The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.

I don’t expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, if I die by four o’clock.

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

Every time I think that I’m getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

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.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

I’m not resigned, but I’m realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it’s a certainty you’ll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it’s an awful process.

I’ve looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

Life is so, so short. Bible says it’s like a vapor.

I don’t pick up toys. I crush them.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

We all die, we all get sick, we all feel hunger and lust and pain, and therefore human life is consistent from one generation to the other. We all – most of us, anyway – want connections with other people and spend our lives looking for them.

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later – yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?

Because I believe in God and have faith in God, it doesn’t mean I am immortal. It doesn’t mean I am immune, as has been claimed. I am as scared as anyone of getting hurt, especially driving a Formula One car.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you’re gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It’s yours. Seize your space.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.

The level of destruction and terror and violence carried out by the powerful states far exceeds anything that can imaginably can be done by groups that are called terrorists and subnational groups.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.