Shocked Death Quotes & Sayings

Anyone in command feigns ease when death is near. We do it for those around us, and we do it for ourselves. We do it because the sole alternative is to die cringing. The difference between an experienced leader and an untested one is that only the untested one is shocked at how well they can pretend when their hand is forced. — Scott Lynch

The smile he gave me was warm, but he was still wounded by his mother's death. There was a hollowness in his eyes: a black hole of shocked grieving that swallowed all the questions and released no answers. When he returned to his work, cutting lengths of coconut-fibre rope for the men to tie around bamboo bracing poles, his young face assumed a numb expression. I knew that expression: I sometimes caught it, by chance, in the mirror: the way we look when the part of happiness that's trusting and innocent is ripped away, and we blame ourselves, rightly or wrongly, for its loss. — Gregory David Roberts

In Sing Sing Prison, in a ghastly white room stands a chair. Its parts are heavy joinings of oak, riveted and screwed together; its strong legs fastened to the floor with teeth and claws of steel. It bites into the marrow of men with fangs of fire. For this is the faldstool of bloody human justice, the prayer-chair of man's vengeance upon man. Into it are strapped ... men who have killed other men. In it, for a high moral purpose, erring human lives are shocked across the barrier into night and the grave. - Edward H. Smith (1918) — Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

The part that always shocked me was the inter-community violence among the chimps: the patrols and the vicious attacks on strangers that lead to death. It's an unfortunate parallel to human behavior - they have a dark side just as we do. We have less excuse, because we can deliberate, so I believe only we are capable of true calculated evil. — Jane Goodall

PTSD in its rawest form is a death sentence which causes many veterans and others to execute themselves in hope to be free. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

You do care a little for me, I know ... but nothing to speak of, and you don't love me. I was yours once till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now ... and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness. — E. M. Forster

On his death bed, the eighteenth-century haiku poet Shisui had finally responded to requests for a death poem by grabbing his brush, painting his poem, and dying. On the paper Shisui's shocked followers saw he had painted a circle. — Richard Flanagan

He was accustomed to women wanting him. What shocked him was the simple fact that he wanted her.
Not hot, energetic sex. Not a blow job from a novice. He wanted her with a
perplexing intensity he hadn't felt in years. He was the King of Death, and she was his consort.
And no amount of common sense could distract him. — Anne Stuart

Hey," I said before he could say anything else that would make the mood even weirder or break it entirely. "You wanna grab some coffee or something someday? I mean, some time when I'm not crawling with maggots," I added with a laugh that sounded nervous to my own ears and probably sounded desperate and pathetic to his. I totally braced myself for him to hem and haw and say that he couldn't or had a girlfriend or something. I was shocked instead when he gave me a nod.
"That sounds nice. And I'm cool with the no maggots thing too. — Diana Rowland

I find that the only way to get through life is to picture myself in an entirely disconnected reality. I often imagine how people would react to my death. Mr Dunthorne's quavering voice as he makes the announcement. The shocked faces of my classmates. A playground bedecked with flowers. The empty stillness of a school corridor. Local news analysis ... The steady stoicism of my parents ... Candlelit vigils ... And finally, my glorious resurrection. — Joe Dunthorne

Well, until next time.' Sadie threw her arms around Annabeth. Annabeth was a little shocked to be getting a hug from a girl she'd just met - a girl who could just as easily have seen Annabeth as an enemy. But the gesture made her feel good. In life-and-death situations, Annabeth had learned, you could make friends pretty quickly. She patted Sadie's shoulder. 'Stay safe. — Rick Riordan

I heard of Bobby first early in the winter, from a Bible-reader at the Medical Mission in the Cowgate, who saw the little dog's master buried. He sees many strange, sad things in his work, but nothing ever shocked him so as the lonely death of that pious old shepherd in such a picturesque den of vice and misery." "Ay, — Eleanor Atkinson

Shocked and grieved by sudden death of Adjutant General Sobolev.' She sobbed and blew her nose, then continued reading. "'He will be hard for the Russian army to replace and, of course, this loss is greatly lamented by all true soldiers. It is sad to lose such useful people who are so devoted to their work. Alexander.'" Fandorin raised his eyebrows slightly - the telegram had sounded rather cold to him. "Hard to replace"? Meaning that the general could be replaced after all? "Sad" - and nothing more? "The lying in state and funeral — Boris Akunin

And often the worst thing wasn't the victims
they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River) — Dennis Lehane

My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it ... I got upon a scaffold near the fatal tree so that I could clearly see all the dismal scene ... I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy. — James Boswell

I make a joke of it, but ... but I'm afraid of death." He straightened up and turned to look into Joseph's eyes. Joseph saw the fear there and was shocked by the intensity of it. "Are you afraid to die, Joseph?"
Joseph considered for a moment, then shook his head. "I'm not afraid to now, but then I'm not dying now. When I come to that moment, I will probably be ... what's the right word? Maybe frightened in a way that you're frightened when an experience lies before you you've never had.
"No more than that?"
"I hope not. — Gilbert Morris

She stared at Raven in a long second of shocked silence, before sagging to the floor. — A. Ashley Straker

Ros was dead.
He had loved heroin more than it loved him. I was shocked beyond imagining; he was the first of my friends to fall. — Craig Ferguson

He's waiting for yu, young queen.'
Shocked, I stared at Seoras. 'Heath?'
The Warrior's look was wise and understanding - his voice gentle. 'Aye, yur Heath probably does await you somewhere in the future, but it is of your Guardian I speak. — P.C. Cast

See, I don't expect to win a prize for stoic control and dignity at mourning time. Death deserve tantrums. Beating back shocked indignation, kicks in the groin, stones, classified unacceptable, not to be tolerated, not to be wooed, not to be conspired with. Only then can music, dance, movies, plays, rap be about life. Only then can life be cherished and adored. — Ruby Dee

Monarchs not only fashion their age, but are fashioned by it, so that they can become a sort of personification of the age. If Elizabeth I, independent, strong, represents the age of Shakespeare's heroines, a woman's heyday, Victoria represents another image of womanhood, predominant in the nineteenth century: a woman who, although queen in her own right, leaned on her husband, looked up to him, and went into perpetual mourning after his death. The feminist movement filled her with shocked horror and outrage. — Eva Figes

Heavy hearts, heavy eyelids," said the master of the caravan.
"Huh?" Heather looked up in dismay, shocked to find she'd nearly been left behind as the caravan prepared to move on. Her last night's sleep had been fitful, full of dreams where Khalid made her suffer for running away. Now she felt drained and groggy, unable to get the images of Khalid spanking her over his knee and then ravishing her out of her tired head.
"Look," the caravan master said. "Riders approaching, a great armed party. No doubt they are searching for escaped slaves."
"No doubt." Heather straightened up wearily in the saddle, determined to outwit Khalid and conceal her true identity as a runaway. The one thing she was sure of was that capture would bring a fate worse than death. Already she could imagine Khalid tying her up, spanking her bottom, making her howl for mercy until she had no pride or will to resist. And then would come the true test of her virtue ... — Patricia Grasso

The main floor of Penn Station, early,
the first commuters arriving, leaving,
the man outstretched on his coat,
wide circles of survivors forming.
He's half in, half out of his clothes,
being kissed and cardio-shocked,
though he was likely dead before he landed.
This goes on for minutes, minutes more,
until the medics unhook the vanished heart,
move him onto the cot and cover him
with the snow-depth of a sheet
and wheel him the fluorescent length
of the hall through gray freight doors
that open on their own and close at will. — Stanley Plumly

If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked. — P. J. O'Rourke

Yeah, so? I was ignorant, but I'm not a fucking moron. Why would I give the shit to you just so I could buy it back from you later?" I leaned back against the counter. "Hon, you're fucking with the wrong chick. I've been around too many drug dealers to buy into a scheme like that."
He shocked me by bursting out laughing. "Drug dealers? Well, that's an interesting analogy." He shook his head but a sardonic smile stayed on his face. — Diana Rowland

And then, in shocked disappointment, and stunned horror, I'm sure, Connor Lavender realized he was dead. — Leslye Walton

I knew you'd know," Mom said in a stabilizing, more confident, yet still husky voice. A smile broke across her face in the simple relief of her only remaining child not being shocked by the death of her youngest. She smiled genuinely, perhaps for the first time since cradling Dustin's body as the fire truck alarm blared towards the house in response to her 911 call. Her son had died that morning in her arms as she tried resuscitating him with her own breath, but the first indication of her daughter's reaction was calm. The child raised to expect death met the first moments of the news with seeming serenity. — Darcy Leech

We pull out of the ground death, we burn death in our power plants, and then we act shocked when we get death in the form of oil spills and global warming. — Van Jones

If one drops dead in the street, friends and loved ones are shocked, stricken, but a long lingering death loses all nobility and drama, while relatives and friends await the inevitable end in a succession of weary anti-climaxes. — Alanna Knight

They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. — Henry David Thoreau

People back home, people who haven't been in war, or at least not that war, sometimes don't seem to understand how the troops in Iraq acted. They're surprised - shocked - to discover we often joked about death, about things we saw. Maybe it seems cruel or inappropriate. Maybe it would be, under different circumstances. But in the context of where we were, it made a lot of sense. We saw terrible things, and lived through terrible things. Part of it was letting off pressure or steam, I'm sure. A way to cope. If you can't make sense of things, you start to look for some other way to deal with them. You laugh because you have to have some emotion, you have to express yourself somehow. — Chris Kyle

A recent study in the American Journal of Epidemiology followed 123,216 subjects over fourteen years and found that men who spent more than 6 hours a day sitting were 17 percent more likely to die during that time than men who sat for less than 3 hours. For women, the increased risk of death was 34 percent. This increased mortality persisted regardless of whether the participants smoked, were overweight, and - this shocked me - regardless of how much they exercised. Humans aren't built to sit all day. — Scott Jurek

The quantum death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. 24 hours before he was "officially" declared dead it was announced on the internet that he had already died. Many people were shocked to hear of his "official" death, especially those who had believed he was already dead. Philip Seymour Hoffman was both dead and alive in the minds of millions simultaneously. A rare death for a rare actor. — Dean Cavanagh

I am shocked at the attitude of our American troops. They have no respect for death, the courage of an enemy soldier, or many of the ordinary decencies of life. — Charles Lindbergh

12 I wrote to Mrs. Traynor. I didn't tell her about Lily, just that I hoped she was well, that I was back from my travels and would be in her area in a few weeks with a friend, and would like to say hello if possible. I sent it first class, and felt oddly excited as it plopped into the postbox. Dad had told me over the phone that she had left Granta House within weeks of Will's death. He said the estate workers had been shocked, but I thought back to the time I had spotted Mr. Traynor out with Della, the woman he was now about to — Jojo Moyes

The city reeked of death, and the savages that resided within its imposing starkness existed in fear of their lives. They had been shocked by the recent bloody Whitechapel murders, as if starvation, disease, moral degradation, and perpetual smog drowning all color in gray wasn't enough to bring home the pathetic reality of their miserable existence. The police were no nearer to capturing the monster that lurked in the crevices, and London seemed stiller in the dark, the streets devoid of hope. — Carol Oates

Will. For a moment her heart hesitated. She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for years expecting to find him there, and only slowly growing accustomed to the fact that side of the bed would always be empty. The moments when she had found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there. The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh; that, like the sound of Jem's violin music, they had faded into the distance where memories are silent. — Cassandra Clare

There are old pilots and there are bold pilots', goes the saying, 'there are no old bold pilots'. Hal never qualified as old. He'd survived his fuel tank blunder; his next mistake killed him.
In the years that followed, other pilot friends and acquaintances were killed in flying accidents. We were never ready; the news always shocked. Whether we learned from these shocks is doubtful; every pilot is certain that Death will never find him. — R.J. Childerhose

{Letter from Debbs to Eva Ingersoll, husband of Robert Ingersoll, just after the news of Robert's death}

We were inexpressibly shocked to hear of the sudden death of your dear husband and our best loved friend. Most tenderly do we sympathize with you, and all of yours in your great bereavement... Gifted with the rarest genius, in beautiful alliance with his heroism, his kindness and boundless love, he made the name of Ingersoll immortal.

To me, he was an older brother and as I loved him living, so will I cherish his sweet memory forever. — Eugene V. Debs

When John took those naked pictures, the most popular singer was a girl with a tiny stick body and a large deferential head, who sang in a delicious lilt of white lace and promises and longing to be close. When she shut herself up in her closet and starved herself to death, people were shocked. But starvation was in her voice all along. That was the poignancy of it. A sweet voice locked in a dark place, but focused entirely on the tiny strip of light coming under the door.
I drop the rag in the bucket and smoke some more, ashing into the sink,. A tiny piece of the movie from the naked time plays on my eyeball: A psychotic killer is blowing up amusement parks. At the head of the crowd clamoring to ride the roller coaster is a slim, lovely man with long blond hair and floppy clothes and big, beautiful eyes fixed on a tiny strip of light that only he can see. — Mary Gaitskill

Snape looked horrified. 'You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?'
'Don't look shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?'
'Lately, only those whom I could not save', said Snape. — J.K. Rowling

Clean your face," I said to the child. "It's dirty." "It's not," the child said. "By God it is," I said, "filth adheres in ine areas which I shall enumerate." "That is because of the dough," the child said. "We were taking death masks." "Dough!" I exclaimed, shocked at the idea that the child had wasted flour and water and no doubt paper too in this lightsome pastime, taking death masks. "Death!" I exclaimed for added emphasis. "What do you know of death?" "It is the end of the world," the child said, "for the death-visited individual. The world ends," the child said, "when you turn out your eyes." This was true, I could not dispute it. I returned to the main point. "Your father is telling you to wash your face," I said, locating myself in the abstract where I was more comfortable. — Donald Barthelme

Then she declared loudly, "Smoke break!" and everyone's eyes came to us, some of them shocked seeing as these days you could light up a doobie and no one would blink but if you lit up a smoke, you courted being publicly stoned to death. — Kristen Ashley