Death After Illness Quotes & Sayings

We are left with nothing but death, the irreducible fact of our own mortality. Death after a long illness we can accept with resignation. Even accidental death we can ascribe to fate. But for a man to die of no apparent cause, for a man to die simply because he is a man, brings us so close to the invisible boundary between life and death that we no longer know which side we are on. Life becomes death, and it is as if this death has owned this life all along. Death without warning. Which is to say: life stops. And it can stop at any moment. — Paul Auster

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man - his courage and hope, or lack of them - and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. The ultimate cause of my friend's death was that the expected liberation did not come and he was severely disappointed. This suddenly lowered his body's resistance against the latent typhus infection. His faith in the future and his will to live had become paralyzed and his body fell victim to illness - and thus the voice of his dream was right after all. — Viktor E. Frankl

I don't want anything from you, Edward. If you'd only told me you were still in love with Emma - '

'You don't understand,' he interrupts. 'It was like an illness. I hated myself every second I was with her. — J.P. Delaney

He was surprised at the way she answered. She had taken a long time to say that. She had nodded her head in a deep way too. Had she wished to affect him with some sort of premonition? He wondered unhappily. Or was it only that she would not help him, after all, by talking with him? For he was not strong enough to receive the impact of unfamiliar things without a little talk to break their fall. He had lived a month in which nothing had happened except in his head and his body - an almost inaudible life of heartbeats and dreams that came back, a life of fever and privacy, a delicate life which had left him weak to the point of - what? Of begging. The pulse in his palm leapt like a trout in a brook.

("Death of a Traveling Salesman") — Eudora Welty

I never felt magic crazy as this
I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree
But now you're here
Brighten my northern sky. — Nick Drake

If we would see the color of our future, we must look for it in our present; if we would gaze on the star of our destiny, we must look for it in our hearts. — Frederic Farrar

In my late thirties the dream of disappointment and exhaustion had been the dream of the exploding head: the dream of a noise in my head so loud and long that I felt with the brain that survived that the brain could not survive; that this was death. Now, in my early fifties, after my illness, after I had left the manor cottage and put an end to that section of my life, I began to be awakened by thoughts of death, the end of things; and sometimes not even by thoughts so specific, not even by fear rational or fantastic, but by a great melancholy. This melancholy penetrated my mind while I slept; and then, when I awakened in response to its prompting, I was so poisoned by it, made so much not a doer (as men must be, every day of their lives), that it took the best part of the day to shake it off. And that wasted or dark day added to the gloom preparing for the night. — V.S. Naipaul

Even death after a long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone ... Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today? — Jeanette Winterson

Man was not born a carnivorous animal, but born to live on the fruits and herbs that the earth grows. I know we must all err. I would give up milk if I could, but I cannot. I have made that experiment times without number. I could not, after a serious illness, regain my strength, unless I went back to milk. That has been the tragedy of my life. But the basis of my vegetarianism is not physical, but moral. If anybody said that I should die if I did not take beef tea or mutton, even on medical advice, I would prefer death. That is the basis of my vegetarianism. — Mahatma Gandhi

Emerson died April 27, 1882, after a few days' illness from pneumonia. Dr. Garnett in his excellent biography says: Seldom had 'the reaper whose name is Death' gathered such illustrious harvest as between December 1880 and April 1882. — Anonymous

And after his death - or even before it, perhaps - he lived on in camp legend as a demented old man of seventy who had once written poetry in the outside world and was therefore nicknamed The Poet. And another old man - or was it the same one? - lived in the transit camp of Vtoraya Rechka, waiting to be shipped to Kolyma, and was thought by many people to be Osip Mandelstam - which, for all I know, he may have been. That is all I have been able to find out about the last days, illness and death of Mandelstam. Others know very much less about the death of their dear ones. — Nadezhda Mandelstam

Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States in the early 1830s and famously proclaimed the emergence of Homo democraticus, a cheeky creature whose passion for equality and self-interest was tempered only by his ability to join fellow citizens in all manner of mutual associations for pragmatic benefit. — Anonymous

But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent compliment, could win Catherine from thinking that some very different object must occasion so serious a delay of proper repose. To be kept up for hours, after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely. There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs. Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the conclusion which necessarily followed. Shocking as was the idea, it was at least better than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other children, at the time - all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment. Its origin - jealousy perhaps, or wanton cruelty - was yet to be unravelled. — Jane Austen

In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine the truth, and that illness and misfortune are caused and alleviated by spirits, ghosts, saints ... and gods. — Steven Pinker

I think you'll be a great teacher, said Gary. That's his role in my life: blind encourager and ambassador of false senses of security. — Matthew Norman

She is no longer a solitary being. She is a million different parts, each reborn, granted the miracle she prayed for in the months before her death, to be completely healed.
Death is the price for rebirth.
Death. Who would have thought it would come with such great joy? Yet, after long years battling illness, death is suddenly more than welcome. — Victoria Kahler

Are you there? If your mind is not there, you are not there! You are wherever your mind is wandering! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Launching more drone strikes than Bush ever did and compiling a secret "kill list," President Obama's administration took the view that al-Qaeda was like an organized crime gang - disrupt the hierarchy, destroy the gang. Theirs was a concerted and dogmatic attempt at pretending that al-Qaeda was nothing but a fringe criminal group, and not a concrete realization of an ideological phenomenon with grassroots sympathy. They took this view in part because of how successful Islamist "fellow-traveler" lobbies had been in influencing Obama's campaign after the mistakes of the Bush years. For Islamists and their allies, the problem was "al-Qaeda inspired extremism," and not the extremism that had inspired al-Qaeda. — Sam Harris

My husband's personality was filled with serenity and sunlight. Not even the incurable illness which fell upon him soon after our marriage could long cloud his brow. On the very night of his death he took me in his arms, and during the many months when he lay dying in his wheel chair, he often said jokingly to me: 'Well, have you already picked out a lover?' I blushed with shame. 'Don't deceive me,' he added on one occasion, 'that would seem ugly to me, but pick out an attractive lover, or preferably several. You are a splendid woman, but still half a child, and you need toys. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

telling us that the death has occurred
in the family home
or after a long illness
or after a short illness
or suddenly
or in England
or peacefully at their home in
all the innumerable ways and places in which anyone can die — Mike McCormack

The French expression 'cul-de-sac' describes what the Baudelaire orphans found when they reached the end of the dark hallway, and like all French expressions, it is most easily understood when you translate each French word into English. The word 'de,' for instance is a very common French world, I would be certain that 'de' means 'of.' The word 'sac' is less common, but I can fairly certain that it means something like 'mysterious circumstances.' And the word 'cul' is such a rare French word that I am forced to guess at its translation, and my guess is that in this case it would mean 'At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment,' so that the expression 'cul-de-sac' here means 'At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment of mysterious circumstances. — Lemony Snicket

Okay, this was kissing. Serious kissing. Not just a kiss before moving out, not a good-bye, this was Hello, sexy, and wow, she'd never even suspected that it could feel this way. — Rachel Caine

Like most doctors, the fanciest ones, he seemed offensively healthy, as if he kept the real secret of vitality to himself. He would live forever and people would crumble and die around him. You were supposed to feel like death after seeing him, in terms of your complexion, your posture, your whole body. If necessary, this doctor would eat you to survive. — Ben Marcus

My job, and that's my job, is to dress the naked truth. To make it interesting, to make it viable, to make it seem like something you understand and feel and love. — Bryce Courtenay

It meant a lot because it was my first time to compete as a senior at that meet, which was kind of weird because I've done senior all year, but I didn't get to compete last year because of my elbow. — Carly Patterson

When I first thought about writing this book, I conceived of it as a book about moods, and an illness of moods, in the context of an individual life. As I have written it, however, it has somehow turned out to be very much a book about love as well: love as sustainer, as renewer, and as protector. After each seeming death within my mind or heart, love has returned to recreate hope and restore life. It has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest. It has, inexplicably and savingly, provided not only cloak but lantern for the darker seasons and grimmer weather. — Kay Redfield Jamison

So finally I came up with a thing that felt really pure, and I'm Christian, so when I hear about death I have a lot of hope because I believe in Jesus and life after death, and John 3:16. — Victoria Jackson

One of us hadn't finished, why did the other one go? And why without warning? Even death after long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone. The day before the Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here and now you're not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today? And where are you? — Jeanette Winterson

A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in the holy days of spring and youth there is no name in man's vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. He who has profaned his spring will understand the present condition of my soul. I am not yet old, or grey, but I no longer live. Psychiaters tell us that a solider, who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and afterwards assured everybody - and believed it himself - that he had died at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his shadow, a reflection of the past. I am now experiencing something resembling this semi-death.. — Anton Chekhov

A few days into the illness, they'll get a rash. With Marburg and Ebola the throat and conjunctivae get inflamed and there are small transparent lesions like tapioca granules in the soft palate. Then they start to bleed with a paradoxical combination of blood clots and hemorrhaging. The clots lodge in the brain, liver, spleen, and the hemorrhaging accelerates until the body cavities fill up with blood. Death comes some six to seven days after the first symptom, either from a massive stroke, or from shock. — Patrick Lynch

Because whether through our whole lives, or through decades at the beginning of them
and, often, at the end of them, after divorces or deaths
it's our friends who move us into new homes, friends with whom we buy and care for pets, friends with whom we mourn death and experience illness, friends alongside who some of us may raise children and see them into adulthood. There aren't any ceremonies to make this official. There aren't weddings; there aren't health benefits or domestic partnerships or familial recognition. — Rebecca Traister