Children Who Die Quotes & Sayings

God have mercy on my soul. Sometimes I wish they'd all just die. My friend and his mother and his father and my aunt and all the neighbors and passers-by and drivers who leave their cars parked by the river and even the poor innocent children who run around in the park beside the river. God have pity on my soul and make me better. Or unmake me. — Roberto Bolano

The way I see Jesus has not changed much at all since I was a child, but my imprisonment and all that followed made me love Him even more. His being the Son of God makes sense to me, because I believe God to be loving, just, forgiving, and merciful. I also believe that He respects free will. After all, He has given it to us so that we can choose to love or hate Him, do good or evil. But is it fair for a loving God to sit on His throne in Heaven and let us struggle and suffer on our own? Would any good father abandon His children this way? It makes perfect sense to me that God decided to come among us, live like us, and die a horribly painful death after being tortured. This is a God I can love with all my heart. A God who sets an example. A God who has bled and whose heart has been broken. This is who Jesus is to me. I don't pretend that I understand the Holy Trinity. But I understand love and sacrifice. I understand faithfulness. — Marina Nemat

What I do know is that I can't hurt a ghost. I wish I could fall in love with Ann Stuart. I wish I could wed her and bed her and have children with her. I wish I could fill that huge house with little spirit children who would live forever and never die. — Jude Deveraux

it is a law of nature; their fathers died before them, and they mourned their loss; they will die before their children, who will, in their turn, grieve for them. — Alexandre Dumas

Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If our poor die of hunger, it is not because God does not care for them. Rather, it is because neither you nor I are generous enough. It is because we are not instruments of love in the hands of God. We do not recognize Christ when once again He appears to us in the hungry man, in the lonely woman, in the child who is looking for a place to get warm. — Mother Teresa

Christmas is about the coming of the Son of Man who "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." These words in Mark 10:45, as a brief expression of Christmas, are what I hope God will fix in your mind and heart this Advent. Open your heart to receive the best present imaginable: Jesus giving himself to die for you and to serve you all the rest of eternity. Receive this. Turn away from self-help and sin. Become like little children. Trust him. Trust him. Trust him with your life. — John Piper

You're welcome in my house when this is over. We'll open a cask of Master al'Vere's best brandy. We'll remember those who fell, and we'll tell our children how we stood when the clouds turned black and the world started to die. We'll tell them we stood shoulder to shoulder, and there was just no space for the Shadow to squeeze through. — Robert Jordan

Beloved, we join hands here to pray for gin. An aridity defiles us. Our innards thirst for the juice of juniper. Something must be done. The drought threatens to destroy us. Surely, God who let manna fall from the heavens so that the holy children of Israel might eat, will not let the equally holy children of Niggeratti Manor die from the want of a little gin. Children, let us pray. — Wallace Thurman

There has been enough suffering in our country, there has been enough of children whose dreams die before they have a chance to grow and there has been enough of our elders who, having served their nation, are forced into indignity in their old age. — John Agyekum Kufuor

Children playing at war. Children who don't deserve to die, but are too foolish to live. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Room 101" said the officer.
The man's face, already very pale, turned a color Winston would not have believed possible. It was definitely, unmistakably, a shade of green.
"Do anything to me!" he yelled. "You've been starving me for weeks. Finish it off and let me die. Shoot me. Hang me. Sentence me to twenty-five years. Is there somebody else you want me to give away? Just say who it is and I'll tell you anything you want. I don't care who it is or what you do to them. I've got a wife and three children. The biggest of them isn't six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and watch it. But not room 101!"
"Room 101" said the officer. — George Orwell

Though this new forest grew mightily, elsewhere the mighty jungles fell. Elsewhere the coastal rain forests that furred the body of the world were torn and riven. Elsewhere the last of the old growth the last of the world's own garment were ripped away. It was in this time, now, that the mother of us all was stripped naked and left to die in shame of her children, she who had been robed in glory like this, adorned like this. I bent my head upon the roots and wept, sorrowing for the trees. — Sheri S. Tepper

And maybe then when they were all a family, Tommy would be able to see what Mary used to see, what his other children saw, not just a man who would kill for them but a man who would die for them ... the man underneath it all. — Genevieve Dewey

If you could read some of the stories that we had before us of parents of children dying of, let's say, bone cancer. Or people who dealt with family members drowning in their own bodies, in the end, suffering without any hope of modern medical science easing their pain or offering any comfort. With the absolute knowledge that they were going to die anyway. I can't quite comprehend how we could want those people to continue to suffer that extreme agony on the understanding that it is the will of a creator or some other philosophical concept. — Kelvin Ogilvie

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

I am Captain Iron and I will use my powers only for good, never for evil.
I will fight injustice wherever I find it.
I will help those who cannot help themselves.
I am a spirit of justice and I am a spirit of vengeance and I will kick the ass of the unrighteous.
I will be gentle, for the world is hard and I will be caring, for the world is harsh and I will be strong and I will endure pain and I will die bravely and I will make it all better again.
So that the children will never have to look up in pain and wonder why they lost so much.
Why so many had to die.
Why they are still even alive because ...
because no one should ever have to ask that question. — J. Michael Straczynski

Daniel observed her from afar, and tried in vain to conceal the hunger in his eyes. She showed none of the disdain against the Indians that he had encountered from whites back east. Aimee was genuinely warm and friendly with these people who were like family to him. She obviously loved children. She played games with the younger ones, and each time she held Elk Runner's infant in her arms, a new wave of desire spread through him. He tried not to think about what it would be like to see her holding a child, their child, in her arms. That could never happen. His white mother had died in this wilderness, giving birth to him. No matter how she dressed, or her abilities on the trail, Aimee was still a white woman. Like a beautiful spring flower, she would wither and die in these mountains. Neither lasted long in this harsh environment. — Peggy L. Henderson

She would go home and marry a man who owned carpet shops, and she would bear his children, and he would take other women to nightclubs, and she would get old and die and hope for better luck next time around. — Nick Hornby

I have a fear of nuclear annihilation. I'm a child of the cold war: I didn't live more than 10 miles from a major WarPac nuclear target until the Berlin Wall came down and the CW ended. Knowing you can die horribly at any moment because of decisions made by alien intelligences thousands of miles away who don't even know you exist - there's something Lovecraftian about that, isn't there? — Charles Stross

Ye have lost a child
nay, she is not lost to you, who is found to Christ; she is not sent away, but only sent before; like unto a star, which going out of our sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere. — Samuel Rutherford

I have a room, which is in my brain, and it's very, very, very ... untidy! There is stuff fallen everywhere. There are some very important ideas next to dome very silly ones. There is a bottle of wine that was opened five years ago, and there is a lunch I haven't eaten from last summer. There are faces of children who are going to die but don't have to. There's my fathers face telling me to tidy up my room. So that's what I'm doing - tidying my room. — Bono

For millions of girls around the world, motherhood comes too early. Those who bear children as adolescents suffer higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and their children are more likely to die in infancy. — Esther Duflo

What would it be like really and absolutely to believe? ( ... ) To know, really and absolutely know, that there's a Divine Being not set in time or space who reads your thoughts better than you ever did, and probably before you even have them? To believe that God sends you to war, God bends the path of bullets, decides which of his children will die, or have their legs blown off, or make a few hundred million on Wall Street, depending on today's Grand Design? (ch. 14) — John Le Carre

I hear very little from evangelicals about the impact of gun proliferation on violent crime, much less an issue like nuclear disarmament. I hear almost nothing about health care for the poor and protecting widows and orphans, both biblical mandates, and scant mention of the thirteen million children who die worldwide from malnutrition in a year. I hear scornful dismissal of concerns about global warming, an issue viewed seriously by the vast majority of scientists. I hear talk about family values, but when an administration proposed legislation to allow mothers to take unpaid leave after childbirth, conservative religious groups opposed it. — Philip Yancey

If anything, I believe that when I die, I will have to stand in front of all the children who went to bed hungry while I was on earth and read aloud a list of my eBay purchases. I shudder to think of it. Explaining to a poor child with a swollen belly why I didn't give his village fifty cents a week but spent twenty-seven dollars in a bidding war for a Mars Attacks coffee cup. — Dana Gould

I tell my grandchildren that confidence wins battles. I do not wish them to fight, I would rather make Ieremias's world a reality and so live in harmony, but there is always some man, and it is usually a man, who looks with envy on our fields, who wants our home, who thinks his rancid god is better than ours, who will come with flame and sword and steel to take what we have built and make it his, and if we are not ready to fight, if we have not spent those tedious hours learning the craft of sword and shield and spear and seax, then that man will win and we will die. Our children will be slaves, our wives whores, and our cattle slaughtered. So we must fight, and the man who fights with confidence wins. — Bernard Cornwell

To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there — Friedrich Nietzsche

Who would not shudder if he were given the choice of eternal death or life again as a child ? Who would not choose to die ? — Saint Augustine

Can we really believe that we are living a good life, an ethically decent life if we don't do anything serious to help reduce poverty around the world and help save the lives of children or adults who are likely to die if we don't increase the amount of aid we are giving. — Peter Singer

She gathered a circle of children around her and commenced singing 'For Those Who Peril on the Sea' over their little heads. But no, 'safety from storms' wasn't enough for her. God had to keep them from being blown up too. She set about ordering the poor things to pray for their parents every night- who knew what the German soldiers might do to them? Then she said to be especially good little boys and girls so Mama and Daddy could look down on them from heaven and BE PROUD OF THEM ... she had those children crying and sobbing fit to die.
I was too shocked to move, but no, not Elizabeth. No, quick as an adder's tongue, she had ahold of Adelaide's arm and told her to SHUT UP.
'Let me go!' Adelaide cried. 'I am speaking the Word of God!'
Elizabeth, she got a look on her that would turn the devil to stone, and then she slapped Adelaide right across the face! — Mary Ann Shaffer

Wars are indeed fought by children, by young people who have little to say in where they are sent to die. — Jeff Shaara

When a plane crashes and some die while others live, a skeptic calls into question God's moral character, saying that he has chosen some to live and others to die on a whim; yet you say it is your moral right to choose whether the child within you should live or die. Does that not sound odd to you? When God decides who should live or die, he is immoral. When you decide who should live or die, it's your moral right. — Ravi Zacharias

Desire animates the world. It is present in the baby crying for milk, the girl struggling to solve a math problem, the woman running to meet her lover and later deciding to have children, and the old woman, hunched over her walker, moving down the hall of the nursing home at a glacial pace to pick up her mail. Banish desire from the world, and you get a world of frozen beings who have no reason to live and no reason to die. — William Braxton Irvine

Children who die young are some of our greatest teachers. We are allowed to die when we have taught what we came to teach and when we have learned what we came to learn. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It was the stuff of legends, the Highland Rising of 1745 in support of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Sebastian had heard the stories, too, from his grandmother, Hendon's mother, who had been a Grant from Glenmoriston. Stories of unarmed clansmen dragged out of crofts and slaughtered before their screaming children. Of women and children burned alive, or turned out of their villages to die in the snow. What was done to the Highlanders after Culloden would forever be a dark stain on the English soul. Everything from the pipes to the plaids to the Gaelic language itself had been forbidden, obliterating an entire culture. — C.S. Harris

God forbid that all children, of whom daily so great a multitude die, would perish, but that also for these, the merciful God, who wishes no one to perish, has procured some remedy unto salvation ... — Pope Innocent III

Dogs are the kids we've always wanted. They're totally devoted and want to live with you until they die. Not like children who can't wait to take off as soon as they grow up and don't need you anymore. — Jonathan Carroll

What does hanging on a cross for twenty-four hours mean to a man who has no children,' I said, 'especially when he knows he's dying for a good cause -- indeed, that he's saving the whole world and then going straight into the best place in Heaven? What's that compared to the suffering I've had to put up with for months and years with the house full of children, when for many whole nights I've shrieked with pain unceasingly and without relief, and I'll soon be dead, and that without having anything to die for; and there'll be no heavenly Kingdom for me, for I know the children will go on crying when I'm dead, and swearing and quarrelling, and begging for milk they can't get. — Halldor Laxness

I read used books because fingerprint-smudged and dog-eared pages are heavier on the eye. Because every book can belong to many lives. Books should be kept in public places and step out with passersby who'll onto them for a spell. Books should die like people, consumed by aches and pains, infected, drowning off a bridge together with the suicides, poked into a potbellied stove, torn apart by children to make paper boats. They should die of anything, in other words, except boredom, as private property condemned to a life sentence on a shelf. — Erri De Luca

As far as I can see it, anyone who has a problem with what guys do over there is incapable of empathy. People want America to have a certain image when we fight. Yet I would guess if someone were shooting at them and they had to hold their family members while they bled out against an enemy who hid behind their children, played dead only to throw a grenade as they got closer, and who had no qualms about sending their toddler to die from a grenade from which they personally pulled the pin ... they would be less concerned with playing nicely. — Chris Kyle

First we die, the woman says. "Then our bodies are buried. So we die two deaths." "Then in another world, folded inside the living world, we wait. We wait until everyone who knew us when we were children has died. And then the last of them dies, we finally die our third death. — Anthony Doerr

I believe in God. But I do not believe the same things about Him that I did years ago, when I was growing up or when I was a theological student. I recognize His limitations. He is limited in what He can do by laws of nature and by the evolution of human nature and human moral freedom. I no longer hold God responsible for illnesses, accidents, and natural disasters, because I realize that I gain little and I lose so much when I blame God for those things. I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it, more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die, for whatever exalted reason.
Some years ago, when the "death of God" theology was a fad, I remember seeing a bumper sticker that read "My God is not dead; sorry about yours." I guess my bumper sticker reads "My God is not cruel; sorry about yours. — Harold S. Kushner

Well, the reality of her father was that he was a very diseased alcoholic, who died at the age of 34. And one always has to pause to wonder how much you have to drink to die at 34. And he was a really tragic father. I mean, he was absolutely unreliable. He was absolutely involved with various people. He had outside families, outside children, outside wives. He made his wife's life miserable. And she [Eleanor Roosevelt]ignored all of his faults and retained this sense of him as the perfect father. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, they all cry out "Here comes Captain Smith!" So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner. — Howard Zinn

it's a long lane that has no turning," "the weariest day draws to an end," etc., seemed false and vain sayings, so long and so weary was the pressure of the terrible times. Deeper and deeper still sank the poor. It showed how much lingering suffering it takes to kill men, that so few (in comparison) died during those times. But remember! we only miss those who do men's work in their humble sphere; the aged, the feeble, the children, when they die, are hardly noted by the world; and yet to many hearts, their deaths make a blank which long years will never fill up. Remember, too, that though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does NOT take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies. The — Elizabeth Gaskell

Who can stop influenza and tuberculosis? The wealth of high society cannot buy off this evil, for their bored children die alongside everyone else. — Margie Bayer

Today's righteous cause is religion. The gods are paying attention, after all. Wanting you to die in their name. Why? To prove your loyalty, of course. And what of their loyalty, you might wonder? Has your god blessed you and your life? Answered your every prayer? Given proof of its omnipotence? Where is this god's loyalty to you? Not loyal enough to spare your life which you give in its name. Not loyal enough to steer you past tragedy and grief, loss and misery. Not loyal enough to save your loved ones. Or the children who had to die as proof of that selfsame loyalty. No, today the sack is filled with religion. Tomorrow it will be something else. The joy lies in beating it. 'Poor — Steven Erikson

How do you help anyone die? I read with amazement the stories of people who reached a certain point of illness or of age and decided it was time to die. It seems the height of both courage and cruelty. Courage because anything so counterintuitive takes courage. And cruelty because it leaves your children wondering if they did something wrong. There's no act you can initiate that doesn't involve other people. We are all interwoven. Even the most rational suicide may come as a blow to someone else. — Erica Jong

Old One," the tenant said apologetically. "It is none of my business and I ought to die, but after all they are the children of your elder brother's son who after all is the first in the next generation after you. — Pearl S. Buck

It will begin with the six who now tread the streets of a city where the stone pinnacle erects like a reed amongst long grass. Where a bridge expands across a gorge, drifts a cloud buzzing with a million stings. There, these six shall bleed. There, these six shall die, and like a plague shall spread the wings that carry the cloud till they consume the city, and with it, the strength that fuels all of your lives. Farewell, children of the new world, and may your deaths be swift. — Najeev Raj Nadarajah

Elliot Leighton spoke up. "The existence of fool's gold does not mean there isn't real gold in the mountains, Mr. Picotte. And the existence of hypocrites who misuse religion for themselves does not mean there isn't a God in heaven who loves His children and sent His Son to die for them." He stood up and stretched. "Never confuse professing Christians with Christ, Mr. Picotte. The former will disappoint you every time. Christ never will. — Stephanie Grace Whitson

You are twenty. You are not dead, although you were dead. The girl who died. And was resurrected. Children. Witches. Magic. Symbols. Remember the illogic of the fantasy. The strange tableau in the closet behind the bathroom: the feast, the beast, and the jelly-bean. Recall, remember: please do not die again. Let there be continuity at least - a core of consistency - even if your philosophy must be always a moving dynamic dialectic. The thesis is the easy time, the happy time. The antithesis threatens annihilation. The synthesis is the consummate problem. — Sylvia Plath

I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life. — Tony Kushner

Out there is a manlike machine who thinks he's a hero. Who thinks he can save the world. A man who calls himself Computerface." A gigantic buzz saw emerged from Adam Prime's chest, heading directly toward the center of the school bus. "And Computerface couldn't possibly watch all these innocent children die!"
"Do something, Harry!" Uterus screamed. — Kevin Strange

The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world - God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts - fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems - all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone, all suffering ends. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

No one in this world can starve n die.. One who does, had died much before then ... Never give money to beggars and specially children on street ... By giving them money, Either u would be killing them or helping them in dieing (indirectly) ... — Honeya

The children of Birmingham did not really die in the State of Alabama, however, because Alabama is a state of mind, and in the minds of the [white] men who rule Alabama, those children had never lived [ ... ] their blood is on so many hands, that history will weep in the telling ... and it is not new blood. It is old, so very old. — Roger Ebert

Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach. We honor anniversaries of deaths by cleaning graves and sitting next to them before fires, sharing food with those who will not eat again. We raise children and tell them other things about who they can be and what they are worth: to us, everything. We love each other fiercely, while we live and after we die. We survive; we are savages. — Jesmyn Ward

Life is a risk, who knows this better than me? Who knows more surely that babies die easily, that children fall ill from the least cause, that royal blood is fatally weak, that death walks behind my family like a faithful black hound? — Philippa Gregory

Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can say about it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide and seek and think that no one can see them. — Sogyal Rinpoche

There are few things in life as precious to us as our children. Rare is the woman or the man who wouldn't readily die for his or her offspring. — Debra Webb

People are paralyzed on a football field. People die. You just never know when it's going to be your last moment. I was the kind of guy who would never talk to my wife on game day. Now I'm the guy who's like, 'I love you.' I want my children to know I love them because I don't know what's going to happen out there. — Troy Polamalu

Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly 10 million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases such as measles, diarrhoea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent. — Peter Singer

And they both began to laugh over nothing as children will when they are happy together. And they laughed so that in the end they were making as much noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old creatures - instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly boy who believed that he was going to die. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

I remember there was this one lady shaman who said that having children puts a hole in your soul. And the only way to get it back is for your children to die. And, you know, monks don't have families. — Larkin Grimm

It's true that when it's time to go, someone will be waiting for you. It might be a relative or a loved one, but not always. It could be a dog, hanging out with a tennis ball and ready to play again. Sometimes, when children die, they don't know any of their relatives who are on the other side, so they'll have an angel or even maybe a cartoon character or Santa Claus waiting to pull them across that bridge. It's just a manifestation of energy saying, "Come on, baby, it's okay. — Jodi Picoult

It could be that everyone who lives to adulthood dies one hit at a time. Only children like Stan die suddenly. — Ernie Wood

I should like,' said the child, 'to leave my dear love to poor Oliver Twist; and to let him know how often I have sat by myself and cried to think of his wandering about in the dark nights with nobody to help him. And I should like to tell him,' said the child pressing his small hands together, and speaking with great fervour, 'that I was glad to die when I was very young; for, perhaps, if I had lived to be a man, and had grown old, my little sister who is in Heaven, might forget me, or be unlike me; and it would be so much happier if we were both children there together. — Charles Dickens

A lot of people die giving birth to their children who have AIDS and HIV and a lot of people don't survive after a time because they've been sick too. — Lucy Liu

And when I die all the memories of my own life will go to the grave with me, God willing, and Dick will never have to look back at them. And his children will never even know what my life was like. They'll know nothing of grinding stones and being hungry and ashamed all day and being beaten by a teacher who couldn't write himself and being sure you kept your mind so empty that you had no thoughts at all. And that's what I've done for them, that's my gift to them and to all their children ever after, so don't talk to me about being hard. — Sebastian Faulks

Every minute of every day, a child under 15 is infected with HIV - the overwhelming majority of children under 15 who are HIV-positive get infected through their mothers at birth. Without treatment, half of these children die before they reach their second birthday. — Gabriel Byrne

Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities,' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die! — John Cage

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God's sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil's gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die ... Woman, you are the gate to hell. — Tertullian

Could she give Doro what he wanted - what she herself had wanted for so long - children who would not die? — Octavia E. Butler

I drink because I don't stand a chance and I know it. I couldn't drive a truck and I couldn't get on the cops with my build. I got to sling beer and sing when I just want to sing. I drink because I got responsibilities that I can't handle ... I am not a happy man. I got a wife and children and I don't happen to be a hard-working man. I never wanted a family ... Yes, your mother works hard. I love my wife and I love my children. But shouldn't a man have a better life? Maybe someday it will be that the Unions will arrange for a man to work and to have time for himself too. But that won't be in my time. Now, it's work hard all the time or be a bum ... no in-between. When I die, nobody will remember me for long. No one will say, "He was a man who loved his family and believed in the Union." All they will say is," Too bad. But he was nothing but a drunk no matter which way you look at it." Yes they'll say that. — Betty Smith

When gods die, self-respect buds', murmured Orland Fank. 'Gods and their examples are not needed by those who respect themselves and, consequently, respect others. Gods are for children, for little, fearful people, for those who would have no responsibility to themselves or their fellows. — Michael Moorcock

Those who die young, they are cheated," she said. "Not cheated out of life, because life is a penance, but the young, they're cheated because they don't know it's coming. They don't have time to move closer, to return home. When you know you're going to die, you try to be near the bones of your own people. You don't even think you have bones when you're young, even when you break them, you don't believe you have them. But when you're old, they start reminding you they're there. They start turning to dust on you, even as you're walking here and there, going from place to place. And this is when you crave to be near the bones of your own people. My children never felt this. They had to look death in the face, even before they knew what it was. Just like you did, no? — Edwidge Danticat

This humble person has been alive long enough to see two generations of children grow up, and knows how rare it is for ordinary birds to give birth to a swan. The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way into the world. — Arthur Golden

A mother experiences more than one death, even though she herself will only die once. She fears for her husband; she fears for her children; again she fears for the women and children who belong to her children ... For each of these-whether for loss of possessions, bodily illness, or undesired misfortune-she mourns and grieves no less than those who suffer. — Saint John Chrysostom

Napoleon said men will die for bits of ribbon pinned to their chests, but the General understands that even more men will die for a man who remembered their names, as he does theirs. When he inspects them, he walks among them, eats with them, calls them by their names and asks about wives, children, girlfriends, hometowns. All anyone ever wants is to be recognized and remembered. Neither is possible without the other. This desire drives these busboys, waiters, janitors, gardeners, mechanics, night guards, and welfare beneficiaries to save enough money to buy themselves uniforms, boots, and guns, to want to be men again. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

The situation with regard to insulin is particularly clear. In many parts of the world diabetic children still die from lack of this hormone ... [T]hose of us who search for new biological facts and for new and better therapeutic weapons should appreciate that one of the central problems of the world is the more equitable distribution and use of the medical and nutritional advances which have already been established. The observations which I have recently made in parts of Africa and South America have brought this fact very forcible to my attention. — Charles Herbert Best

Hence a commander who advances without any thought of winning personal fame and withdraws in spite of certain punishment, whose only concern is to protect his people and promote the interests of his ruler, is the nation's treasure. Because he fusses over his men as if they were infants, they will accompany him into the deepest valleys; because he fusses over his men as if they were his own beloved sons, they will die by his side. If he is generous with them and yet they do not do as he tells them, if he loves them and yet they do not obey his commands, if he is so undisciplined with them that he cannot bring them into proper order, they will be like spoiled children who can be put to no good use at all. — Sun Tzu

You are an individual, and you came here on your own as a child, and you will die on your own. The fact that you may live in a community or with your family does not change the solitude of your spiritual journey. By cluttering your life with many things, you soon lose sight of who you are and what you came for. — Stuart Wilde

Most of us are painfully aware that we're not perfect parents. We're also deeply grieved that we don't have perfect kids. But the remedy to our mutual imperfections isn't more law, even if it seems to produce tidy or polite children. Christian children (and their parents) don't need to learn to be "nice." They need death and resurrection and a Savior who has gone before them as a faithful high priest, who was a child himself, and who lived and died perfectly in their place. They need a Savior who extends the offer of complete forgiveness, total righteousness, and indissoluble adoption to all who will believe. This is the message we all need. We need the gospel of grace and the grace of the gospel. Children can't use the law any more than we can, because they will respond to it the same way we do. They'll ignore it or bend it or obey it outwardly for selfish purposes, but this one thing is certain: they won't obey it from the heart, because they can't. That's why Jesus had to die. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

I never again want to see the face of a starving child or hear the weeping of a mother who has lost her son to war. Peace, this is what my husband gave his life for, and I want the world to know that he did not die in vain. Peace, this is what will make me very happy. — Jehan Sadat

You but winnowed out those who have made their pride a funeral shroud." Jaren met Rain's eyes. "Our world has changed, Feyreisen. I have watched great Fey cities die, seen our forests fade back into desert, and listened to my shei'tani weep for the children her womb will not bear. It seems to me when the ways of the past lead only to death, then change is the only hope for life. — C.L. Wilson

Families with disabled children are praying for their kids to die before them because they have no support systems. They are very scared about who will take care of their kids and how their kids will have a dignified life after they die. — Safak Pavey

Look around. The hantavirus is waiting for you. Ebola and the tropical rainforest is cooking up all kinds of brews to make sure that the population is kept in control. All these things are necessary. Why is there an increase in sexual deviance right now? Because it goes against procreative sex. Mother Nature does not want more children. This is not a time of birth. It is not a time to give birth, it's a time to die. The Bible says all things under heaven and that includes death as well as life. You out there, you comfortable ones, you point the finger. You say the junkie is the problem, you say the sexual deviant, serial killer, racist, and the man who hates his fellow man is the problem. But they ain't the problem. You're the problem. The sexual deviant, the murderer, the serial killer, the taker of human life is the cure, you're the problem. — Joe Coleman

Are some women and children going to die? Yeah. But it's doing the right thing. You got money, you sit around talking about peace. People who don't have money need some help. — Kid Rock

Who and of what import were the men whose bones bulk the Great Wall, the thirty million Mao starved, or the thirty million children not yet five who die each year now? Why, they are the insignificant others, of course; living or dead, they are just some of the plentiful others ... And you? To what end were we billions of oddballs born? — Annie Dillard

A Reason? People always say that. But only pepole who haven't really suffered talk about reasons. Because that's so much eaiser to say than to hear. What's the reason that our patients die? That they'll never walk again? That we've treated children whose limbs have been blown off? For that matter what's the reason for this hideous war? — John Shors

Do not find peace. Find passion. Find something you want to die for more than something you want to live for. If it is your children, then fight not just for your own but for orphans who have no one else. If it is for medicine, then do not just seek out a cure for cancer but search for a cure for AIDS as well. Fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Speak for them. Scream for them. Live and die for them. You life will not always be a happy one, but it will have meaning. — Michelle Hodkin

Brave and loyal followers! Long ago we resolved to serve neither the Romans nor anyone other than God Himself, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind. The time has now come that bids us prove our determination by our deeds we have never submitted to slavery, even when it brought no danger with it. We must not choose slavery now, and with it penalties that will mean the end of everything if we fall alive into the hands of the Romans God has given us this privilege, that we can die nobly and as free men and leave this world as free men in company with our wives and children.
(Elazar Ben Yair) — Flavius Josephus

Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, in all good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace. — Salman Rushdie

In the last analysis, human security means a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, an ethnic tension that did not explode, a dissident who was not silenced, a human spirit that was not crushed. — Mahbub Ul Haq

The great constructive energies of the child ... have hitherto been concealed beneath an accumulation of ideas concerning motherhood. We used to say it was the mother who formed the child; for it is she who teaches him to walk, talk, and so on. But none of this is really done by the mother. It is an achievement of the child. What the mother brings forth is the baby, but it is the baby who produces the man. Should the mother die, the baby still grows up and completes his work of making the man. — Maria Montessori

That you are happy, that Monsieur Pontmercy has Cosette, that youth espouses mourning, that there are about you, my children, lilacs and nightingales, that your life is a beautiful lawn in the sunshine, that all the enchantments of heaven fill your souls, and now, that I who am good for nothing, that I die; surely all this is well. — Victor Hugo

A child who had been introduced to misery in Saudi Arabia, a teenager who went to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, a deeply devout Muslim who had graduated with honors in medicine, a man who had fed a stranger to wild dogs in Damascus, a zealot who had dosed three foreigners with smallpox and watched them die in agony, gave thanks to Allah for the blessings that had been bestowed upon him. — Terry Hayes

You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us. — Philip Pullman