Quotes & Sayings About Death Being A Part Of Life

When people pass on we must choose how to remember them. While our loved ones sleep for eternity we must carry on with our daily toil. We can elect to harbor adoration and love in our precious memories or cling to animosity and detestation. We can kindly remember our ancestors or continue to feel embedded enmity towards people who no longer walk this earth. Regardless the human frailties of the recently departed, it seems that we should aspire to clutch the best part of our ancestors being fast to our hearts. A book encapsulating a departed person's life has many pages; we must choose which chapters to treasure and what chapters to disregard or downplay. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Within you is a spirit that lived before your physical birth and that will continue to live after your physical death. Eternity goes both ways. You lived--not as another person but as yourself--in a spiritual pre-life.

God had clear and beautiful purpose in providing you with this mortal phase of eternity. Part of that purpose has to do with the struggle of being on your own here, without memory of there.

But you do have some sliver of memory--just enough to feel i t is true when you hear it--just enough to believe in the earlier life of your own soul. — Richard Eyre

When a man lives with the wilderness he comes to an acceptance of death as a part of living, he sees the leaves fall and rot away to build the soil for other trees and plants to be born. The leaves gather strength from sun and rain, gathering the capital on which they live to return it to the soil when they die. Only for a time have they borrowed their life from the sum of things, using their small portion of sun, earth, and rain, some of the chemicals that go into their being - all to be paid back when death comes. All to be used again and again. — Louis L'Amour

The impeccable watchmaker geared the noble self to suffer. The ineluctable part of being human is perpetual sorrow, grief, and misery. Suffering is part of living. Life begins joyously and regretfully ends in tragedy. The cold realities of the world triumphantly crush each one of us. Between birth and death is comedic conjugation, the haunting prelude to the end of the self. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Part of this experience involves your being able to say to a person who is dying, You are loved. You are beautiful. You are like a newborn babe, going into another realm. Release now anyone, and everything, that is a burden to you. Release everything and know that you have lived your life to the fullest. There is no judgment on you. Go in peace, put a smile on your face, and release any judgments you hold. Relax, and allow your life to have meaning as you embark on the next phase of your identity. — Barbara Marciniak

Dying is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society. Perhaps it is that. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The life of every man is a way to himself, an attempt at a way, the suggestion of a path. No man has ever been utterly himself, yet every man strives to be so, the dull, the intelligent, each one as best he can. Each man to the end of his days carries round with him vestiges of his birth - the slime and egg-shells of the primeval world. There are many who never become humans; they remain frogs, lizards, ants. Many men are human being above and fish below. Yet each one represents an attempt on the part of nature to create a human being. — Hermann Hesse

Shut up," I snapped. "This is not the time. What part of this situation seems like a joke to you?"
Lohka pulled up his knees, giving a feeble, half-manic little laugh. "Oh, maybe just the idea that some soul-devouring being of chaos could be waiting anywhere to finish destroying my life," he said. "That's kind of hilarious, you know. Have you ever had a soul-devouring being of chaos hunting you down so it could finish eating you?"
"No," I said. "I'm sorry, Lohka."
"That's nice," he muttered.
"What about the part where this soul-devouring being of chaos seems to have a taste for me at the moment?" Zhabyr asked. "Can we worry about that, now? Because I kind of already am. — J. Leigh Bralick

The immortal remains of Brother Watchtower watched the dragon flap away into the fog, and then looked down at the congealing puddle of stone, metal and miscellaneous trace elements that was all that remained of the secret headquarters. And of its occupants, he realized in the dispassionate way that is part of being dead. You go through your whole life and end up a smear swirling around like cream in a coffee cup. Whatever the gods' games were, they played them in a damn mysterious way. He looked up at the hooded figure beside him. "We never intended this," he said weakly. "Honestly. No offense. We just wanted what was due to us." A skeletal hand patted him on the shoulder, not unkindly. And Death said, CONGRATULATIONS. — Terry Pratchett

Rough as life can be, I know in my bones we are supposed to stick around and play our part. Even if that part is coughing to death from cigarettes, or being blown up young in a house with your mother watching. And even if it's to be that mother. Someone down the line might need to know you got through it. Or maybe someone you won't see coming will need you. Like a kid who asks you to help him clean motel rooms. Or some ghost who drifts your way, hungry. And good people might even ask you to marry them. And it might be you never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all make our way. I don't think we get to know why. It is, as Ben would say about most of what I used to worry about, none of my business. — Bill Clegg

Teach him to live rather than to avoid death: life is not breath,
but action, the use of our senses, our mind, our faculties, every
part of ourselves which makes us conscious of our being. Life
consists less in length of days than in the keen sense of living.
A man maybe buried at a hundred and may never have lived at all.
He would have fared better had he died young. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Part of dealing with the sense of being cut off - for both the one dying and the one bereaved - is acknowledging that though a vital part of life has changed dramatically, all relationships (with friends, even with you, perhaps) have not. — Sandra L. Bertman

When my mother was alive, I was the daughter first and everything else second ... That's what made her death so painful. My mother was a big part of my life and a big reason why I did what I did. I've always derived a lot of energy from being a good daughter ... When she was gone, I suddenly thought, Why am I doing this? For whom? Losing my mom was really hard on me. I remember going to the Academy Awards shortly after she died and thinking, Well I'm all dressed up, and my mother won't see me. — Goldie Hawn

Clyde, she said it's fine. What? Really?" Mom huffed. "Your dad wants to know if 'fine' is
code for 'please come home, I'm being held hostage by hormonal maniacs.'" Pause. "And if said
hormonal maniacs are listening he wants them to know he will cut off vital body parts and watch them
bleed out a slow and torturous death then bury said body parts on different continents throughout the
world so he will never be brought to justice and will revel in their excruciating demise for the rest of
his life because they had the nerve to cause his daughter any discomfort whatsoever."
I grinned. "Mom, Dad didn't say that."
"I may have ad-libbed that last part. But he did ask about the hormonal maniacs. — A&E Kirk

The image of my father's ashes drifting down into the clear water among the spawning salmon played across the screen of my mind. I counted off all the deaths I had seen, the tally of which remarked upon the fate of all living things, which is to be eaten, whether by whales, eagles, bears, or the microbes of the grave. But this is part and parcel of the continuation of life...the translation of bidies into more bodies, and life into life. The litter of shattered crab shell at my feet gave brilliant red testimony to how death becomes life, is necessary for life, and this being so, is beyond being labeled as good or bad. — Lynn Schooler

Adversity is a natural part of being human. It is the height of arrogance to prescribe a moral code or health regime or spiritual practice as an amulet to keep things from falling apart. Things do fall apart. It is in their nature to do so. When we try to protect ourselves from the inevitability of change, we are not listening to the soul. We are listening to our fear of life and death, our lack of faith, our smaller ego's will to prevail. To listen to your soul is to stop fighting with life
to stop fighting when things fall apart; when they don't go our away, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty and to wait. — Elizabeth Lesser

I was walking down a street and after his death and saw a billboard on the side of a brick wall for Van's shoes. It was a picture of Hopper's face, and all it said was, 'Hopper Lives.' So I think he's still part of youth culture. There are lessons to be learned from Hopper about being a young person who wants to live the art life in America. — Tom Folsom

I wanted my eternity in carbon molecules, in being part of the trees, the sky, air itself — Ruth Ahmed

[At Marc Antony's tomb:] Nothing could part us in life, but now in death we are likely to change places, you the Roman lying here in Egyptian soil, and I, helpless woman that I am, being buried in Italy. — Cleopatra

If your problem is being chronically starved of social bonds, then part of the solution is to bond with the heroin itself and the relief it gives you. But a bigger part is to bond with the subculture that comes with taking heroin - the tribe of fellow users all embarked on the same mission and facing the same threats and risking death every day with you. It gives you an identity. It gives you a life of highs and lows, instead of relentless monotony. The world stops being indifferent to you, and starts being hostile - which is at least proof that you exist, that you aren't dead already. The heroin helps users deal with the pain of being unable to form normal bonds with other humans. The heroin subculture gives them bonds with other human beings. — Johann Hari

Much of what is written on the craft is biased in one way or another, so weed out what is useful to you and ignore the rest. I see the next few years as being crucial in the transformation of our culture away from the patriarchal death cults and toward the love of life, of nature, of the female principle. The craft is only one path among the many opening up for women, and many of us will blaze new trails as we explore the uncharted country of our own interiors. The heritage, the culture, the knowledge of the ancient priestesses, healers, poets, singers, and seers were nearly lost, but a seed survived the flames that will blossom in a new age into thousands of flowers. The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts ~~ Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be. — Starhawk

People have gotten used to living a botched-up life - to be anxious, insecure, hateful, jealous, and in various states of unpleasantness through the day - slowly humanity has begun to see it as normal. None of these things are normal. These are abnormalities. Once you accept them as part of life they become normal because the majority has joined the gang of unpleasantness. They are all saying, "Unpleasantness is normal. Being nasty to each other is normal. Being nasty to myself is normal." Someone trusted that you would be doing good things at least to yourself and said, "Do unto others what you do unto yourself." I am telling you, never do unto others what you are doing to yourself! By being with people, I know what they are doing to themselves is the worst thing. Fortunately, they are not doing such horrible things to others. Only once in a while they are giving a dose to others, but to themselves they are giving it throughout the day. — Jaggi Vasudev

I suppose the most radical part of my teaching at present is that love is not a feeling. Everybody suffers from love, or the fear of it, or the lack of it. Why? Why is love so universally and inevitably heart-breaking, whether it be through the end of a love affair, the death of a loved one or being locked in with the habitual casualness or grim indifference of a partner? The answer is because we've been taught and conditioned by the world to believe that love is a feeling. — Barry Long

Odd: I wish I could believe in reincarnation.
Chief Porter: Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don't make me go through high school again.
Odd: If there's something we want so bad in this life but we can't have it, maybe we could get it the next time around.
Chief Porter: Or maybe not getting it, accepting less without bitterness and being grateful for what we have is a part of what we're here to learn. — Dean Koontz

I don't really enjoy experiencing pain. No one does. But we will become less human if we learn to detach ourselves from one another to the point that when we experience death of a beautiful being (our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our soul mates, our friends etc.) that it will not bother us that we will not feel. But see that's suppression. It will bother us somewhere deep inside. So, love someone. Hold them tight. Don't fear the loss. Fear the part of being too afraid to love someone. Love Everyone. It's inevitable: we all die. Thats the ugly part of life. But Love and being alive is so beautiful and so strong that the love, the memories stay even in death. Life is love, life is being alive to feel pain. The love the beautiful love always remains. Love. Life. Joy. Peace — Jill Telford

If I die, don't take this too hard," she counseled them, "death is only part of things bigger than we can imagine. Our brains are just starting the greatness, to learn how to do things like flying. What next? You will see, and you will see that your mother is of the design. And I will always be made of things, and things will always be made of me. Nothing can get rid of me because I am already included into the pattern. — Louise Erdrich

When you see a 14-year-old boy who has never known what peace looks like for a day in his life, there's part of you as a human being that feels some degree, you can say, compassion for the fact that these boys have known war, famine, violence and death from the day they were born. — Amanda Lindhout

Life is hard. People can't be trusted. Vigilance is key. Be wise about whom you love, and when you do love, do it with every fiber of your being. Till death do you part. — David DiBenedetto

Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. — Paul Bowles

The ovarian world is the product of a life rhythm. The moment a child is born it becomes part of a world in which there is not only the life rhythm but the death rhythm. The frantic desire to live, to live at any cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm. There is not only no need to keep alive at any price, but, if life is undesirable, it is absolutely wrong. This keeping oneself alive, out of a blind urge to defeat death, is in itself a means of sowing death. Every one who has not fully accepted life, who is not incrementing life, is helping to fill the world with death. To make the simplest gesture with the hand can convey the utmost sense of life; a word spoken with the whole being can give life. Activity in itself means nothing: it is often a sign of death. — Henry Miller

The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition, or success or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes, instead that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he know that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learnt that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death. — Russell Kirk

If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution of happiness, strength, and understanding to my being remains to sustain me in an altered world. — Helen Keller

Imagine being just strong enough to remember what life was like, feeling things, your heartbeat, the world around you. And imagine you couldn't have it anymore, couldn't even properly remember it, but there was just enough that some deep part of you knew what you were missing. Wouldn't you do anything to get it back, if it was right there for the taking? Wouldn't you be willing to kill for it? — Apollo Blake

Whenever we give our hearts in love, the burden of our vulnerability grows. We risk being rebuffed or embarrassed or inadequate. Beyond these things, we risk the enormous pain of loss. When those we love die, a part of us dies with them. When those we love are sick, in body or spirit, we too feel the pain. All of this is worth it. Especially the pain. If we insulate our hearts from suffering, we shall only subdue the very thing that makes life worth living. We cannot protect ourselves from loss. We can only protect ourselves from the death of love, we are left only with the aching hollow of regret, that haunting emptiness where love might have been. — Forrest Church

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
"It is why we are drawn to babies ... " He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals. — Mitch Albom

I think when you think of death as being part of the life cycle and recognize that death is an inevitability for our species because the world has to be renewed with each death, then the hope becomes when it is renewed it will be renewed by people on whom I have had some influence for good. — Sherwin B. Nuland