Death Is So Final Quotes & Sayings

And a ride in a hearse tells us we're all close to that final cruise ... when the body dies and we move on. It's just the body, man. It's just the body. The soul's already gone. So don't be afraid of a dead body absent a soul. It's empty, man. No resident. What you need to worry about is a living body that's lost its soul. Now that is scary, man. - Funk N. Wagnalls, owner of the Grim Reapers auto lot, a character in Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues. — David Mutti Clark

Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities. — George R R Martin

The death penalty fulfills a preventive function, but it is also very clearly a form of revenge. It is an especially severe form of punishment because it is so final. The human life is ended and the executed person is deprived of the opportunity to change, to restore the harm done or compensate for it. — Dalai Lama

As my visits with Morrie go on, I begin to read about death, how different cultures view the final passage. There is a tribe in the North American Arctic, for example, who believe that all things on earth have a soul that exists in a miniature form of the body that hold it -so that a deer has a tiny deer inside it, and a man has a tiny man inside him. When the large being dies, that tiny form lives on. It can slide into something being born nearby, or it can go to a temporary resting place in the sky, in the belly of a great feminine spirit, where it waits until the moon can send it back to earth.
Sometimes, they say, the moon is so busy with the new souls of the world that it disappears from the sky. That is why we have moonless nights. But in the end, the moon always returns, as do we all.
That is what they believe. — Mitch Albom

So many people are afraid of the ending of their life on earth. Then there are others who are afraid of not being able to leave after their bodies have long failed them. There's nothing at all to be afraid of. Death is the last lesson in the school of life. It is the final stage of growth. Death is the one event that is designed to remove all of your remaining fears. Someday you will find that the things you were most afraid of, like death, were only illusions. — Kate McGahan

We live on the edge of the abstract all the time. Look at something solid in the known world: an automobile. Separate the fender, the hood, the roof, lie them on the garage floor, walk around them. Let go of the urge to reassemble the care or to pronounce fender, hood, roof. Look at them as curve, line, form. Relax the mind. Don't immediately try to make meaning or be practical. Truthfully, how practical is life anyway? All our work, and death is the final result? So let's enjoy the unfolding shape, the elemental, organic delight and agony of it all. — Natalie Goldberg

I thought if you knew. you'd kill him.
I nearly did. I nearly killed you too. The trouble with death is - his lips twisted - it's so final. — Marie Treanor

What gives us word-users the right to make life-and-death decisions concerning other living creatures that have no words? Why do we find ourselves in positions of such anguish (at least for some of us)? In the final analysis, it is simply because might makes right, and we humans, thanks to the intelligence afforded us by the complexity of our brains and our embeddedness in rich languages and cultures, are indeed high and mighty, relative to the "lower" animals (and vegetables). By virtue of our might, we are forced to establish some sort of ranking of creatures, whether we do so as a result of long and careful personal reflections or simply go along with the compelling flow of the masses. Are cows just as comfortably killable as mosquitoes? Would you feel any less troubled by swatting a fly preening on a wall than by beheading a chicken quivering on a block? — Douglas R. Hofstadter

I see the way you look at me. I feel the way you touch me. I hear the hidden messages in your voice. Unlike you, I've been blessed knowing the warmth that comes with love. The way a person's eyes glow and body softens. You love me! And if you can stand there and deny it - when it's so blatantly obvious - then there really is no hope for us. You might as well march me outside and complete the Final Debt, because I'd rather you kill me quickly than live through this endless death!-Nila — Pepper Winters

When I look back all is flux, without beginning and flowing towards no end, or none that I shall experience, except as a final full stop. The items of flotsam that I choose to salvage from the general wreckage - and what is a life but a gradual shipwreck? - may take on an aspect of inevitability when I put them on display in their glass showcases, but they are random; representative, perhaps, perhaps compellingly so, but random nonetheless. — John Banville

On one side it seems there is faith in a Creator-God - and at the same time, the rejection of his creation; and on the other side there is an affirmation of the world, yet a world that is horrible in its meaninglessness, for the one who alone has the possibility of using and enjoying this world - man- is in this world an accidental guest, destined for total annihilation. And so this horrible and frightening dilemma brings us to the one question that each of us must pose: in the final analysis, how do *I* personally relate to this inescapable, universal, and relentless question about death? — Alexander Schmemann

Singing in the midst of evil is what it means to be disciples. Like Mary Magdalene, the reason we stand and weep and listen for Jesus is because we, like Mary, are bearers of resurrection, we are made new. On the third day, Jesus rose again, and we do not need to be afraid. To sing to God amidst sorrow is to defiantly proclaim, like Mary Magdalene did to the apostles, and like my friend Don did at Dylan Klebold's funeral,t hat death is not the final word. To defiantly say, once again, that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, will not, shall not overcome it. And so, evil be damned, because even as we go to the grave, we still make our song alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

When I stand by the stream and watch it, I am relatively still, and the flowing water makes a path across my memory so that I realize its transience in comparison with my stability. This is, of course, an illusion in the sense that I, too, am in flow and likewise have no final destination - for can anyone imagine finality as a form of life? My death will be the disappearance of a particular pattern in the water. Feeling — Alan W. Watts

To only see 'death' in death is to somehow assume that death itself is a barrier so abrupt that God Himself is halted by it. To see 'life' in death is to understand that death is a sprawling horizon to a new beginning that God created long before death ever thought to show up. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Where there is life, George, there is still hope. Death is so terribly final. It will come soon enough — Elizabeth Gilbert

...why can't I stop all the moving and look out over the vast arrangements and find by the contours and colors and qualities of light where my father is, not to solve anything but just simply even to see it again one last time, before what, before it ends, before it stops. But it doesn't stop; it simply ends. It is a final pattern scattered without so much as a pause at the end, at the end of what, at the end of this. — P. Harding

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we are all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quietly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone Else's words ... I was going to die, if not sooner then later whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. — Audre Lorde

Once people grasp that the events of the Messiah's death and resurrection have transformed everything and that they are now living between that initial explosive event and God's final setting right of the world (when God is "all in all"), then everything will change: belief, behavior, attitudes, expectations, and not least a new love, a real sense of belonging, which springs up among those who share all this. That is what so much of Paul's writing is about. — N. T. Wright

You think the final act of love is setting them free to Rainbow Bridge? That is not the final act of love. The final act of love is releasing them from your leash of grief so they can be free in the heaven on the other side of the Bridge. Until you resolve your grief, you bind them to you in the land between Heaven and Earth while they wait, suspended between the worlds, for you to heal. When you are free of your grief, they are free of your grief. — Kate McGahan

So let me get this straight," he says. "Death is the only destination and nothing else is real because it's not perfect or final?"
I roll my eyes. "Okay, Nietzsche. That's not exactly what I said."
"I just think people are always doing that."
"Doing what?"
"They're always asking themselves, 'Where am I going?' but they're never looking around and asking, 'Where am I?' Everything's about what's going to be next instead of noticing what's happening right now. But the now is the only thing that's actually real. — Autumn Doughton

We have reached a stage in evolution which is not the final stage. We must pass through it quickly, for if we do not, most of us will perish by the wa y, and the others
will be lost in a forest of doubt and fear. Envy therefore, evil as it is, and terrible as are its effects, is not wholly of the devil. It is in part the expression of a heroic pain, the pain of those who walk through the night blindly, p erhaps to a better resting-place, perhaps only to death and destruction. To find the right road out of this despair civ ilised man must enlarge his heart as he has enlarged his mind. He must learn to tran scend self, and in so doing to acquire the freedom of the Universe. — Bertrand Russell

Nearly everyone who is asked where they want to spend their final days says at home, surrounded by people they love and who love them. That's the consistent finding of surveys and, in my experience as a doctor, remains true when people become patients. Unfortunately, it's not the way things turn out. At present, just over one-fifth of Americans are at home when they die. Over 30 percent die in nursing homes, where, according to polls, virtually no one says they want to be. Hospitals remain the site of over 50 percent of deaths in most parts of the country, and nearly 40 percent of people who die in a hospital spend their last days in ICU, where they will likely be sedated or have their arms tied down so they will not pull out breathing tubes, intravenous lines, or catheters. Dying is hard, but it doesn't have to be this hard. — Ira Byock

...[T]he king is lying down, severely wounded; one of his faithful companions, Lucan the Butler, approaches, in tears, to say a final farewell. Arthur stands up to embrace him, "holding him so tightly against his chest that he smothers him, crushes his heart and kills him." This is a strange and dramatic event, unexpected, serving no plot purpose, but an event that recalls that Arthur was in origin a bear-king endowed with superhuman strength: like the animal he could kill his enemy in hand to hand combat simply by pressing him against his chest. The king is not aware of his animal strength, but even as he is dying, he retains the power to cause death by a mere embrace, a power that no human being possesses. (p.53-54) — Michel Pastoureau

Where there is life, George, there is hope. Death is so terribly final. It will come soon enough to us all. I would hesitate to wish it hastened upon anyone. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Death is the best healing of all, so try not to worry about it. When we die, that's the final, permanent healing. Our old body finally dies and we are rid of it and free. Then we don't have any more diseases or troubles. We won't hurt anymore because we will be in our spiritual body, our new model! — David Berg

Despite a thousand Easter hymns and a million Easter sermons, the resurrection narratives in the gospels never, ever say anything like, "Jesus is raised, therefore there is a life after death," let alone, "Jesus is raised, therefore we shall go to heaven when we die." Nor even, in a more authentic first-century Christian way, do they say, "Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised from the dead after the sleep of death." No. Insofar as the event is interpreted, Easter has a very this-worldly, present-age meaning: Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world's true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God's new creation has begun - and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven! To be sure, as early as Paul the resurrection of Jesus is firmly linked to the final resurrection of all God's people. — N. T. Wright

Any way, death is so final, isn't it?
"Is it?" asked Richard.
"Sometimes," said the marquis de Carabas. And they went down. — Neil Gaiman

As a Buddhist, I view death as a normal process, a reality that I accept will occur as long as I remain in this earthly existence. Knowing that I cannot escape it, I see no point in worrying about it. I tend to think of death as being like changing your clothes when they are old and worn out, rather than as some final end. Yet death is unpredictable: We do not know when or how it will take place. So it is only sensible to take certain precautions before it actually happens. — Dalai Lama

Sometimes the hardest goodbyes are the ones never said, the ones that always just hang there in the back of the mind like a dark cloud. There's so much to say but no one to say it to because the person you want most to hear it is already gone. That's how he felt. Sorrow, regret, a wound so deep it didn't even bleed. Like a puncture wound, an ache that didn't heal but just hurt. He didn't know if he wanted it to heal. That'd be too much like a final goodbye. — Virginia Brown

She sent Death a thought, one she hoped would be her final gift. The Game means something only because we lose. That is your gift to humans. So thank you. — Martha Brockenbrough

Death used to announce itself in the thick of life but now people drag on so long it sometimes seems that we are reaching the stage when we may have to announce ourselves to death. It is as though one needs a special strength to die, and not a final weakness. — Ronald Blythe

What about death is to be feared? The burdens of life can be so great that it would be a comfort to know that someday it will end...that someday, we will have earned final rest. — Annette Marie

At a quarter to twelve on that Friday, Patty Jefferson died. In the final moments, Jefferson's sister Martha Carr had to help the grieving husband from his wife's bedside.13 He was, his daughter recalled, "in a state of insensibility" when Mrs. Carr "with great difficulty, got him into the library, where he fainted" - and not for a brief moment. Jefferson "remained so long insensible that they feared he would never revive." When he did come to, he was incoherent with grief, and perhaps surrendered to rage. There is a hint that he lost all control in the calamity of Patty's death. According to his daughter Patsy, "The scene that followed I did not witness" - presumably "the scene" unfolded in the library when he revived - "but the violence of his emotion, when, almost by stealth, I entered his room by night, to this day I dare not describe to myself."14 (Patsy was writing half a century later.) A — Jon Meacham

Death pulls people from our spaces so often and we accept it as our final payment for having been here and having lived, however big or small. We don't always have time to notice how things have changed in the absence of some of them. But then death pulls away someone we love, and we find that time. In here, we notice everything; growing grass and fingernails, and songs that end in a minor key. We are too sad to do anything else but watch a clock, applying seconds, minutes, and hours to the trauma and the lacerations. Time, the forever healer, they say. We find the time to wonder how everyone else is moving on, around our paralyzed selves. Ourselves unsure of roads and trees and birds and things. It all blurs and words aren't words anymore. We find the time to attempt to figure a way to rethink everything we thought about this world and why we came to it. — Darnell Lamont Walker

Well, even if the boy lives, he'll be a cripple, grotesque. Give me a good, clean death any day.' ... 'Speaking for the grotesques, I'll have to disagree. Death is so final. Whereas life, ah life is so full of possibilities. — George R R Martin

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

Everyone suffers; life is pain; and death is the final punctuation at the end of that sentence, so deal with it. I really think you can manage pain and suffering by living in fullness and being true to yourself and all those seemingly vapid platitudes. — Sufjan Stevens