed to be no longer a tree away from me and apart from me. The enclosing barriers of
consciousness were removed and the text came into my mind, Thou in me and I in thee.
The distinction of self and not-self was an illusion. I could feel the rising sap; in me also
sprang the fountain of life uprushing from its roots, and the joy of its outbreak at the extremity
of each twig right up to the summit was my own: that which kept me apart was nothing. I do not
argue; I cannot explain; it will be easy to prove me absurd, but nothing can shake me. Thou in me
and I in thee. Death! What is death? There is no death: in thee it is impossible, absurd.
He has lain down to die, and the grass is already over him.
Death plucks my ears and says, "Live - I am coming."
