A Little While To Die Quotes & Sayings

God forbid that Americans earning, say, more than $1 million a year be asked to pony up a little more in taxes to support a larger military at a time when, we are told over and over, the country is in the middle of a war on terror. Millionaires can't be asked to sacrifice even just a little bit. No, they deserve to have their taxes cut while others fight and die. — E. J. Dionne

Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die
die, sweetly die
into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

So when I watch trains, it makes me think about how much movement there is in the world. How every train has dozens of cars and every car has hundreds of parts, and all those parts and cars work day after day. And then there are all these other motions. People are born and die. Seasons change. Rivers flow to the sea. Earth circles the sun and the moon circles Earth. Everything whirring and spinning toward something. And I get to be part of it for a little while, the way I get to watch a train for a minute or two, and then it's gone. — Jeff Zentner

--Your headache--


I am trying to imagine it
Your head is in your hands
The nurse is pouring pills onto a plate
November again
Too late

Your headache
It is a bird
Wounded, in leaves

Its sweet bird's nest is full of pain in a distant place

November
There are daisies
In the ruined garden, still blooming strangely

And in a manic yellow hat, the old lady

And the old man, dead in his bed

And their daughter, the saint:

Her dark, religious hair gets tangled in the branches
She is screaming, grabbing

While the nurses play Mozart in another room
While the bats fly over the roof
Snatch the black notes from the blackness
Laughing

You cry
I am going to die

I can see them through this window

Their little black capes

The touching ugliness of their little faces — Laura Kasischke

Then there are all of those children, the ones who aren't resilient. The ones who slowly, quietly die. I think the difference is that the kids who bounce back learn to bear a little bit more than they thought they could, and they soon understand that the secret to surviving foster care is to accept finite disappointments while never losing infinite hope. I think that was how Donald survived as long as he did, by never losing his faith in the wish that tomorrow would be better. But as time went by, day after day, the tomorrows never got better; they got worse, and he simply gave up. In the way he saw the world, pain was inevitable, but no one ever explained to him that suffering was optional. — John William Tuohy

all of us were here for a little while, and then we were somewhere else; we were not alive at all; we approached living, but we never achieved it. We are going to die. Everybody was going to die. — John Fante

My dog," he said, "just barks and plays -has all he wants to eat. He never works- has no trouble about business. In a little while he dies, and that is all. I work with all my strength. I have no time to play. I have trouble every day. In a little while I will die, and then I go to hell. I wish that I had been a dog. — Robert G. Ingersoll

A little while ago I visited Omaha Beach for the second time in my life. In the intervening 26 years, nearly 20,000 tides had come and gone and little remains visible of the greatest military landing in man's history of endless warring. What's to be seen is mostly in a superb museum and a panoramic cemetery. The cemetery memorializes with dignity and grandeur the event and the dead, and moves one deeply. Before they die less precipitously and/or in lesser purpose, Americans who can should visit World War II's Normandy Beach. Such seeing and remembering helps a man's perspective. — Malcolm Forbes

I must do what I can to make myself intelligible to you. Our natures, however, are so different, that this may not be easy. Men and women live but to die; we, that is such as I-we are but a few-live to live on. Old age is to you a horror; to me it is a dear desire: the older we grow, the nearer we are to our perfection. Your perfection is a poor thing, comes soon, and lasts but a little while; ours is a ceaseless ripening. I am not yet ripe, and have lived thousands of your years-how many, I never cared to note. The everlasting will not be measured. — George MacDonald

And I'm suppose to sit by while you date boys and fall in love with someone else, get married ... ?" His voice tightened. "And meanwhile, I'll die a little bit more every day, watching. — Cassandra Clare

Most people don't discover what life is all about until just before they die. While we are young, we spend our days striving and keeping up with social expectations. We are so busy chasing life's big pleasures that we miss out on the little ones, like dancing barefoot in a park on a rainy day with our kids or planting a rose garden or watching the sun come up. We live in an age where we have conquered the highest of mountains but have yet to master our selves. We have taller buildings but shorter tempers, more possessions but less happiness, fuller minds but emptier lives. Do not wait until you are on your deathbed to realize the meaning of life and the precious role you have to play within it. — Robin S. Sharma

I think when people die, their souls go to heaven but just for a little while. Like that's where they see their old friends and stuff, and kind of catch up on old times. But then I actually think the souls start thinking about their lives on earth, like if they were good or bad or whatever. And then they get born again as brand-new babies in the world. — R.J. Palacio

Mari began to suspect that this reflection was going to prove to be like that little computer paperclip assistant
at first it helps, but after a while you just want the paperclip to die. — Kresley Cole

She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, "Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die - die, sweetly die - into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit."
And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu

But really, anybody could die any day, whether you were ready or not. It could be your pet fish or your sister or you. Nothing is the same forever. Maybe all the people on Earth are God's little pet fish. God lives such a long time that people's lives probably seem really short to him. He watches them swim for a little while, and then they stop swimming. — Suzanne LaFleur

People who raise dogs to fight should be shot. Men who steal a little girl's dog to bait a fighting dog should die the slowest, most torturous death possible. Their skin should be separated from their flesh with an air hose through minute slits and then have water from the Salton Sea injected slowly into the cavities while someone rips off strips of duct tape from their balls. But that's just off the top of my head. — Rhys Ford

[What's exciting is] the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there's now a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it's time to die, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There's only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it. — Isaac Asimov

You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over; You hearken to the lover's say, And happy is the lover. 'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever. — A.E. Housman

In the day I can smile though I wanna die / Hold on, hold on / I can keep it together for a little while / and be strong, so strong / But when the sun goes down and I'm all alone / I haven't the strength to fight / That's when my tears give in to the night — Kim Wilde

The women at Dachau knew they were about to be gassed when they pushed back the Nazi guard who wanted to die with them, saying he must live. And sang for a little while after the doors closed. — Jack Gilbert

By speaking the truth, we learn the difference between our authentic self and our facade. If we put our little masked self out there, the horror is that other people might accept and end up making love to it, while we starve and die of neglect behind it. It's much richer to interact genuinely with the world. When you speak the truth, it feeds and brightens your Spirit. When you don't, it dims your Spirit. Don't you want to live in a way that brightens your Spirit? To take a deep breath and feel what's rocketing and roiling around in your core? What a delight! — Ana T. Forrest

Alarm clocks were going off in the city now. One after another, sometimes two or three together, they drove their small silver knives into the body of the great dream that sprawled naked on the housetops. Sensual, amiable, and defenseless as it was, it would still take a little while to die. — Peter S. Beagle

What I love most about nature is how indifferent it is to us humans and human suffering. While we are here with our little or big tragedies - the wind is blowing, the leaves are rustling in the trees, the flowers bloom, and die - there's a great comfort in that indifference, — Valzhyna Mort

Love equals a morbid and relentless fear of losing the other person. It's a freak-accident fear, a piece of space junk falling from the sky and obliterating him, leaving nothing but his smoking boots. It's the unfortunate-organ-defect fear - suddenly, on his thirtieth birthday, the little crack in his heart that's been there since birth will rear its ugly head and take him in his sleep while he's spooning you. It's the only way to know you're really in love, when you ask the question would it be harder to watch him die, or to know he'll watch me die? Is there more mercy in being the one who does the watching or in being the one who does the dying? It's when you realize what mercy-killing actually means, it's when you actually care to the point of tormenting worry. It's not roses and white horses, it's fucking brutal and it can send a person running for the hills. To love is brave and Will was the bravest person I knew. — Renee Carlino

A four-year-old says, "My mommy lives in heaven. Her eyelashes go down instead of up because she is ... in heaven, but I miss her." She feels consoled that her mother "is with God," who, she says, "has pink whiskers, red hair, and two feet. ... I did not want her to die until I died. I think I am going to die too in a little while. — Jonathan Kozol

The dead in Nigeria are always waking up. When somebody dies there, they only seem to die for a little while, — Precious Williams

He pondered that a little while and then he asked, do Black people have to pay for their doctors, too? Because that's what TV programs had said. I smiled a little at this and told him it's not only Black people who have to pay for doctors and medical care; all people in America have to. Ah, he said. And suppose you don't have the money to pay? Well, I said, if you don't have the money to pay, sometimes you died. And there was no mistaking my gesture, even though he had to wait for the translator to translate it. We left him looking absolutely nonplussed, standing in the middle of the square with his mouth open and his hand under his chin staring after me, as in utter amazement that human beings could die from lack of medical care. It's things like that that keep me dreaming about Russia long after I've returned. — Audre Lorde

Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart - if you have one - you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. — Mark Twain

He kept fighting. If you didn't have something to live for, he reasoned, you'd die. Not just to live for, but to live toward. He thought for a little while he'd live for someone else - a — Leslie Parry

Watching Limelight with my mother really brought home to me the brevity of life. I realized in a little while that I would die and leave everything behind. Unlike vain people, I had the ability to think this right through. I had no difficulty in picturing full theatres and cinemas long after myself was gone. Not everybody can do that. Many are so intoxicated with sensual impressions that they're not able to grasp that there is a world out there. And therefore they're not able to comprehend the opposite either - they don't understand that one day the world will end. We, however, are only a few missing heartbeats away from being divorced from humanity forever. — Jostein Gaarder

She glanced pointedly at the flopping tadpole.
"What?"
"Take it back."
"You're kidding, right?" he said disbelievingly.
"Do we have time?"
He considered that. "Yes, but
"
"Then, no I'm not."
"That lake was three hops ago," he said impatiently.
"If you don't take it back it's going to die, and while you may think it's just a pathetic little thing with an abbreviated little life that hardly even signifies in the fairy scheme of things, I'll bet in the tadpole scheme of things it's really looking forward to becoming a frog. Now take it back. A life is a life. I don't care how tiny an almighty fairy thinks it is."
One dark brow arched and he inclined his head. "Yes, Gabrielle." Scooping up the tadpole in one big hand, gently enough that it gave her pause, he popped out.
-Gabrielle and Adam Black — Karen Marie Moning

You are so high in the tree.
If you jump
you will live a full life
while falling.
You will get married
to a hummingbird
and raise beautiful part-
hummingbirds.
You will die of cancer
in mid-air.
I will not lie. It will be painful.
You are a brave little boy
or girl. — Zachary Schomburg

A little downy girl still wearing poppies
still eating popcorn in the colored gloam
where tawny Indians took paid croppers
because you stole her
from her wax-browed and dignified protector
spitting into his heavy-lidded eye
ripping his flavid toga and at dawn
leaving the hog to roll upon his new discomfort
the awfulness of love and violets
remorse despair while you
took a dull doll to pieces
and threw its head away
because of all you did
because of all I did not
you have to die — Vladimir Nabokov

Even you, the person asking the question. 'I'm useless' is the answer you give yourself. Soon that answer will poison you and you will die while still alive, even though you still walk, eat, sleep and try to have a little fun whenever possible. Don't try to be useful. Try to be yourself: that is enough, and that makes all the difference. — Paulo Coelho

Come here, he said. Rebeca obeyed. She stopped beside the hammock in an icy sweat, feeling knots forming in her intestines, while Jose Arcadio stroked her ankle with the tips of his fingers, then her calves, then her thighs, murmuring: Oh, little sister, little sister. She had to make a supernatural effort not to die when a startlingly regulated cyclonic power lifted her up by the waist and despoiled her of her intimacy with 3 slashes of its claws and quartered her like a little bird. She managed to thank God for having been born before she lost herself in the inconcievable pleasure of that unbearable pain ... — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If Shirley were not an indolent, a reckless, an ignorant being, she would take a pen at such moments, or at least while the recollection of such moments was yet fresh on her spirit. She would seize, she would fix the apparition, tell the vision revealed. Had she a little more of the organ of acquisitiveness in her head, a little more of the love of property in her nature, she would take a good-sized sheet of paper and write plainly out, in her own queer but clear and legible hand, the story that has been narrated, the song that has been sung to her, and thus possess what she was enabled to create. But indolent she is, reckless she is, and most ignorant; for she does not know her dreams are rare, her feelings peculiar. She does not know, has never known, and will die without knowing, the full value of that spring whose bright fresh bubbling in her heart keeps it green. — Charlotte Bronte

First commandment: there ain't no such thing as "one true way" and the way you find is only good for you, not anybody else, because your interpretation of what you see and feel and understand as the truth is never going to be the same as anyone else's.
Second commandment: the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself.
Third commandment: leave the world better than you found it.
Fourth commandment: if it isn't true, going to do some good, or spread a little love around, don't say it, do it, or think it.
Fifth commandment: there are only three things worth living for; love in all it's manifestations, freedom, and the chance to keep humanity going a little while longer. They're the same things worth dying for. And if you aren't willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race. — Mercedes Lackey

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that. — E.B. White

So know this name. Shout it back at the enemy when he attacks. Comfort yourself and others with it. When the bills pile up and the money isn't there to pay them, Jehovah Shammah! When your spouse leaves you and the loneliness surrounds like a fog, Jehovah Shammah! When affliction strikes and the pain is so intense you think you will die, Jehovah Shammah! When you weep silently in the midnight hour over things you cannot tell your family or friends, Jehovah Shammah! And when the final hour of this life comes, and the darkness of death closes in around you, look for the light. In just a little while, you will stand face to face with Jehovah Shammah, The Lord who is there. — Terri Lynn Main

Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, It's a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man's life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness. — John Steinbeck

You ever wonder what happens to people when they die?" I asked. He shrugged. "Not really. I mean, I guess they go to heaven? That's where my Grans went." "I think about it a lot," I said. "I think when people die, their souls go to heaven but just for a little while. Like that's where they see their old friends and stuff, and kind of catch up on old times. But then I actually think the souls start thinking about their lives on earth, like if they were good or bad or whatever. And then they get born again as brand-new babies in the world." "Why would they want to do that?" "Because then they get another chance to get it right," I answered. "Their souls get a chance to have a do-over. — R.J. Palacio

I opened my mouth to tell her that nothing could kill me, not now, but she said, 'Not kill you. Destroy you. Dissolve you. You wouldn't die in here, nothing ever dies in here, but if you stayed here for too long, after a while just a little of you would exist everywhere, all spread out. And that's not a good thing. Never enough of you all together in one place, so there wouldn't be anything left that would think of itself as an "I." No point of view any longer, because you'd be an infinite sequence of views and points ... — Neil Gaiman