Death Not The End Quotes

“Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind toward some final resolution, some clear meaning, which it perhaps never finds.”

— Robert Anderson

“A society that doesn't know any longer how to observe every death with proper rituals, that does not know that death is not the end, but only part of the journey, has lost its way, has had the very heart of its humanity torn out.”

— Marina Warner

“Death is not the end for a servant of God, but just the start of indescribable everlasting life in the presence of Jesus.”

— Brother Yun

“
Who knows what death, anxiety of the living,
Who knows what loneliness, end of the loving
I could say to myself of the love (I had):
Let it not be immortal, since it is flame
But let it be infinite while it lasts.”

— Vinicius De Moraes

“Sonnet of Fidelity
Above all to my love I'll be attentive
First and always with care and so much
That even when facing the greatest enchantment
By love be more enchanted my thoughts.
I want to live it through in each vain moment
And in its honor I'll spread my song
And laugh my laughter and cry my tears
When you are sad or when you are content.
And thus when later comes looking for me
Who knows the death anxiety of the living
Who knows the loneliness end of all lovers
I'll be able to say to myself of the love I had :
Be not immortal since it is flame
But be infinite while it lasts.”

— Vinicius De Moraes

“Accounts from Europe indicate that the danse macabre took another form, inspired by the Black Death, rather like our children's rhyme 'Ring o' Ring o' Roses', which refers to the Great Plague. In 1374, a fanatical sect of dancers appeared in the Rhine, convinced that they could put an end to the epidemic by dancing for days and allowing other people to trample on their bodies. It is not recorded whether they recovered but, incredibly, they began to raise money from bystanders. By the time they reached Cologne they were 500 strong, dancing like demons, half-naked with flowers in their hair. Regarded as a menace by the authorities, these dancers macabre were threatened with excommunication.”

— Catharine Arnold

“Hear this now. Nothing, not even death, will keep me from loving you. Though this body may wither and become a dry shell, my spirit will pursue you until the end of time. We will never be apart." He covered her mouth with his and tasted her blood. Trailing tender kisses across her cheek and jawline, he nestled against her neck. "Eternally yours," he whispered. She clutched his head and offered her throat. "Together forever," she responded. Broderick hesitated, her erratic pulse beating against his tongue. "Give me peace," she whispered in a tortured breath. "Do this for me." "I will love you forever, Davina." His fangs pierced her cool skin and Broderick drank the life from his wife, granting her wish ... and tormenting his already damned soul.”

— Arial Burnz

“The widespread willingness to rely on thermonuclear bombs as the ultimate weapon displays a cavalier attitude toward death that has always puzzled me. My impression is that ... most of the defenders of these weapons are not suitably horrified at the possibility of a war in which hundreds of millions of people would be killed ... I suspect that an important factor may be belief in an afterlife, and that the proporttion of those who think that death is not the end is much higher among the partisans of the bomb than among its opponents.”

— Thomas Nagel

“We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.”

— Thomas Bernhard

“But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhythms. Not death but disease is the real enemy, disease the malign force that requires confrontation. Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost. Even the confrontation with disease should be approached with the realization that many of the sicknesses of our species are simply conveyances for the inexorable journey by which each of us is returned to the same state of physical, and perhaps spiritual, nonexistence from which we emerged at conception. Every triumph over some major pathology, no matter how ringing the victory, is only a reprieve from the inevitable end.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

“It [death] chokes you, gags you, but you have to pretend that you're doing just fine, not trembling with this fear because the end is close.”

— Ellen Hopkins

“Love is the very essence of life. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet it is not found only at the end of the rainbow. Love is at the beginning also, and from it springs the beauty that arched across the sky on a stormy day. Love is the security for which children weep, the yearning of youth, the adhesive that binds marriage, and the lubricant that prevents devastating friction in the home; it is the peace of old age, the sunlight of hope shining through death. How rich are those who enjoy it in their associations with family, friends, and neighbors! Love, like faith, is a gift of God. It is also the most enduring and most powerful virtue.”

— Gordon B. Hinckley

“His life had seemed horrible when it was measured by its happiness, but now he seemed to gather strength as he realised that it might be measured by something else. Happiness mattered as little as pain. They came in, both of them, as all the other details of his life came in, to the elaboration of the design. He seemed for an instant to stand above the accidents of his existence, and he felt that they could not affect him again as they had done before. Whatever happened to him now would be one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern, and when the end approached he would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.
Philip was happy.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

“He whistled, and Mrs. O'Leary bounded after him to the far end of the grove. Leneus huffed indignantly and brushed the twigs off his shirt. "Now, as I was trying to explain, young lady, your boyfriend has not sent any reports since we voted him into exile." "You tried to vote him into exile," I corrected. "Chiron and Dionysus stopped you." "Bah! They are honorary Council members. It wasn't a proper vote." "I'll tell Dionysus you said that." Leneus paled. "I only meant ... Now see here, Jackson. This is none of your business." "Grover's my friend," I said. "He wasn't lying to you about Pan's death. I saw it myself. You were just too scared to accept the truth." Leneus's lips quivered. "No! Grover's a liar and good riddance. We're better off without him." I pointed at the withered thrones. "If things are going so well, where are your friends? Looks like your Council hasn't been meeting lately.”

— Rick Riordan

“What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? We are all ordinarily in a state of desperation; such is our life; ofttimes it drives us to suicide. To how many, perhaps to most, life is barely tolerable, and if it were not for the fear of death or of dying, what a multitude would immediately commit suicide! But let us hear a strain of music, we are at once advertised of a life which no man had told us of, which no preacher preaches. Suppose I try to describe faithfully the prospect which a strain of music exhibits to me. The field of my life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, with no death nor disappointment at the end of it. All meanness and trivialness disappear. I become adequate to any deed. No particulars survive this expansion; persons do not survive it. In the light of this strain there is no thou nor I. We are actually lifted above ourselves.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“In the end, there is cruelty and death alone over the land. Not in a single ray of light or grain of sand will you find solace, for all is dark, and the cold gaze of God's indifferent, heavy-lidded eyes falls on all with equal disdain. Only in your inner strength is there salvation; you must live just as a tree must live, or the cockroaches and fleas that flourish in the land and ruin of Earth. And so you live, and feel the sting of knowing you live. You eat whatever comes to hand, and if what you eat was once a brother or sister, so be it; God does not care. Nobody cares. You whore, and if you whore with man or woman, nobody cares; for when all are hungry, all are whores, even those who use the whores. And disease flourishes when all are whores, for germs must live, and spread across the land and ruin of Earth.”

— Greg Bear

“An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.
All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant ...”

— Virginia Woolf

“And it bred caution in the unveiling of its powers. The Crippled God bred caution but not well enough, for the powers of the earth came to it in the end. Chained was the Crippled God, and so Chained was it destroyed. And upon this barren plain that imprisoned the Crippled God many gathered to the deed. Hood, gray wanderer of Death, was among the gathering, as was Dessembrae, then Hood's Warrior-though it was here and in this time that Dessembrae shattered the bonds Hood held upon him. Also among the gathering were”

— Steven Erikson

“Nora knows better than most that nothing lasts forever. Life doesn't, love doesn't, hope doesn't, so why would death, hate, or despair? Nothing is permanent. Not even the end of the world.”

— Isaac Marion

“We tend to think that our age is the most apocalyptic of all. But imagine living in a shtetl in Eastern Europe in the late 1930s. Or during the First World War, amidst that unprecedented butchery. Or during the Black Death, when one-third of Europe's population died. Or in any number of places around the world assaulted by colonialism. The world is always ending, and every time there's a storyteller bearing witness. And if there isn't, then that world doesn't end, it's worse than that: It simply disappears. A place and a time that is not expressed in stories mostly vanishes from human consciousness. So yes, I do believe stories and their creators are still relevant.”

— Yann Martel

“Death is never an end, but always a beginning. A death is a door opening, not a door closing.”

— Neale Donald Walsch

“I know that mundane history is not of enormous interest to most Shadowhunters", he said. "But there was a time before the Nephilim. A time when Rome battled the city of Carthage, and over the course of many wars was victorious. After one of the wars, Rome demanded that Carthage pay them tribute, that Carthage abandon their army, and that the land of Carthage be sowed with salt. The historian Tacitus said of the Romans that 'they make a desert and call it peace.'" He turned to Jia. "The Carthaginians never forgot. Their hatred of Rome sparked another war in the end, and that war ended in death and slavery. That was not peace. This is not peace."
...
"The Fair Folk have long hated the Nephilim for their harshness. Show them something other than harshness, and you will receive something other than hate in return!”

— Cassandra Clare

“Might be that marriage was not the death of a woman and the end of her true self, but the unfolding of her. It might be that a woman could be a wife without having to cut the pride and the spirit out of herself. A woman might blossom into being a wife, not be trimmed down to fit.”

— Philippa Gregory

“Death is not the end. Death is an ocean on all sides of our lives. Deep and dark and cold, and anything but empty.”

— Joey Comeau

“I'd like to get the sex thing over with, but I realized I'm not done with it.You should never will a change in your work-you have to work an idea to death. I often find that the best things happen when you're near the end.”

— John Currin

“It's not the end that I fear with each breath- It's life that scares me to death.”

— Tim McIlrath

“I would be misleading you if I made you feel that we could win a violent campaign. It's impractical even to think about it. The minute we start, we will end up getting many more people killed unnecessarily. Now, I'm ready to die myself. Many other committed people are ready to die. If you believe in something firmly, if you believe in it truly, if you believe it in your heart, you are willing to die for it, but I'm not going to advocate a method that brings about unnecessary death.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“To the end, I will remain a child of Europe, of worry and of shame. I have no message of hope to deliver. For the West, I do not feel hatred. At most I feel a great contempt. I know only that every single one of us reeks of selfishness, masochism and death. We have created a system in which it has simply become impossible to live, and what's more, we continue to export it.”

— Michel Houellebecq

“The whole motley confusion of acts, omissions, regrets and hopes which is the life of each one of us finds in death, not meaning or explanation, but an end.”

— Octavio Paz

“Life is eternal and it's worth living. What we do in this life is not futile. Death is not the end. Our practice in this life will assist us in our next life.”

— Frederick Lenz

“Despite all expectations, the time of my last campaign and of my passing is near. I wish to die at home. Let not my end disarm you, and on no account weep for me, lest the enemy be warned of my death.”

— Genghis Khan

“Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new life. Yes, it is an end of something that is already dead. It is also a crescendo of what we call life, although very few know what life is. They live, but they live in such ignorance that they never encounter their own life. And it is impossible for these people to know their own death, because death is the ultimate experience of this life, and the beginning experience of another. Death is the door between two lives; one is left behind, one is waiting ahead.”

— Rajneesh