Quotes & Sayings About Running From Death

I have never been much of a patriot. My father would not have allowed such a thing while he lived, and his death insured that his wish was carried out. Piter commanded far more affection and loyalty from me than the nation as a whole. But that night, running across the unplowed fields of winter wheat, with the Fascist invaders behind us and the dark Russian woods before us, I felt a surge of pure love for my country.
We ran for the forest, crashing through the stalks of wheat, beneath the rising moon and the stars spinning farther and farther away, alone beneath the godless sky. — David Benioff

She knew, with all her heart that running away from the country's top relationship coach was as good as saying, 'there's no hope for me, ever'! — Diane Hall

Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily course of duty run. Cast off dull sloth, and joyful rise to pay thy morning sacrifice. All praise to thee, who safe hast kept and hast refreshed me while I slept! Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake, I may of endless life partake. All praise to thee, my God, this night for all the blessings of the light. Keep me, oh keep me, King of Kings, beneath Thine own almighty wings. Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. — Thomas Ken

I will garden on the double run,
my rhythm obvious in the ringing rakes,
and trust in fate to keep me poor and kind
and work until my heart is short,
then go out slowly with a feeble grin,
my fingers flexing but my eyes gone gray
from cramps and the lack of oxygen. — Richard Hugo

Death. It is a strange stalker, one that we spend our whole lives running from, some more successful than others. — Alessandra Torre

There is no lasting pleasure but contemplation; all others grow flat and insipid upon frequent use; and when a man hath run through a set of vanities, in the declension of his age, he knows not what to do with himself, if he cannot think; he saunters about from one dull business to another, to wear out time; and hath no reason to value Life but because he is afraid of death. — Gilbert Burnet

Don't run away from the world. The world is God. Don't run towards the world. God is the void. Don't be afraid of the complexities of this life, nor the stark simplicity of death. — Frederick Lenz

Gates got up, but not fast or jerkily, with the same slowness that had always characterized him. He wiped the sweat off his palms by running them lightly down his sides. As though he were going to shake hands with somebody.
He was. He was going to shake hands with death.
He wasn't particularly frightened. Not that he was particularly brave. It was just that he didn't have very much imagination. Rationalizing, he knew that he wasn't going to be alive anymore ten minutes from now. Yet he wasn't used to casting his imagination ten minutes ahead of him, he'd always kept it by him in the present. He couldn't visualize it. So he wasn't as unnerved by it as the average man would have been.
("3 Kills For 1") — Cornell Woolrich

Death continues to stalk the streets, stealing the souls of our children as they sleep. We're running out of fingers to close their eyes, voices to bless their souls, hands to dig their graves. Poisonous fumes from their unburied bodies contaminate the alleys, and the ghosts of those who have been buried rise nightly. Their tiny forms dance above their tombstones, an agonising reminder that we've failed them. — Joanne Owen

Freedom is about life or death, I would rather die fighting for it than die running away from the oppressor — Peter Mutanda

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we'll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life. — Pema Chodron

A scream so loud it shattered and splintered into a dreadful chorus that rattled and shook my brain and bones and cells and soul. I grabbed the telegram from Mama's hand, threw it on the fire, ran out of the room into the hallway, and then outside into the square, and I continued running, zigzagging down streets, through mews, and on and on, as though I could escape from that moment; escape my brother's death and run back through time. — Judith Kinghorn

Ageing destroys youth, sickness destroys health, degeneration of life destroys all excellent qualities and death destroys life. Even if you are a great runner, you cannot run away from death. you cannot stop death with your wealth, through your magic performances or recitation of mantras or even medicines. Therefore, it is wise to prepare for your death. — Dalai Lama

I think that we're a culture that runs away from death, for good reason. Nobody really wants to think about the fact that we're going to be lifeless food for worms in a coffin someday. But at the same time, I feel like knowing that you're going to die can be an incredibly rewarding, powerful knowledge. It inspires us to live in ways that we wouldn't if we were ignorant. I feel like that has inspired me to care about every breath. For me it's not a morbid curiosity, it's just wanting to make sure that every moment I have here on the Earth while I am breathing is accounted for. — Jon Foreman

If you did not have death, you would curse me incessantly for depriving you of it. Realizing its advantages, I have deliberately mixed a little bitterness into it to prevent you from embracing it too greedily and imprudently. To place you in the state of moderation I ask of you, of neither running from life nor fleeing from death, I have modulated them both between sweet and bitter. — Michel De Montaigne

Does that have to go in?" Lada asked.
"What do you mean?" Wistala said, brought back to the dictation.
"The battle. Betrayals. Incompetence, even cowardice. Boats falling, mud everywhere, blood running from balconies, carrion birds poking marrow from bones, dwarves hanging from bridges, burned corpses, but worst of all, no hero whose courage and skill is put to the ultimate test."
"They asked for a history, they shall have my history. If someone else will have the battle take place on a spring-green field with pennants at the lance points and songs sung over the honored dead, let them write it thus. This history is a story of death begetting death, and should end with carrion birds, for they are the only ones who come out the better at the end. — E.E. Knight

The funny thing about murder is that the act is often committed decades before the actual action. Something happens, and it leads, inexorably, to death many years later. A bad seed is planted. It's like those old horror films from the Hammer studios, of the monster, not running, never running, but walking without pause, without thought or mercy, toward its victim. Murder is often like that. It starts way far off. — Louise Penny

I'm convinced that this anxiety running through my life is the tension between what I "should be" and what i am. My anxiety doesn't come from thinking about the future but from wanting to control it. It seems to begin whenever I smuggle into my mind an expectation about how I or others should be. It is the tension between my desire to control the world and the recognition that I can't. "I will be what I will be" - where is the anxiety in that ? Anxiety is the recognition that I might not reach the rung on the opinion ladder I have just set for my self. I fear death most when I am about to exceed what I believe others think of me; then death threatens to cut me off from myself, because "myself" is not yet. — Hugh Prather

Back then death was invisible for children like me, who went outside, running fearlessly along those fantastical streets, safe from history. The night of the earthquake was the first time I realized that everything could come tumbling down. Now I think it's a good thing to know. It's necessary to remember it every second. — Alejandro Zambra

She looks at the Dictaphone in my hand.
"Are you recording this?"
"No, Alex, I was summarizing a deposition."
"How can you work?"
"How can you see a movie? How can you have a friend over?"
She looks away. Half of the room is bright from my lamp. The other side is dark, the sharp silhouette of the mountain framed by the window running across the room. The image always reminds me of a panoramic picture. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

That is exactly what nobody seems to grasp about this karma business. It's not a simple matter of cause and effect, reward and punishment. It's a question of what's available. You see, as long as life for the majority of souls on this planet is just a long round of starvation, misery, torture, and early death - and believe me, outside this fortunate watershed that is an apt description of the state of affairs - as long as only a few live in comfort while the masses scrape along in want, then all us returning souls have to take our fair share of shifts among the hungry. You think this life you've lived was tough? Let me tell you, it was just R and R between the ones where you never get a solid meal two days running or you die before your first birthday from drinking bad water. — Starhawk

If you asked most kids, "Hey, you want to summon fire or lightning or magical makeup?" they'd think it sounded pretty cool. But those powers went along with hard stuff, like sitting in a sewer in the middle of winter, running from monsters, losing your memory, watching your friends almost get cooked, and having dreams that warned you of your own death. — Rick Riordan

She had the feeling that she would be different from now on, that she could never go back and be the same person she had been.
So who am I now?
Somebody fierce, I think.
Somebody who'd enjoy running through the darkness, underneath stars bright as miniature suns, and maybe even hunt deer.
Somebody who can laugh and death — L.J.Smith

I realized that more and more I was saying, 'It seems to me that we have come to the time war ought to be given up. It no longer makes sense to kill 20 million or 40 million people because of a dispute between two nations who are running things, or decisions made by the people who really are running things. It no longer makes sense. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits from destructive war of this sort and there is all of this human suffering.' And Einstein was saying the same thing of course. So that is when we decided - my wife and I - that first, I was pretty effective as a speaker. Second, I better start boning up, studying these other fields so that nobody could stand up and say, 'Well, the authorities say such and such '. — Linus Pauling

The rapture was severe, absolute as death, delivering him.
He made no effort to prolong it. The peak came fast, slamming into him with a power that took his breath, and then he tumbled into a violent, shuddering release, the spasms piercing. He came endlessly, cradling her in his arms, hunching over her as if he could protect her, even as he lunged into her with ravenous strokes.
She was shaking in the aftermath, thrills of reaction running through her from head to toe. He held her, trying to comfort her, pulling her head against his chest. His eyes were blurred and hot, and he blotted them against a velvet cushion.
It took a while for him to realize that the trembling came not from her, but him. — Lisa Kleypas

Rivers are inherently interesting. They mold landscapes, create fertile deltas, provide trade routes, a source for food and water; a place to wash and play; civilizations emerged next to rivers in China, India, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. They sustain life and bring death and destruction. They are ferocious at times; gentle at times. They are placid and mean. They trigger conflict and delineate boundaries. Rivers are the stuff of metaphor and fable, painting and poetry. Rivers unite and divide - a thread that runs from source to exhausted release. — Edward Gargan

He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others!
He's stupid if he doesn't know other people's unhappiness is theirs,
And isn't cured from the outside,
Because suffering isn't like running out of ink,
Or a trunk not having iron bands!

There being injustice is like there being death. — Alberto Caeiro

Opportunity may knock, but Death always rings, for he is perfectly aware that sometimes even the hardest of door poundings may go unheard from within, particularly when there is a vacuum running. — Clayton Smith

I learned that everything is right where we are. No matter our pain or distress, all of life is in whatever moment we wake to. I could clearly see and feel how our fear of death makes us run, though there is nowhere to go. Yet mysteriously, I learned that there's a ring of peace at the center of every fear, if we can only get to it. Every time I shower now, I try to remember that we can-not live fully until we can first accept our eventual death. Otherwise, we will always be running to or running from. Only when we can accept that we are fragile guests on this Earth, only then will we be at home wherever we are. — Mark Nepo

You don't feel your wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of the armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes. You stop feeling, you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight, the foe, this man and then the next and the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you're not, you're alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing. Battle fever. — George R R Martin

Trying to run away is never the answer to being a fully human. Running away from the immediacy of our experience is like preferring death to life. — Pema Chodron

She pictured herself running from a hoard of ravenous zombies on a hot day eventually collapsing from heatstroke and getting devoured. Then she imagined Hal giving a rousing eulogy at her funeral explaining how Kendra's death was a beautiful sacrifice allowing the noble zombies to live on delighting future generations by mindlessly trying to eat them. With her luck it could totally happen. — Brandon Mull

She remembers blood.
A fine mist which goes deep into her lungs, over her skin and through the air. She remembers a desert at dusk. The sky indigo blue and the fire bright, so bright that she can see everything. Near the fire, in the night, all she knows is chaos wrapped in crimson. All is death and nightmare with a single solitary dancer who smiles cruelly as he moves. He is power and darkness. He is man and beast, silver coin eyes and that face, those claws and the agony of loss.
Time stretches wide; seconds like vast eons swallow up her world. Vince is dead, his mother, his brother and her small son ripped apart and gushing as he/it moves. She is screaming, a howl of agony beyond words, primal and wordless. Still he moves, faster than air, faster than she could ever be. Blood drips from her face as she grunts, running with her lungs on fire and her last remaining hope wrapped in her arms. — Amanda M. Lyons

White froth bubbles from the mouth of Chow Sze Teck. The airconditioner is still running and the room is dark. Slumped over the mahogany desk in his study, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Housing is, as always, immaculately dressed. — Wong Souk Yee

The sounds of many were unintelligible and undoubtedly many more called for their parents from whom they were parted by death or by accident. They grasped their tortured limbs, their tiny burning legs until they were no longer able to stand or run. And then they would crash to the ground where they would writhe in the bubbling tar until death released them from their physical misery. — Martin Caidin

I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted. — Fiona Shaw

The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow
to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much
too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

In all the heroic tales, dying soldiers saw their lives pass before their eyes. No, Martin realized. The memories were just running like rats from a sinking ship, down the ropes only to drown. He watched the backs of their heads. — J.P. Moore

I've been running from, and toward, death all my life, more aware of it than a person should be. — Ridley Pearson

America's not the world's policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe and it is beyond our means to right every wrong. But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. — Rand Paul

The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War's roots are in ignorance. Without understanding we can easily become frightened by life's fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death. Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be satisfying. — Jack Kornfield

It appeared like their pain and suffering were combined feelings. But, feelings never did kill anyone. It was running away from feelings that lead to the absolute death of any relationship. — A.A. Gupte

There's a quote from Stalin," he says. "'A single death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.' Can you imagine seven billion of anything? I have trouble doing it. It pushes the limits of our ability to comprehend. And that's exactly why they did it. Like running up the score in football. You played football, right? It isn't about destroying our capability to fight so much as crushing our will to fight. — Rick Yancey

Shinji slowly fell forward onto his face. Debris bounced up on impact. It took less than thirty seconds for the rest of his body to die. The memento of his beloved uncle
the earring worn by the woman he loved
was now stained with the blood running down Shinji's left ear, reflecting the glow from the red flames of the farm building.
And so the boy known as the Third Man, Shinji Mimura, was dead. — Koushun Takami

If you see really bright lights, or hear really loud noises, go towards them, don't run away from anything. It's like giving someone instructions on how to handle a bear, don't run away from it. Stand up and try to make yourself look as big as possible. Don't give it the signal that it should chase you. And that's the case with the after death visions. Don't go for dark seductive lights, go only for bright lights. — Robert Thurman

Sometimes the one who is running from the Life/Death/Life nature insists on thinking of love as a boon only. Yet love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience.... Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow.... 589 — Anonymous

On the seventh day of Passover, the curtain finally rose: the Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community. From that moment on, everything happened very quickly. The race toward death had begun. First edict: Jews were prohibited from leaving their residences for three days, under penalty of death. Moishe the Beadle came running to our house. "I warned you," he shouted. And left without waiting for a response. The same day, the Hungarian police — Elie Wiesel

The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die
it does not care if it itself grinds to a halt. It is a beast running on chance and death, careening from nowhere to nowhere. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. We are free and seeing; we can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our lives. — Annie Dillard

Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,
The costly aversion of the eyes from death-
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs. — Philip Larkin

When top executives get huge pay hikes at the same time as middle-level and hourly workers lose their jobs and retirement savings, or have to accept negligible pay raises and cuts in health and pension benefits, company morale plummets. I hear it all the time from employees: This company, they say, is being run only for the benefit of the people at the top. So why should we put in extra effort, commit extra hours, take on extra responsibilities? We'll do the minimum, even cut corners. This is often the death knell of a company. — Robert Reich

Broken leaves flew into the air from the violence of his thrashing, and the gore and blood kept pouring from the black hole in his belly and from his mouth - surely enough blood for ten men, a sight horrid enough to make God Himself weep - and suddenly, his boots stopped running and his form stilled and then ... Death caught him. — Laurie Halse Anderson

The battle fever. He had never thought to experience it himself, though Jamie had told him of it often enough. How time seemed to blur and slow and evenstop, how the past and the future vanished until there was nothing but the instant, how fear fled, and thought fled, and even you body. "You don't feel your wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of the armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes. You stop feeling you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight , the foe, this man and then the next and the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you're not, you're alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing." Battle fever. I am half a man and drunk with slaughter, let them kill me if they can! — George R R Martin

...it pointed to an alternative approach, a 'negative path' to happiness, that entailed taking a radically different stance towards those things that most of us spend our lives trying to avoid. It involved learning to enjoy uncertainty, embracing insecurity, stopping trying to think positively, becoming familiar with failure, even learning to value death. In short, all these people seemed to agree that in order to be truly happy, we might actually need to be willing to experience more negative emotions - or, at the very least to learn to stop running quite so hard from them. — Oliver Burkeman

[Sen. John] Kerry is also a man who opposes the death penalty, wants to restrict access to guns and voted against the resolution approving the start of ground operations against Saddam Hussein in 1991 - just what you would expect from Ted Kennedy's partner and Michael Dukakis's running mate. — David S. Broder

God, to prevent all escape, hath sown the seeds of death in our very constitution and nature, so that we can as soon run from ourselves, as run from death. We need no feller to come with a hand of violence and hew us down; there is in the tree a worm, which grows out of its own substance, that will destroy it; so in us, those infirmities of nature that will bring us down to the dust. — William Gurnall

One by one the angels had come to the top of Har Megiddo where I sat, holding her body close to mine after she'd died. I'd fought alongside them in battle, but up close, when they stood quietly watching us, they looked as beautiful as they looked unreal. the angels weren't supposed to feel emotions, but they were all weeping. All of them. Their tear stained their flawless faces like rain running in rivulets across stone. Azrael was the only one of then who came to me, knelt in front of me and took her from my arms. He was the angel of death come to carry his sister home. I din't want to give her up, knowing it would be the last time I ever saw her face. I had died on that wretched hill with her. — Courtney Allison Moulton

War brutalises a man. It is not surprising he was moody and violent. But you must remember two things: running away from battle has always been punishable by death. Military discipline must be harsh, or every soldier would run away; and secondly in a firing squad of ten men only one held a rifle with live ammunition - nine held blanks. So every man had a nine out of ten chance of not being responsible for the death of his colleague. — Jennifer Worth

Death Valley is the perfect flesh-grilling device, the Foreman Grill in Mother Nature's cupboard.

It's a big, shimmering sea of salt ringed by mountains that bottle up the heat and force it right back down on your skull. The average air temperature hovers around 125 degrees, but once the sun rises and begins broiling the desert floor, the ground beneath Scott's feet would hit a nice, toasty 200 degrees - exactly the temperature you need to slow roast a prime rib. Plus, the air is so dry that by the time you feel thirsty, you could be as good as dead; sweat is sucked so quickly from your body,you can be dangerously dehydrated before it even registers in your throat. Try to conserve water,and you could be a dead man walking.

But every July, ninety runners from around the world spend up to sixty straight hours running down the sizzling black ribbon of Highway 190, making sure to stay on the white lines so the soles of their running shoes don't melt. — Christopher McDougall

I am surprised at three things: 1. [A] man runs from death while death is inevitable. 2. One sees minor faults in others, yet overlooks his own major faults. 3. When there is any defect to one's cattle he tries to cure it, but does not cure his own defects. — Umar

Conservatives have every reason to believe the death penalty system is no different from any politicized, costly, inefficient, bureaucratic, government-run operation, which we conservatives know are rife with injustice. But here the end result is the end of someone's life. In other words, it's a government system that kills people. — Richard Viguerie

One cannot run from a challenge without losing. To flee is signing a death warrant to dignity and character, and, having run, there is no return; one is a weakling forever. Meeting a challenge, though one may be defeated, gives strength, character, and a certain assurance that regardless of outcome, one will survive or go down fighting. — Sigurd F. Olson

The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the street believes that the world will always be the same and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Maybe comfort exists in believing there is order in the world, even when someone is making the most disorderly decision we know: running toward death instead of away from it.

In their absence, we're left trying to pin meaning to air. — Kate Fagan

Survival is running from death.
Our whole life is running from death, but we all just meet it while we are running from it! what a failure is this try! — Fereidoon Yazdi

Death doesn't come running, but you can't run away from it, neither; nor must you be helping it along. — Ivan Turgenev

Xander, there are two certainties in life--death and truth. They will both pursue you to your grave. There is no escaping them. But we run from them anyway in hopes that somehow we can slip by unnoticed. In the end, one or both of them catch up. Running doesn't solve anything. — A.C. Williams