Quotes & Sayings About A Good Person Dying

I felt like I was a good woman, a good person. But I was sinking deeper and deeper into depression, because my soul wasn't living. I was purposely holding down my soul and my spirit. It was dying inside of me. — Evangeline Lilly

The cousin was one of those bodies, one of those deaths Gareth tried to keep faceless. The torture of Narvel dying in his arms had been enough. A tired, bitter huff slipped from his lips. "So the lieutenant didn't punish his cousin and now all the colony suffers. When is everyone going to understand that one man's sacrifice is enough?" "They barely accepted one man's sacrifice in Galilee on an old rugged cross. How could they ever weigh the good that can come from realizing no person was more important than the rest? — Vanessa Riley

He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back neatly from the impact of the axe. The cardinal when he fell had no persecutor more relentless than Thomas More. Yet, he thinks, I did not hate him. I exercised my skills to the utmost to persuade him to reconcile with the king. And I thought I would win him, I really thought I would, for he was tenacious of the world, tenacious of his person, and had a good deal to live for. In the end he was his own murderer. He wrote and wrote and he talked and talked, then suddenly at a stroke he cancelled himself. If ever a man came close to beheading himself, Thomas More was that man. — Hilary Mantel

do you know what a dying declaration is?" I didn't, although I gave it a shot. "It's a declaration made by someone who is dying?" "It is a term of law," he said. "If a man whispers the name of his killer and then dies, it's considered good evidence because there's a belief - an understanding - that a person who is dying would not want to die with a lie upon his lips. No sin could be greater than a sin that cannot be rectified, the sin you never get to confess. — Allen Eskens

Since the moment when, at the sight of his beloved and dying brother, Levin for the first time looked at the questions of life and death in the light of the new convictions, as he called them, which between the ages of twenty and thirty-four had imperceptibly replaced the beliefs of his childhood and youth, he had been less horrified by death than by life without the least knowledge of whence it came, what it is for, why, and what it is, Organisms, their destruction, the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy, development - the terms that had superseded these beliefs - were very useful for mental purposes; but they gave no guidance for life, and Levin suddenly felt like a person who has exchanged a thick fur coat for a muslin garment and who, being out in the frost for the first time, becomes clearly convinced, not by arguments, but with the whole of his being, that he is as good as naked and that he must inevitably perish miserably. — Leo Tolstoy

Can you think of an older adult who hates their career? They may be good at it and it makes them a lot of money at it, but the passion is not there. This person's lack of passion will eventually begin to erode the quality of their work. These are the types of people who get laid off first. A wise person will pay attention to their passions as they progress in their career. If they feel the fire dying, then it is time to begin training for a new career or a shift within the career. — Michael G. Johnson

It's not that I'm a very good person. It's that I think I should at least look at the ways in which I am not a good person, the ways in which I so readily become the person who would not notice that the wonderful clothing I'm wearing someone is probably dying for. — Jamaica Kincaid

There is no single best kind of death. A good death is one that is "appropriate" for that person. It is a death in which the hand of the way of dying slips easily into the glove of the act itself. It is in character, ego-syntonic. It, the death, fits the person. It is a death that one might choose if it were realistically possible for one to choose one's own death. — Edwin S. Shneidman

That's the business model. How quickly can they be made to grow, how tightly can they be packed, how much or little can they eat, how sick can they get without dying. This isn't animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating ... Why doesn't a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it? It's easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it ... How riveting wold the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Fretting makes us important. Say you're an adult male and you're skipping down the street whistling "Last Train to Clarksville." People will call you a fool. But lean over to the person next to you on a subway and say, "How can you smile when innocents are dying in Tibet?" You'll acquire a reputation for great seriousness and also more room to sit down.
...Being gloomy is easier than being cheerful. Anybody can say "I've got cancer" and get a rise out of a crowd. But how many of us can do five minutes of good stand-up comedy? — P. J. O'Rourke

I wanted so much to live. I wanted so much to stay and not to leave. In a moment no answer would matter to me, but just the same, I wanted to know what I guess any dying person wants to know.
"Answer this, Ellimist: Did I . . . did I make a difference? My life, and my . . . my death . . . was I worth it? Did my life really matter?"
"Yes," he said. "You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered."
"Yeah. Okay, then. Okay, then. — K.A. Applegate

How much of the "good death" is for the person dying and how much for the person helping him? — Sherwin B. Nuland

A person who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he or she ought only to consider whether in doing anything he or she is doing right or wrong- acting the part of a good person or a bad person. — Plato

I loathed being sixty-four, and I will hate being sixty-five. I don't let on about such things in person; in person, I am cheerful and Pollyannaish. But the honest truth is that it's sad to be over sixty. The long shadows are everywhere - friends dying and battling illness. A miasma of melancholy hangs there, forcing you to deal with the fact that your life, however happy and successful, has been full of disappointments and mistakes, little ones and big ones. There are dreams that are never quite going to come true, ambitions that will never quite be realized. There are, in short, regrets. Edith Piaf was famous for singing a song called "Non, je ne regrette rien." It's a good song. I know what she meant. I can get into it; I can make a case that I regret nothing. After all, most of my mistakes turned out to be things I survived, or turned into funny stories, or, on occasion, even made money from. But — Nora Ephron

There is a very good organization called "Make a Wish Foundation" that helps make a dying child's wishes come true.
People go out of their way and work together to create an unbelievable lasting memory for a deserving person.
What just dawned on me was:
Why do we wait until someone is dying in order to do that?
We have the opportunity to do this everyday for many, many, many people over our lifetime.
It doesn't have to be a really big wish, small wishes add up fast.
Imagine how much better the world would be if we all granted each other small wishes that came true every day.
Find someone today and implement the "Make a Wish" concept in your life.
Watch what happens. — JohnA Passaro

Did ya get in a couple of good swipes?" Emmett asked eagerly.
"No! Of course not!"
"No, not really? You really didnt attack him?"
"Emmett!" I protested.
"Aw, what a waste. And here you're probably the one person who could take him- since he can't get into your head to cheat- and you had a perfect excuse too. I've been dying to see how he'd do without that advantage. — Stephenie Meyer