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I believe in the
immortality
of the soul because
I have within me immortal longings.
Helen Keller
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death
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Death
is not the enemy of life, but its friend, for it is the
knowledge that our years are limited which makes them so
precious. It is the truth that time is but lent to us
which makes us, at our best, look upon our years as a
trust handed into our temporary keeping. |
Joshua
Loth
Liebman |
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Our
creator would never have made
such lovely days
and have given us
the deep hearts to enjoy them,
above
and
beyond all thought, unless
we were meant to be immortal.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I am not going
to die. I'm
going home like a shooting star.
Sojourner Truth |
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He is not
dead, this friend; not dead,
Gone some few, trifling steps ahead,
And nearer to the end;
So that you, too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
You fancy dead.
Robert
Louis Stevenson
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We
are born for a higher destiny than that of earth; there
is a realm where
the rainbow never fades, where the stars
will be spread before us like islands
that slumber on the
ocean, and where the beings that pass before us
like
shadows will stay in our presence forever.
Edward
Bulwer-Lytton
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Winter
is on my head but eternal spring is in my heart. The
nearer I approach the end,
the plainer I hear around me
the immortal symphonies of the world to come.
For half a
century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and
verse; but I feel
that I have not said one-thousandth
part of what is in me. When I have gone down
to the grave
I shall have ended my life's work; but another day will
begin
the next morning. Life closes in the twilight but
opens with the dawn.
Victor Hugo
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The Reaper
and the Flowers
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
"Shall I have naught that is fair?" saith he;
"Have naught but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of these flowers is
sweet to me,
I will give them all back again."
He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;
It was for the Lord of Paradise
He bound them in his sheaves.
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"My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,"
The Reaper said, and smiled;
"Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child.
"They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care,
And saints, upon their garments white,
These sacred blossoms wear."
And the mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above.
Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;
'T was an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.
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If we really believed that those who
are gone from us were as truly alive as ourselves,
we
could not invest the subject with such awful depth of
gloom as we do. If we could imbue
our children with
distinct faith in immortality, we should never speak of
people as dead,
but passed into another world. We should
speak of the body as a cast-off garment, which
the wearer
had outgrown; consecrated indeed by the beloved being
that used it for a season,
but of no value within itself.
Lydia Maria Child |
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It was not until after the coming of Christ
that
time and humans could breathe freely.
It was not until
after him that people began
to live toward the future. Humans do not
die in a ditch like a dog--but at home
in
history, while the work toward
the conquest of death is
in full swing;
they die sharing in this work.
Boris Pasternak |
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There is, I know not
how, a certain presage, as it were,
of a future existence;
and this takes the deepest root,
and is most discoverable,
in the greatest geniuses
and most exalted souls.
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Cicero
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Death stands above me,
whispering low
I know not what into my ear;
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
Walter Savage Landor |
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People
living deeply have no fear of death.
Anais Nin |
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The deep pain that is felt at the
death of every friendly soul arises
from the feeling that
there is in every individual something
which is
inexpressible, peculiar to him or her alone
and is therefore
absolutely and irretrievably lost.
Artur Schopenhauer
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If
some persons died, and others did not die,
death would
indeed be a terrible affliction.
Jean de la Bruyere |
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Life
does not cease to be funny when
people die any more than
it ceases
to be serious when people laugh.
George Bernard Shaw |
It is
equally pointless to weep because
we won't be alive a
hundred years
from now as that we were not here
a hundred
years ago.
Montaigne |
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The
idea of full dress is preparation for a battle comes not from
a belief that it will add
to the fighting ability. The
preparation is for death, in case that should be the result
of
the conflict. Every Indian wants to look his or her best
when they go to meet
the Great Spirit, so the dressing up is
done whether an imminent danger is an oncoming battle or a
sickness or injury at times of peace.
Wooden
Leg (Cheyenne) |
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So
proud she was to die
It made us all ashamed
That what we cherished, so unknown
To her desire seemed.
So
satisfied to go
Where none of us should be,
Immediately, that anguish stooped
Almost to jealousy.
Emily
Dickinson |
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Science says:
"We must live," and seeks the means
of prolonging,
increasing, facilitating and amplifying life,
of making it tolerable
and acceptable;
wisdom says: "We must die," and
seeks how to make us die well.
Miguel de
Unamuno
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We
find by losing. We hold fast by letting go.
We become something new by ceasing to be something old.
This seems to be close to the heart of that mystery.
I know no more now than I ever did about the far side
of death as the last letting-go of all, but now I know
that I do not need to know, and that I do not need
to be afraid of not knowing. God knows.
That is all that matters.
Frederick
Buechner |
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Death is simply a shedding of
the physical body,
like the butterfly coming out of a cocoon. . . .
It's like putting away your winter coat when spring comes.
Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross |
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Death is by no
means separate from life. . . . We all interact with death
every day, tasting it as we might a wine, feeling its keen edge even
in
trifling losses and disappointments, holding it by the hand,
as a dancer might a partner, in every separation.
Eugene Kennedy |
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| We treat death as a tragedy, as an ending of
the good times. But what if we could think of it as it
really is in nature, a process of physical change, an
inevitable transformation, something you cannot alter and so
must accept? Then it's possible to look directly at it
instead of turning away in fear, to examine it instead of
shunning it in denial.
Mark Forstater |
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Do not fear
death, but welcome it, since it too comes from nature. For just
as
we are young and grow old, and flourish and reach maturity, have teeth
and
a beard and grey hairs, conceive, become pregnant, and bring forth new
life,
and all the other natural processes that follow the seasons of our
existence,
so also do we have death.
A thoughtful person will never take death lightly,
impatiently, or scornfully,
but will wait for it as one of life's natural processes.
Marcus Aurelius |
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Master Tanzan, on the day of his death, called upon
his assistant
to send a batch of identical postcards. Each one said simply:
"I am departing this world. There will be no further
messages. Tanzan."
traditional Zen Buddhist story |
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