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

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

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

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

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

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

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

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime. I’ve came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.

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.

Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

It is natural to die as to be born.

How young can you die of old age?

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.

Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

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.

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

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.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

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.

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

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

If you look back at the history of the twentieth century, Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia several times.

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

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I’m going to be alive, I want to be challenged – to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn’t an easy way, but it’s a rewarding way.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

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.

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

Wars based on principle are far more destructive… the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

Israel is following policies which maximise its security threats… policies which choose expansion over security… policies which lead to their moral degradation, their isolation, their delegitimation, as they call it now, and very likely ultimate destruction. That’s not impossible.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

Civilisations have been destroyed many times, and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

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

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

My gold, my money couldn’t stop cancer from appearing on my body. If they can’t save me, then I don’t need them.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

Previous generations understood about death, and undoubtedly would have seen a reasonable amount of death. Once you get into the Victorian era, you might well have seen the funerals of many of your siblings before you were very old.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

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.

Shall I, that have destroyed my Preservers, return home?

If anyone thinks they’d rather be in a different part of history, they’re probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You’d probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.

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.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.