Quotes & Sayings About Living To Die

Jesus didn't die to keep us safe. He died to make us dangerous. Faithfulness is not holding the fort. It's storming the gates of hell. The will of God is not an insurance plan. It's a daring plan. The complete surrender of your life to the cause of Christ isn't radical. It's normal. It's time to quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. It's time to go all in and all out for the All in All. Pack your coffin! — Mark Batterson

What if there is no dirt on Merjack?
Oh, I can answer this one. (Omari raised his hand like he was in a classroom, then dropped it to his side.) We all die. (Omari)
I just love teenage angst. By the way, chip, there are worse things in life than dying. (Nero)
Like what? (Omari)
Living as a slave. (Alix) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Any stupid ass can die- you have to work at living! — Jack LaLanne

So many people want to die when all they need is to start living. — Anonymous

A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.
It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.
Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. — Theodore Roosevelt

We might as well die as to go on living like this. — Charlie Chaplin

At those critical junctures, the question is not simply whether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living. — Paul Kalanithi

Nobody gets to pick their time to die, but living every day to the max is something we all get to do. — Lurlene McDaniel

You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy's leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and you think there's a difference, like the banker's just doing his job but the loan shark's a criminal. I like the loan shark better because he doesn't pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be where I am sitting right now. I'm not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men's club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid's grades. Die at my desk, and they'll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt's hit the coffin. — Dennis Lehane

TO THOSE WHO WOULD USE INTELLIGENCE IN THE BATTLE AGAINST DEATH - TO STRENGTHEN THE WILL TO LIVE AGAINST THE WISH TO DIE, AND TO REPLACE WITH LOVE THE BLIND COMPULSION TO GIVE HOSTAGES TO HATRED AS THE PRICE OF LIVING. — Karl A. Menninger

All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done. II find most people spend too much time living as if they're never going to die. — Edward Albee

What happens if the cause dies? What happens if people die? Why would I subject myself to that? It's just easier to not." She said.
"I suppose, but what's the use of living in freedom if you can't free others, too?" I asked her. — Meghan Blistinsky

I think normally people think that they're afraid to die but I actually think people are more afraid to live. People are more afraid to make the choices that they want because they're very hard decisions to make in order to be happy. I think a lot of people are really afraid of that. It's easy to be in a band because you have a lot of things to hide behind so that's really not always living ... that doesn't always constitute as living life the way you want. But at times you have to make decisions that sometimes hurt others in order to live. — Gerard Way

It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences. — Hunter S. Thompson

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

I think the world has mostly ended because the cities we wander through are as rotten as we are. Buildings have collapsed. Rusted cars clog the streets. Most glass is shattered and the wind drifting through the hollow high-rises moans like an animal left to die. I don't know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just us? The Dead replacing the Living? I guess it's not so important. Once you're arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which road you took. — Isaac Marion

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still. — Terry Pratchett

So many people die though they live, and it is not as if they don't have life; they only refuse to keep breathing! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

And why not death rather than living torment? To die is to be banish'd from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her Is self from self: a deadly banishment! — William Shakespeare

Six months ago when she first came up with the idea to kill Wilson, back when she was living in Memphis, she'd started going to church again. Since she was spending so much time thinking about sinister things, the least she could do, she reasoned, was to think about God and his love twice a week at church so that she wouldn't become a total sociopath. And rather than kill other people who were stand-ins for the person she really wanted to kill, like serial killers did, she'd be kind and generous to others and hone in on the one who deserved to die. And her plan had worked extremely well. Since she'd started planning to kill Wilson, and then decided to destroy his family instead, she felt no animosity toward anyone but him. Almost none at all! — Elizabeth Stuckey-French

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

When I look at small things, I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet ... When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world ... — Kobo Abe

It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go - let it die away - go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow - and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. — C.S. Lewis

When there's love enough you can stand anything. When there isn't, you can stand nothing. Living together every day you find out a lot you didn't know, and love can't keep still. It's got to grow or die. — Kate Langley Bosher

I was finally beginning to perceive that no matter how many dead people I might see, or people at the instant of their death, I would never manage to grasp death, that very moment, precisely in itself. It was one thing or the other: either you are dead, and then in any case there's nothing else to understand, or else you are not yet dead, and in that case, even with the rifle at the back of your head or the rope around your neck, death remains incomprehensible, a pure abstraction, this absurd idea that I, the only living person in the world, could disappear. Dying, we may already be dead, but we never die, that moment never comes, or rather it never stops coming, there it is, it's coming, and then it's still coming, and then it's already over, without ever having come. — Jonathan Littell

Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die. — Nicolaus Cusanus

When Marguerite (Marguerite-Louise of France, Grand Duchess of Tuscany), caught malaria, she claimed the royal family of Tuscany was trying to murder her, but that she would, in fact, rather die than return to her husband. Louis XIV asked the pope to threaten excommunication if Marguerite persisted, and the pontiff sent her a harsh letter. She didn't fear hell, she replied she was already living in it. — Eleanor Herman

I believe in revelation, but not in revelation which each religion claims to possess ... but in the living revelation which surrounds us on every side - mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die. — Jose Rizal

To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way. — Henry Miller

Most people die, living their life paycheck to paycheck,trying to stretch out each dollar, as like a roll of toilet paper. Toiling each tissue, never quite wiping away all the shit from their asses, where the world always takes what little they flush, back into its deprived system, always hungry. — Anthony Liccione

The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die. — Albert Camus

Weary with my weariness, white last moon, sole regret, not even. To be dead, before her, on her, with her, and turn, dead on dead, about poor mankind, and never have to die anymore, from among the living. Not even, not even that. My moon was here below, far below, the little I was able to desire. And one day, soon, soon, one earthlit night, beneath the earth, a dying being will say, like me, in the earthlight, Not even, not even that, and die, without having been able to find regret. — Samuel Beckett

I'm just learning every day and I hope to continue that until the day I die. I'm just trying to learn and experience as much as I possibly can. I look at acting, at how I look at being involved in a job and living my life and prioritising. — Emma Stone

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

When we don't allow ourselves to hope, we don't allow ourselves to have purpose. Without purpose, without meaning, life is dark. We've no light within, and we're just living to die. — Dean Koontz

This is why we shouldn't be afraid. There are two possibilities: One is that there's more to life than the physical life, that our souls "will find an even higher place to dwell" when this life is over. If that's true, there's no reason to fear failure or death. The other possibility is that this life is all there is. And if that's true, then we have to really live it - we have to take it for everything it has and "die enormous" instead of "living dormant," as I said way back on "Can I Live." Either way, fear is a waste of time. — Jay-Z

Living a life that in fact lives them, as well as death dies them every moment since the triumphal birth in order to die. — Sorin Cerin

The rims of his eyelids were burning. A blow received straightens a man up and makes the body move forward, to return that blow, or a punch-to jump, to get a hard-on, to dance: to be alive. But a blow received may also cause you to bend over, to shake, to fall down, to die. When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see oneself living at great speed, right up to the moment of death. Detectives, poets, domestic servants and priests rely on abjection. From it, they draw their power. It circulates in their veins. It nourishes them. — Jean Genet

It's not that I have any moral compunctions about work ... but grampa may die to-morrow and he may live for ten years. Meanwhile we're living above our income and all we've got to show for it is a farmer's car and a few clothes. We keep an apartment that we've only lived in three months and a little old house way off in nowhere. We're frequently bored and yet we won't make any effort to know any one except the same crowd who drift around California all summer wearing sport clothes and waiting for their families to die. — F Scott Fitzgerald

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

The saints are persecuted, eyes are closed to the truth, darkness is the daily wear. The most savage beasts are those that are blind. No one thinks seriously of Hell. Oh the wickedness of people!" In the name of the King' means, in these days, " In the name of the Revolution!" No man knows where his duty lies, to be living or to be dead. To die in sanctity is forbidden, burial is a civic matter. — Victor Hugo

Its hard to die. Harder to live — Dan Simmons

The "romance" of a missionary is often made up of monotony and drudgery; there often is no glamour in it; it doesn't stir a man's spirit or blood. So don't come out to be a missionary as an experiment; it is useless and dangerous. Only come if you feel you would rather die than not come. Don't come if you want to make a great name or want to live long. Come if you feel there is no greater honor, after living for Christ, than to die for Him. — C.T. Studd

Yep, that girl was as dead as you could get inside. But Scarlett Jo wasn't worried. Not really. Because sometimes a person has to die in order to really live. — Denise Hildreth Jones

Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter. With an average life expectancy of 78.2 years in the US (subtracting eight hours a day for sleep), I have around 250,00 conscious hours remaining to me in which I could be smiling or scowling, rejoicing in my life, in this race, in this story, or moaning and complaining about my troubles. I can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breaths, to my wife and my children and my neighbors, or I can grasp after the vapor and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live. And, like Adam, I will still die in the end. — N.D. Wilson

Great things seem complex and cause the nations to rush towards the minor things that seem easy to reach, hence, they perish. And again my memory echoes ... my people die for lack of knowledge. — Blaise Tshibwabwa

I prefer to die fighting than living defeated — Luigina Sgarro

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.

Fear is flooding over me, like water.
The living know nothing. Teach me, dead ones, how to die without fear, or at least without horror. Because death is senseless, as is life. — Mesa Selimovic

All is ready. Except me. I am being given, if I may venture the expression, birth to into death, such is my impression. The feet are clear already, of the great cunt of existence. Favourable presentation I trust. My head will be the last to die. Haul in your hands. I can't. The render rent. My story ended I'll be living yet. Promising lag. That is the end of me. I shall say I no more. — Samuel Beckett

The key to happiness is having dreams and the key to success is fulfilling those dreams.and eventually one day we'll die, just like eventually one day you'll die too, so you can't let the fear of something that's completely and absolutely inevitable prevent you from living your dreams and doing what you love. — Jeb Corliss

Strive to discover the mystery
before life is taken from you.
If while living you fail to find yourself,
to know yourself,
how will you be able to understand
the secret of your existence
after you die? — Farid Al-Din Attar

Do you want to die, Gabriel?" "No." His hand fell to cover hers, heated and rough. "I just want that moment when the choice to live or die isn't my responsibility. Not my life, or anyone else's." Pale eyes fixed on her. "More than anything, I want a reason to keep living. — Cole McCade

To live is to die. To die is to live. To avoid death, is to avoid living. — Sunday Adelaja

I am the living dead girl because I am too weak to die. I hate those crying dough women on TV because they are just like me, weak and broken and clinging to the hands that hold us under. — Elizabeth Scott

Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.
Let it teach you Being.
Let it teach you integrity - which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.
Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem. — Eckhart Tolle

At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It's you the hearse is taking away. I don't want to be there for your cremation; I don't want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, 'Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr'* and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushed over you. Neither of us wants to outlive the other. We've often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we'd like to spend it together.
*The world is empty. I don't want to go on living. — Andre Gorz

I believe that there is one only living and true God, existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ... that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are a revelation from God ... that God did send His own Son to become man, die in the room and stead of sinners, and thus to lay a foundation for the offer of pardon and salvation to all mankind so as all may be saved who are willing to accept the Gospel offer. — Roger Sherman

This humble person has been alive long enough to see two generations of children grow up, and knows how rare it is for ordinary birds to give birth to a swan. The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way into the world. — Arthur Golden

Adoration is not some fervent spiritual or poetic exercise reserved for a chosen few. I believe the human race will die out and destroy nature if it does not learn again how to adore God, the God in all of us, God shining and living in nature, and learn again how to act from and in that spirit of adoration. — Andrew Harvey

Walker and Timothy sat quietly for a very long time. "Why do so many people make it so hard for anyone to help them or to love them?" Walker asked finally.
Timothy chuckled. "Ah, Walker - if I could explain all of humanity's foibles, I'd be a rich man indeed, at least as far as money goes. I believe people are like that because of fear. They fear being loved because they fear that if they're loved, they'll have to love back. And if they love back, they may get hurt. And many people aren't ready to put their hearts on the line like that. Mostly because they don't have anything to fall back on. It's quite a shame, really, because they hurt themselves by trying to avoid getting hurt. But we have to be willing to die many times if we're ever going to get on with this business of living. — Tom Walsh

[T]he unnamed soldier is a gift. The named soldier
dead, melted wax
demands a response among the living ... a response no-one can make. Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous
as if cursed
while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?
Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living. — Steven Erikson

And those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest.
Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity?
The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: "You are under arrest"
If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

But then this morning I had to tell him goodbye. And he held me and kissed me so much, I thought I might die if he let go.
But I didn't die. Because he let go and here I am. Still living. Still breathing.
Just barely. — Colleen Hoover

The only chains God wants us to wear are the chains of righteousness
not the chains of hopeless subjectivism, not the shackles of risk-free living, not the fetters of horoscope decision making
just the chains befitting a bond servant of Christ Jesus. Die to self. Live for Christ. And then do what you want, and go where you want, for God's glory. — Kevin DeYoung

Combat isn't where you might die
though that does happen
it's where you find out whether you get to keep on living. Don't underestimate the power of that revelation. Don't underestimate the things young men will wager in order to play that game one more time. — Sebastian Junger

Death is like giving birth. Birth can be painful. Sometimes women die from giving birth. However, when the baby is born, all that pain (that was endured) vanishes in an instant. Love for that tiny baby makes one forget the pain, the fear. And as I've said before, love between mother and child is the highest experience, the closest to divine love.
You might wonder about the parallel I'm making between birth and death. But I say to you, the fear and pain accompanying an awful death is over quickly. Beyond that portal one is suddenly in the light, in oneness and bliss ... Just as a woman heals rapidly after childbirth and then is able to fall in love with her baby, those who pass over also are able to fall in love with a new life."-Kuan Yin (From "Oracle of Compassion: the Living Word of Kuan Yin — Hope Bradford

Tree' is the title of a dance, is the cadence of a song. The black silhouette is only a moment of stillness caught by the shutter of the eye. It is finely tuned to the harmonics of the air. It loves both the sun and the wind and is let turn towards its beloved and so become itself.
This is the dance of all living things. This is why endangered peoples say if they have their dance they will never die. — Amanda Fieldsend

You must not die. You must not die by any hand, but least of all your own. Until the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not die. For if he is still with the quick Undead, your death would make you even as he is. No, you must live! You must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakable. You must fight Death himself, though he come to you in pain or in joy. By the day, or the night, in safety or in peril! On your living soul I charge you that you do not die. Nay, nor think of death, till this great evil be past. — Bram Stoker

Today I share about my addiction and recovery journey as often as possible because I don't want to die all alone in a dark closet, shrouded in shame beside the decomposing skeletons I tried so desperately to hide. I want to live. — Shannon Egan

You can't live life waiting for things to go wrong, because then you're not really living. Everyone is going to die. That is part of the journey of living. What matters most is living each day you do have like it might be yout last. — Missy Johnson

It's easy to cry that you're beaten - and die;
It's easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight
Why, that's the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred,
Just have one more try - it's dead easy to die,
It's the keeping-on-living that's hard. — Robert Service

In the life of the individual man, virtue is the sole good; such things as health, happiness, possessions, are of no account. Since virtue resides in the will, everything really good or bad in a man's life depends only upon himself. He may become poor, but what of it? He can still be virtuous. A tyrant may put him in prison, but he can still persevere in living in harmony with Nature. He may be sentenced to death, but he can die nobly, like Socrates. Therefore every man has perfect freedom, provided he emancipates himself from mundane desires. Stoicism — Piper Kerman

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I cant say that it's even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothin but you do. If you aint they'll know it. They'll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. — Cormac McCarthy

Better to sink with tempests raging o'er
Masts all dismantled and hull gaping wide
Than rest and rot on some unclouded shore
The idle plaything of the listless tide.

Better the grime of battle on the brow,
With grim defeat to crush thy dying hand
Than through long years of peace to tyrant bow
Or dwell captive in a strangers land.

Better the castle with beleaguered gate,
By battle's lightning shivered in a day
Than peaceful walls in pomp of sullen state,
Through centuries sinking to a dull decay.

Better resolve to win thy heart's desire,
And striving bravely, die in the endeavor
Than have the embers of some smothered fire
Lie smouldering in thy saddened soul forever. — Sam Davis

I too get goosebumps when someone talks of national pride and integrity but my brain knows better. What is there to be so proud of pieces of land? People die for them. They kill each other for them. They behave as if being born on this piece makes them superior to the people living on other pieces. Just because people who speak the same language and eat the same food surround you makes you a proud owner of the land you share, completely ignoring the fact that given a chance, the same people can slit your throat at the slightest provocation? — Amit Sharma

To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time.
That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life
while you're living. — Mitch Albom

I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible; to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit. — Dawna Markova

World is sensation. We drift in an ocean of sensory stimuli: motion, color, texture, shape, heat, cold, natural symphonies of sound, an infinite number of scents, tastes beyond the human ability to catalogue. Nothing but sensation endures. Living things all die. Great cities do not last. — Dean Koontz

To be born, to live and to die is merely to change forms ... And what does one form matter any more than another? ... Each form has its own sort of happiness and unhappiness. From the elephant down to the flea ... from the flea down to the sensitive and living molecule which is the origin of all, there is not a speck in the whole of nature that does not feel pain or pleasure. — John Dewey

When you have been born in a war like me, living in a war as a child, when you have been in wars as a war correspondent all your life - trust me! You develop a form of fatalism; you are always ready to die. — Oriana Fallaci

Let living know they will die one day. They ought to live wisely. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I can't stop," the shark rasped. "If I stop, I shall sink and die. That's the way I'm made. I have to keep going always, and even when I get where I'm going, I'll have to keep on. That's living. — Catherynne M Valente

O Tree of God - Tree of Life, In the gift of your shade, I stand, my heart raised to your Creator. Your branches call me to reach out in all directions to many people. Your branches remind me of the sheltering arms of God. Your roots call me to be rooted in all that is good and nourishing. Your roots ask me to spend time in the ground of my being. Teach me, like you, to praise God in the silence of my being. Help me to surrender unnecessary words. Draw me, like a magnet, into the abiding love of God. And when it is time for me to die, teach me to die gracefully and joyfully. Teach me to let go as you let go of your leaves each autumn. In living and in dying, teach me to praise God by living well and dying well. May it come to pass! — Macrina Wiederkehr

Unless you become alert and aware in life, unless you change the quality of your living, you will not die consciously. And only a conscious death can bring you to a conscious birth; and then a far more conscious life opens its doors. — Rajneesh

In essence, we live only to die; the Christian dies only to live; it is a celebration of life, not death. — Danny L. Deaube

Why are you afraid of death? Is it perhaps because you do not know how to live? If you knew how to live fully, would you be afraid of death? If you loved the trees, the sunset, the birds, the falling leaf; if you were aware of men and women in tears, of poor people, and really felt love in your heart, would you be afraid of death? Would you? Don't be persuaded by me. Let us think about it together. You do not live with joy, you are not happy, you are not vitally sensitive to things; and is that why you ask what is going to happen when you die? Life for you is sorrow, and so you are much more interested in death. You feel that perhaps there will be happiness after death. But that is a tremendous problem, and I do not know if you want to go into it. After all, fear is at the bottom of all this - fear of dying, fear of living, fear of suffering. If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether yo u are living or dead. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Soldiering was about fighting. It was about killing people before they killed you. It was about having your way by force and guile in a dangerous world, taking a shit in the woods, living in dirty, difficult conditions, enduring hardships and risks that could - and sometimes did - kill you. It was ugly work. Which is not to say that certain men didn't enjoy it, didn't live for it. Garrison was one of those men. He embraced its cruelty. He would say, this man needs to die. Just like that. Some people needed to die. — Mark Bowden

When his hand came down across my bottom the first time I thought I was going to die. But the pain passed, transmuted as if my some alchemical wizardry, and for a moment I experienced a surreal satisfaction in being bent over in this way without rights or choices, past or future. In pain you are living in the present and as the pain passes there is pleasure from having endured the pain. — Chloe Thurlow

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

It's peculiar to me,' she said, 'that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying. Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying to prolong life instead of finding pleasant ways to end it? There must be a hell of a lot of people in the world like me--who want to die but haven't got the guts. — Horace McCoy

We die so that the world may continue to live. We have been given the miracle of life because trillions upon trillions of living things have prepared the way for us and then have died - in a sense, for us. We die, in turn, so that others may live. The tragedy of a single individual becomes, in the balance of natural things, the triumph of ongoing life. — Sherwin B. Nuland

The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning. Mind is learning; meditation is unlearning: that is - die constantly to your experience; let it not imprison you; experience becomes a dead weight in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness. — Rajneesh

devastate him. I don't want him to watch me die by degrees. I don't want that for his daughters, either. I know what it is like; some images, once seen, can never be forgotten. I want them to remember me as I am, not as I will be when the cancer has had its way. He leads me into the small living room and gets me settled on the couch. While I wait, he pours us some wine and then sits beside me. I am thinking of how it will feel when he leaves, and I am sure the same thought occupies his mind. With a sigh, he reaches into his briefcase — Kristin Hannah

Unless you learn to wrap your brain around the fact that you are eventually going to die, you'll never wrap your arms around the fact that you are currently living. — Ty Roth

It is the system of nationalist individualism that has to go ... We are living in the end of the sovereign states ... In the great struggle to evoke a Westernized World Socialism, contemporary governments may vanish ... Countless people ... will hate the new world order ... and will die protesting against it. — H.G.Wells

Here is the key to existence. Are you listening? Here is the key to existence; when I tell you this you will know how to run your lives. You will know if you have been living life to the full, and if you realize you haven't been, you will know immediately how to correct that state of affairs. As soon as I tell you the key to existence. Are you ready? Are you ready for me to tell you? ... Always breathe. That's the basis of life, breathing. That's basically the basis. If you don't breathe, you die. — Christopher Durang

No thanks," said Digory, "I don't know that I care much about living on and on after everyone I know is dead. I'd rather live an ordinary time and die and go to Heaven. — C.S. Lewis

Living near the cross of Calvary thou mayst think of death with pleasure, and welcome it when it comes with intense delight. It is sweet to die in the Lord: it is a covenant blessing to sleep in Jesus. Death is no longer banishment, it is a return from exile, a going home to the many mansions where the loved ones already dwell. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

It is never too late to ask yourself, 'Am I ready to change the life I am living? Am I ready to change within?' Even if a single day in your life is the same as the day before, it surely is a pity. At every moment and with each new breath, one should be renewed and renewed again. There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death. — Elif Shafak