Quotes about Dying

What good is life if you have no one to spend it with?

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

But when it really happens I'm very fascinated, I'm waiting for the moment, because the moment where life abandons you and death steps in, that moment must be fantastic, no?

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

I never have held death in contempt, though in the course of my explorations I have oftentimes felt that to meet one's fate on a noble mountain, or in the heart of a glacier, would be blessed as compared with death from disease, or from some shabby lowland accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure, set so glaringly open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel gratefully sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen lives.

On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death...Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

Die – you will have to die. But die gracefully. I am not saying die like a stoic, I am not saying die like a very controlled man. No, I'm saying die gracefully, beautifully, as if a friend is coming, knocks at your door, and you are happy. And you embrace the friend and invite him in, and you have been waiting for him so long....

If you can love death you become deathless; if you can understand non-being then your being becomes the very ground of being-hood, the very ground of God. If you can love non-being then nothing can destroy you, you have transcended time and space. Then you have become one with the total, and this is what holiness is – to become whole is to be holy.

Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" — and find that there is no death.

Men have all been culturally designed with conquest, killing, or dying in mind. Even sissies. Early in life a boy learns that he must be prepared to fight or be called a sissy, a girl. Many of the creative men I know were sissies. They were too sensitive, too compassionate, to fight. And most of them grew up feeling they were somehow inferior and flunked the manhood test. I suspect many writers are still showing the bullies on the block that the pen is mightier than the sword. The test shaped us, whether we passed or flunked.
We are all war-wounded.

I'm not afraid of death; but dying scares the hell out of me

     "It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It is the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance. It is the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give. And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live."

We only see what we really wanted to see,
And hear what we are dying to hear,
No one realizes that we hold this world
In our palms, being buried in this oblivion
Then this thought saves us from death,
and every misfortune that comes before it.

Born alone to escape thoughts conceived within a dying star.

The best that mankind ever knew:  
Freedom and life are earned by those alone  
Who conquer them each day anew.

What's the point in dying... if you haven't LIVED...?

Go ahead and do what you really love to do! Do nothing else! You have so little time. How can you think of wasting a moment doing something for a living you don’t like to do? What kind of a living is that? That is not a living, that is a dying!

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment,
and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations

If a man considers that he is born, he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body that is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find from where thoughts emerge. Then you will be able to abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death.

I shall becoming back to you
From seas, rivers, sunny meadows,
glens that hold secrets:
I shall come back with my hands full
Of light and flowers...
I shall bring back things I have picked up,
Traveling this road or the other,
Things found by the sea or in the pinewood.
There will be a pine-cone in my pocket,
Grains of pink sand between my fingers.
I shall tell you of a golden pheasant's
feather...
Will you know me?

A Life That Matters

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won't matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end. It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave. What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence, but your character. What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone. What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice. Choose to live a life that matters. It really matters!

There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same.  Only love.

There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same.  Only love.

You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like the seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

The Ship:  A Parable of Immortality

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.  She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes!'

Gone where?

Gone from my sight ... that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination.  Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, 'There she goes!' there are other eyes watching her coming and their voices ready to take up the glad shouts 'Here she comes!'

This is how I see and understand death.

If I'm not afraid of dying, what should I be afraid of?

When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed.  Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied.  Only those relationships matter.  The body is an old crock that nobody will miss.  I have never known a man to think of himself when dying.  Never.