Death Veil Quotes & Sayings

My mother used to say that rain here pours like a blessing, like a thick veil that parts to reveal the bride's face. But nearly every day, when this rain parted, it revealed a long line of soldiers, like you, like death, marching toward us, and we would scatter with a practiced silence and hide. — Mia Kirshner

Because the world was not the world, that was the thing, that was the terrible truth he had discovered. It was a dream world, a veil of light and sound and matter that the real world hid behind. Walkers in a dream of death, that's what they were, and the dreamer was the girl, this Girl from Nowhere. The world was a dream and she was dreaming them! — Justin Cronin

So, even for those of us who can't personally witness Salome's dance, the fifth veil surely will fall. It will fall at the moment of our death. As we lie there, helpless, beyond distraction, electricity stealing out of our brains like a con man stealing out of a sucker's neighborhood, it will occur to many of us that everything we ever did, we did for money. And at that instant, right before the stars blink off, we will, according to what else we may have learned in life, burn with an unendurable regret
or have us a good silent laugh at our own expense. — Tom Robbins

Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil. It was like a wall of stone and steel. The funeral was going on outside. All things concerning death and burial were said and done. Finish. End. Never-more. Darkness. Deep hole. Dissolution. Eternity. Weeping and wailing outside. Inside the expensive black folds were resurrection and life. — Zora Neale Hurston

The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt - industrial - modern - all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos - all these
entangled in your mummied roots - and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form! — Allen Ginsberg

Are your eyes dimmed with death's black veil? — Aya Kanno

I have seen things. I saw the great Mantis God of Africa fighting a creature from the primordial depths, a billion-year war until finally the Mantis threw the writhing creature from the heavenly sky into the deepest pit. I've seen the past through the lens of the Eye and it wasn't in tasteful sepia. It was etched in blood and death and filtered through a veil of tears. — Charlie Human

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generation of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle."
-from "Song of Myself — Walt Whitman

We derive insightful perception by observing and studying, comparing and contrasting. Without investigating why we prefer the veil of life to the cloak of death and without considering how to create dangerously, live honorably, and die gloriously without remorse and regret, we risk dissipating what precious little shelf life our brittle humanity grants us. — Kilroy J. Oldster

He knew that she was to have an elaborate wedding, and the being who loved her most, who would love her forever, would not even have the right to die for her. Jealousy, which until that time had been drowned in weeping, took possession of his soul. He prayed to God that lightning of divine justice would strike Fermina Daza as she was about to give her vow of love and obedience to a man who wanted her for his wife only as a social adornment, and he went into rapture at the vision of the bride, his bride or no one's, lying face up on the flagstones of the Cathedral, her orange blossoms laden with the dew of death, and the foaming torrent of her veil covering the funerary marbles of the fourteen bishops who were buried in front of the main altar. Once his revenge was consummated, however, he repented of his own wickedness, and then he saw Fermina Daza rising from the ground, her spirit intact, distant but alive, because it was not possible for him to imagine the world without her. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If human love hath power to penetrate the veil
and hath it not?
then there are yet living here a few who have the blessedness of knowing that an angel loves them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The woman who presents herself to the spectator as a 'picture' forever arranged, is, for the contemplative mind, the chiefest danger. Sometimes one meets a woman who is beast turning human. Such a person's every movement will reduce to an image of a forgotten experience; a mirage of an eternal wedding cast on the racial memory; as insupportable a joy as would be the vision of an eland coming down an aisle of trees, chapleted with orange blossoms and bridal veil, a hoof raised in the economy of fear,stepping in the trepidation of flesh that will become myth; as the unicorn is neither man nor beast deprived, but human hunger pressing its breast to its prey.
Such a woman is the infected carrier of the past; before her the structure of our head and jaws ache -- we feel that we could eat her, she who is eaten death returning, for only then do we put our face close to the blood on the lips of our forefathers. — Djuna Barnes

The Grace represented the world of life, the world of the dead, and the way magic and Creation linked them. The outer circle of the design represented the beginning of the infinite world of the dead. Inside the outer circle was a square, its points just touching the outer circle. Inside the square was another circle, just touching the insides of the square. The area between those two circles with the square represented the world of life. The inside circle was life's beginnings, the outer circle its end, where souls crossed through the veil into the eternity of the underworld. An eight-pointed star inside the smaller circle was the Light of Creation. Lines from the star's points radiated out across the inner circle. the square. and across the outer circle that also symbolized the veil to the wold of the dead. The lines radiating outward from the Light represented the spark of the gift that journeyed with everyone from birth, through life, and on into death. — Terry Goodkind

Besides, the story is ambivalent and mysterious in its ending. Is this Alkestis returning from down below? Why does she have a veil over her face? Could it be that when we forcefully bring back to life what has been lost through love what we get is only a shate of its former reality? Maybe we can never succeed fully in restoring the soul to life. Maybe she will always be veiled and at least partially shielded from the rigors of actual life. Love demands a submission that is total. — Thomas Moore

Though I'm not sure, I thought I saw women dressed in black, with her head and face covered by a black veil, duck behind a tree as we approached the road and parked car. Hiding so we wouldn't see her. But I caught a glimpse, enough to reveal the rope of lustrous pearls she wore. Pearls that were there for a thin white hand to lift and nervously, out of long habit, twist and untwist into a knot. Only one women I knew did that
and she was the perfect one to wear black, and should run to hide!
Forever hide! Color all her days black! Every last one! — V.C. Andrews

Healing of every sort-physical, psychological, energetic, and spiritual-can take place over time or happen in the twinkling of an eye. That our loved ones in heaven know of our suffering and care deeply about us and the onward flow of our lives speaks once again of the love, presence, and connection extending beyond the veil of death. — Lee Lawson

I can't be responsible for losing you, the way I almost lost you tonight."
The sense of vertigo is so bad now that Ryan seems fuzzy, as if I'm seeing him through a veil of light.
'You're already responsible,' Ryan implores. 'I'm a marked man. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me. With you, or without you, I'm marked for death. And I'll take my chances with you. In
any life, given the same choice, I would choose you. Are you hearing me? — Rebecca Lim

The gospel, centered profoundly for Jesus in the announcement that the reign of God is at hand, is eschatological in character. It pulls back the veil on the coming reign of God, thereby revealing the horizon of the world's future. The gospel portrays the coming of Jesus, and particularly his death and resurrection, as the decisive, truly eschatological event in the world's history. — Darrell L. Guder

Our crucifixes exhibit the pain, but they veil, perhaps necessarily, the obscenity: but the death of the God-Man was both. — Charles Williams

There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was singing ... The leaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them all low to the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays. — Elizabeth Gaskell

Love is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the pathway of discipleship. It comforts, counsels, cures, and consoles. It leads us through valleys of darkness and through the veil of death. In the end love leads us to the glory and grandeur of eternal life. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought ... in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system ... but his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them ... Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression. — Andrew Dickson White

Finally, still kneeling, he looked up at the woman.
Sturm caught his breath as the woman removed the hood of her cloak and drew the veil from her face. For the first time,human eyes looked upon the face of Alhana Starbreeze.
Muralasa, the elves called her-Princess of the Night. Her hair, black and soft as the night wind, was held in place by a net as fine as cobweb, twinkling with tiny jewels like stars. Her skin was the pale hue of the silver moon, her eyes the deep, dark purple of the night sky and her lips the color of the red moon's shadows.
The knight's first thought was to give thanks to Paladine that he was already on his knees. His second was that death would be a paltry price to pay to serve her, and his third that he musk say something, but he seemed to have forgotten the words of any known language. — Margaret Weis

When the veil of death has been drawn between us and the objects of our regard, how quick-sighted do we become to their merits, and how bitterly do we remember words, or even looks, of unkindness which may have escaped in our intercourse with them. — Reginald Heber

Just when normal life felt almost possible - when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness (the prismatic spray of light through an icicle; the stillness of a sunrise), some small thing would go awry and the veil of optimism was torn away, the barren world revealed. They learned, somehow, to wait those times out. There was no cure, no answer, no reparation. — David Wroblewski

Poor friend and learned physician, my sensitive and gentle companion, instead of treating and curing the sick you yourself have fallen beneath the yoke of death, and now belong to death's kingdom. For many months you have witnessed such suffering and horror as the human mind can scarcely conceive, as he who sees cannot believe. Perhaps it is for the best that your nerves have betrayed you, that a benevolent veil of forgetfulness has fallen upon your mind. Now, at least, you need not fret or worry about what the future may hold in store for you. — Miklos Nyiszli

The mist covered the ground like the white veil over a new bride's face. The air was thick with smoke - smelling of death and decay. The birds were no longer singing their sweet songs, nor were there any immediate signs of life in the area. The charred ground crunched under my feet and I realized it was the only sound I could hear in the eerie silence. I looked up at the once milky moon and cringed at its new bright crimson color. What could've possibly caused the moon to turn blood red? I thought to myself as I continued to walk cautiously through the unrecognizable forest. — Christine Gabriel

I shirk not. I long for work. I pant for a life full of striving. I am no coward, to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm, nor even quail before the awful shadow of the Veil. But hearken, O Death! Is not this my life hard enough, - is not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enough, - is not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough, but that thou must needs enter here, - thou, O Death? — W.E.B. Du Bois

Death, with funereal shades in vain surrounds me, My reason through his darkness seeth light: 'Tis the last step which brings me close to Thee: 'Tis the veil falling, 'twixt Thy face and mine. — Alphonse De Lamartine

But if you cross me again Akil, so-help-me, I'll find a way to kill you this time."
His eyes lit up at the prospect, as though he'd accepted a challenge I didn't even know I'd laid down. "I'd expect nothing less."
Demons; only they can get a cheap thrill from a death threat. — Pippa DaCosta

Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes - the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable - the unloving and the unloved - there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death - the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain. ("The Lifted Veil") — George Eliot

The splendors of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sudden Light
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turn'd so,
Some veil did fall, - I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more? — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

He'd been about to turn away when she lifted her face to the moon and sang.
It was not in any language that he knew. Not in the common tongue, or in Eyllwe, or in the languages of Fenharrow or Melisande, or anywhere else on the continent
This language was ancient, each word full of power and rage and agony.
She did not have a beautiful voice. And many of the words sounded like half sobs, the vowels stretched by the pangs of sorrow, the consonants hardened by anger. She beat her breast in time, so full of savage grace, so at odds with the black gown and veil she wore. The hair on the back of his neck stood as the lament poured from her mouth, unearthly and foreign, a song of grief so old that it predated the stone castle itself.
And the the song finished, its end as butal and sudden as Nehemia's death had been.
She stood there a few moments, silent and unmoving. — Sarah J. Maas

No matter what we are or who created us, we're all energy. And energy that becomes bound together by love cannot be torn apart. Not by time. Not by grief and pain. Not even the veil of death. — Callie Hart

Let us remember: when we talk of the rending of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant; but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free. — A.W. Tozer

With his coming are the dread fires born again. The hills burn, and the land turns sere. The tides of men run out, and the hours dwindle. The wall is pierced, and the veil of parting raised. Storms rumble beyond the horizon, and the fires of heaven purge the earth. There is no salvation without destruction, no hope this side of death.
-fragment from The Prophecies of the Drqagon believed translated by N'Delia Basolaine First Maid and Swordfast to Raidhen of Hol Cuchone (circa 400 AB) — Robert Jordan

When Death, or adverse Fortune's ruthless gale,
Tears our best hopes away, the wounded Heart
Exhausted, leans on all that can impart
The charm of Sympathy; her mutual wail
How soothing! never can her warm tears fail
To balm our bleeding grief's severest smart;
Nor wholly vain feign'd Pity's solemn art,
Tho' we should penetrate her sable veil.
Concern, e'en known to be assum'd, our pains
Respecting, kinder welcome far acquires
Than cold Neglect, or Mirth that Grief profanes.
Thus each faint Glow-worm of the Night conspires,
Gleaming along the moss'd and darken'd lanes,
To cheer the Gloom with her unreal fires. — Anna Seward

Life, ongoing life, is really what death rituals are about. Mourners who are fortunate enough to be enveloped in familiar traditions by family and caring friends can become revitalized and newly sustained by the process. Mourning traditions revive and animate memories and feelings. They satisfy a human need of validation and inclusiveness; that is, we need to feel that we are an acceptable part of a larger whole. We bid farewell to those who have gone to another dimension, and by sharing memories of the deceased, people reinforce feelings and even beliefs about the deceased after the veil of death is drawn closed. — Jacqueline S. Thursby

When mourning the loss of our departed friends, I cannot help but think that in every death there is a birth; the spirit leaves the body dead to us, and passes to the other side of the veil alive to that great and noble company that are also working for the accomplishment of the purpose of God, in the redemption and salvation of a fallen world. — Wilford Woodruff