Death Comes Unexpectedly Quotes & Sayings

We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it. I don't think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they'd make fewer foolish mistakes. — Dmitri Shostakovich

Switch on the television or glance at the newspaper: You will see death everywhere. Yet, did the victims of those plane crashes and car accidents expect to die? They took life for granted, as we do. How often do we hear stories of people whom we know, or even friends, who died unexpectedly? We don't even have to be ill to die: Our bodies can suddenly break down and go out of order, just like our cars. We can be quite well one day, then fall sick and die the next. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Death, however clearly foretold, still came unexpectedly. — Daniel Abraham

The man who fears death will never do anything worthy of a man who is alive; but he who knows that these were the conditions drawn up for him when he was conceived will live according to this rule and at the same time, through the same strength of mind, he will ensure that none of what happens to him will come unexpectedly. — Seneca.

We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it? — Gautama Buddha

...the vague thought passed through my mind that all of us, probably, would die like that: unexpectedly, in the middle of something we wanted to do, instead of at the end of our endeavors, as we always fondly believe. — Kenneth Roberts

Impending death had a way of unexpectedly unearthing the past so that it came together with the present in an unholy coupling. — Abraham Verghese

Yes, but perhaps he did have something to do with it." (In such arguments Stenham often found himself unexpectedly extolling the bourgeois virtues.) "If he was good himself, and worked hard - "

"Never!" cried Amar, his eyes blazing. "You're a Nazarene, a Christian. That's why you talk that way. If you were a Moslem and said such things, you'd be killed or struck blind here, this minute. Christians have good hearts, but they don't know anything. They think they can change what has been written. They're afraid to die because they don't understand what death is for. And if you're afraid to die, then you don't know what life is for. How can you live? — Paul Bowles

I often sit over against myself, as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active principle that calls itself to life has adapted itself even to this form. All other expressions lie in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death; - it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct - it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought - it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude - it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of nothingness. Thus we live a closed, hard existence of the utmost superficiality, and rarely does an incident strike out a spark. But then unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up. Those — Erich Maria Remarque

He is trapped underground, suddenly and unexpectedly close to death, but still in control of his fate. "At that moment I put death in my head and decided I would live with it," he says later. — Hector Tobar

Do not pursue the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. The past no longer is. The future has not yet come. Looking deeply at life as it is. In the very here and now, the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom. We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it? The sage calls a person who knows how to dwell in mindfulness night and day, 'one who knows the better way to live alone.' — Gautama Buddha