Knowing When You Will Die Quotes & Sayings

The best thing the universe ever gave us is that we'll all be forgotten. [...] I kinda like the idea. That when we die, despite any pain or fear or embarrassment we experienced during our lives, despite any heartbreak or grief, we get to be dispersed back into nothingness. It makes me feel brave, knowing I'll get a blank slate at the end. You get a brief glimmer of consciousness to do with what you will and then it's given back to the universe again. I'm not religious, but even I can appreciate that that's redemption, on the grandest scale. Oblivion isn't scary; it's the closest thing to genuine absolution of sin that I can imagine. — Krystal Sutherland

Why is it that we claim to want certainty? Only fools and cowards seek certainty. Certainty is a dead end; it's a rich old widow living out the rest of her days on the Upper East Side with a little dog and big memories. Unless you are a senior citizen, you'll go nuts after a few weeks of knowing what the rest of your life will bring. You'll die of boredom. But uncertainty is what keeps us alive. It is that flip of a coin, that brief moment when it's in the air or spinning on its side, that snaps us out of our daily stasis. Some invisible Odds Gods are giving you a chance to become better, smarter, richer. What fun it is to get paid if you earned it by the skin of your teeth, by the close call. And how dreadful it is to shoot fish in a barrel. Exposure to uncertainty earns you membership in a select tribe: You are a Padawan mastering the Force. Once the trade is on, once the die has been cast, you're in a parallel, auspicious universe. — Katya G. Cohen

I didn't know anything about Opus Die except from pop culture, like Dan Brown novels, which I knew wasn't really knowing anything about Opus Die. — Wes Bentley

I don't want to be rich and famous but I want to die knowing I stood infront of a broken man and gave him one reason to smile again. — Nikki Rowe

He's kissing me like he's lost me and he's found me and I'm slipping away and he's never going to let me go. I want to scream, sometimes, I want to collapse, sometimes, I want to die knowing that I've known what it was like to live with this kiss, this heart, this soft soft explosion that makes me feel like I've taken a sip of the sun, like I've eaten clouds 8,9, and 10. — Tahereh Mafi

Living is struggling to do something impossible;
To succeed or die, knowing that you had tried. — Anne McCaffrey

Originally, I thought the story of the Alamo was all these men defending their liberty when they could have left, knowing they were going to die. That's without a doubt what appealed to me, the romance and the nobility. But, as in life, the more you dig the more you find out that things weren't quite like that. — Phil Collins

I have a fear of nuclear annihilation. I'm a child of the cold war: I didn't live more than 10 miles from a major WarPac nuclear target until the Berlin Wall came down and the CW ended. Knowing you can die horribly at any moment because of decisions made by alien intelligences thousands of miles away who don't even know you exist - there's something Lovecraftian about that, isn't there? — Charles Stross

Antonia, if Mark is right and I never see you again, if this really is good-bye, tell me one thing for certain. Tell me I won't die knowing you married him willingly. Fight them both with all you have. — Julie March

Knowing I would die for you, how would you live if you were worthy of that sacrifice? Live that way. — Brent Weeks

What is she to you anyway?"
"Here's my answer captain. She's the thing that made this all okay-the threadbare coats and the old boots and the guns that jams when you most need them to fire, the loneliness of knowing that you don't matter, that you will never matter, the fact that you're just another body, another uniform to be sent into the fold or the frost, another good boy who knows his place, who does his job, who doesn't ask questions, who will lie down and die and be forgotten. What is she? She's everything, you dumb son of a bitch. — Leigh Bardugo

What the hell?" Helena objected. "And would someone please flick a Bic or rub two sticks together? I want to die knowing exactly what killed me. — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

I think humans might be like butterflies; people die every day without many other people knowing about them, seeing their colors, hearing their stories ... and when humans are broken, they're like broken butterfly wings; suddenly there are so many beauties that are seen in different ways, so many thoughts and visions and possibilities that form, which couldn't form when the person wasn't broken! So it is not a very sad thing to be broken, after all! It's during the times of being broken, that you have all the opportunities to become things unforgettable! Just like the broken butterfly wing that I found, which has given me so many thoughts, in so many ways, has shown me so many words, and imaginations! But butterflies need to know, that it doesn't matter at all if the whole world saw their colors or not! But what matters is that they flew, they glided, they hovered, they saw, they felt, and they knew! And they loved the ones whom they flew with! And that is an existence worthwhile! — C. JoyBell C.

You can stay in the safe, secure oblivion and pain of ignorance, not knowing, and just die. You'll just die, like everyone else, and shuffle into another incarnation that won't be very different. — Frederick Lenz

Knowing how to die is knowing how to live. What is death anyway? It's the outcome of life. — Jeanne Moreau

Flying Is that what it's like when you die? Do you slip out of your skin, go soaring up into a butterscotch sky? Do you surf waves of light? How far? How high? I hope that's what it's like, but I'm afraid it's a lot more like falling with no net to catch you, and no way of knowing how hard you will hit or where you'll stop. Will you touch down back on Earth, or will you land in the nightmare you always feared you'd never wake up from? — Ellen Hopkins

You think you know horror, Irnakk? Horror is looking into the eyes of the Shadowed One, knowing you are about to die ... and then being forced to live. Horror is waking each day to see every part of your body moving on its own - a shifting mass of Protodites where once was solid metal and living tissue. Horror is what is in the eyes of your partners when they look at you ... and in the cries of your enemies when your swarm engulfs them. Don't talk to me about fear, creature - I am fear!
-Zaktan — Greg Farshtey

We are born knowing how to be just. And we die knowing we spent a lifetime pretending we didn't. — Susan Meissner

Just because the ones we love die (or fall out of our lives or disappear from the spinning of our spheres) does not mean we love them any less or erase them from the deeply etched lines of the maps we have traveled.

We find ways to keep them alive in spirit, with the brutal knowing that they are gone in body.

We can remember; we can feel & this can all be grief & it can all be love, too. — Bryonie Wise

Die knowing something. You're not here long. — Walker Evans

-I die. My footprints are cursed. I walk around the village not knowing that all who cross where I have been will stay in estrous zero and bear no young. Eventually all die. O the embarrassment. — Joe Haldeman

I shall die soon ... Here at this Dros. And what will I have achieved in my life? I have no sons nor daughters. No living kin ... Few friends. They will say, 'Here lies Druss. He killed many and birthed none'."
"They will say more than that," said Virae suddenly. "They'll say, 'Here lies Druss the Legend, who was never mean, petty nor needlessly cruel. Here was a man who never gave in, never compromised his ideals, never betrayed a friend, never despoiled a woman and never used his strength against the weak.' They'll say 'He had no sons, but many a woman asleep with her babes slept more soundly for knowing Druss stood with the Drenai.' They'll say many things, whitebeard. Through many generations they will say them, and men with no strength will find strength when they hear them."
"That would be pleasant," said the old man, smiling. — David Gemmell

Before I sleep I normally lie awake and think of the future. I've resolved I can't understand life the way I can understand an equation or formula. For so long I've wanted to find concrete answers or die trying. It's hard at first to find comfort in not knowing or to make peace with it. But I think it is the only way to make it in this life. Getting stuck on a question only makes me estranged from the world. — Shane Crash

The estranged self, hidden with its inexhaustible potential, lies undiscovered by many people who die without even knowing that it exists. — Kazuo Chiba

Hope? Hope is not the absence of tragedy, my friend. It is the conviction that tragedy can be endured. Hope is the spark in you that is not subdued in the face of the vast and callous indifference of the universe. Hope is that which is not shattered by hardship. Hope is the urge to fight what is wrong even when you know it will destroy you. Hope is the decision to love and need someone knowing that they will one day die. For me to promise that there are no obstacles would be the cruelest lie I could possibly tell. That lie is not hope. Hope is the will which needs no lies. — Travis Beacham

Where will you go, when the clock strikes twelve? What will you do, when you face yourself? How will you live, knowing what you've done? How will you die, if your soul's already gone? — Marie Lu

Maybe it's because we innately know that everything is impermanent that we so desperately cling to it.
But cling we do.
We know that our youth vanishes that we and our loved one will die one day, that whatever we have accumulated can easily be taken away from us, that one day our skills might not be wanted, that a day may come when our love might not be reciprocated. But we go on clinging.
Everywhere we turn we are faced with impermanence. (..)
The more we cling - of course - the more pain we feel as things fade, disappear, die around us.
And sometimes the more we cling, the more these things happen. (..)
The key to being able to let go of all the stuff you're holding on to is knowing that you'll be okay if you don't have it.
And that's the truth.
You can survive with very little. And though the passing of people and things can be painful, you will survive. — John C. Parkin

He hesitated. 'Serpine used my wife and child as a weapon against me. In order to do so, he had to kill them. He took my family's death and he made it about me. Valkyrie, when you die, it will be your death and yours alone. Let it come to you on your own terms.' She nodded.
'Valkyrie Cain,' he said, 'it has been an absolute pleasure knowing you. — Derek Landy

Do not waste your life in vain, or take life in vain. Where there is faith, there is also kindness and forgiveness, and where there is forgiveness, there you will find true balance - the most coveted prize of all. It is easy to stray, misled by one's own greed, or by easy pleasure. Men are weak, and many step off the path never knowing it. It is nothing but a gentle lie to say that most will find heaven when they die. Traveler, by your faith, forgive those who stand in your way. Yet, if they should seek to betray truth, then wield justice to bring their journey to its rightful end. — Miyuki Miyabe

But I'll tell them of your other side, too. The side I saw sometimes when you spoke softly to the camel, and when you gently touched the leaves of the saltbush,only picking what you needed. And the times you rescued me. I will tell them how you chose prison rather than let me die. Because you did, didn't you? You knew, right from when that snake bit me, it was all over. When I asked you to stay with me in the plane, you did it knowing you were turning yourself in. — Lucy Christopher

I've never been in love. I will die without knowing what it feels like to need to see one person's face when you go to sleep at night, to crave seeing it when you wake up. I wish I knew. — Libba Bray

The way I feel about suicide is, I like knowing it's there. I like having it as an option. Because if I'm going to kill myself, then nothing really matters, so I might as well stick around for one more day. Just to see what happens. Out of curiosity. If I'm going to die anyway, then nothing is of particular consequence, so why not see what happens next? That way all I have to do is live until tomorrow. I know I can always handle one more day. — Nina De Gramont

There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child - you grow up knowing you aren't allowed to disappoint, you're not even allowed to die. — Gillian Flynn

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book ... or you take a trip ... and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken. — Anais Nin

I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true ... If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses. — Amy Tan

Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable. — Meghan O'Rourke

In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war [WW II], and I defy the powers of darkness which they represent. I am proud to die for my ideals, and I am sorry for the sons of Britain who have died without knowing why. — William Joyce

We die, he said.
We die, I said. And kn owing this how do we live?
Knowing this, we live.
We live. — Alan Spence

Most of all, God has blessed us by giving us the privilege of knowing Him and walking with Him every day. He did this by sending His Son into the world to die for our sins. — Billy Graham

(a) God intended Jesus to die as the climax of his rescue operation; (b) the intentions and actions that sent Jesus to his death were desperately wicked. This doesn't for a moment justify the wickedness. Rather, it declares that God, knowing how powerful that wickedness was, had long planned to nullify its power by taking its full force upon himself, in the person of his Messiah, the man in whom God himself would be embodied. — N. T. Wright

I suppose I will die never knowing what pumpkin pie tastes like when you have room for it. — Robert Breault

We are only chance visitants to this jungle of blind mutations. The natural world existed when we did not, and it will continue to exist long after we are gone. The supernatural crept into life only when the door of consciousness was opened in our heads. The moment we stepped through that door, we walked out on nature. Say what we will about it and deny it till we die
we are blighted by our knowing what is too much to know and too secret to tell one another if we are to stride along our streets, work at our jobs, and sleep in our beds. It is the knowledge of a race of beings that is only passing through this shoddy cosmos. — Thomas Ligotti

Too many years fighting back tears. Why can't the past just die? Wishing you were somehow here again, knowing we must say goodbye. Try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try! No more memories, no more silent tears, no more gazing across the wasted years. Help me say goodbye. — Charles Hart

In another place, their sons were killed between the barbs of their own guard wire, killed with misfired bombs while squirming in the mire like animals, killed with friendly fire, killed sometimes without knowing that they were about to die - a bullet through the head while joking with a comrade, laughing — Jonathan Safran Foer

And that's about all any of us can really hope for, to die with our dignity, to die with honor and valor. To die knowing we did everything we could. — Pittacus Lore

Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. ("Death Ship") — Richard Matheson

If you have to die [ ... ] better to go down fighting. Better to die in company. Better not be the last, and alone, weighed down with all that knowing. — Elizabeth Bear

Living was struggling to do something impossible - to succeed, or die, knowing you had tried! — Anne McCaffrey

In my small way, I preserved and catalogued, and dipped into the vast ocean of learning that awaited, knowing all the time that the life of one man was insufficient for even the smallest part of the wonders that lay within. It is cruel that we are granted the desire to know, but denied the time to do so properly. We all die frustrated; it is the greatest lesson we have to learn. — Iain Pears

I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die. — Adrienne Rich

I don't want to die and come back and not remember your face, Will. I don't want to spend another lifetime not knowing who you are! — Courtney Allison Moulton

Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore defeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems. — Robinson Jeffers

To die for a cause is easy, to live, to be steady day after day doing the small things, taking care of the details, knowing you will be forgotten by history and still choosing to do so, that is real courage — Anonymous

You ask: Why is the malady of death fatal? She answers: Because whoever has it doesn't know he's a carrier, of death. And also because he's like to die without any life to die to, and without evn knowing that's what he's doing. — Marguerite Duras