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

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

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

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

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.

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

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

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.

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.

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.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.

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.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

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

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

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

Death wasn’t part of God’s original plan for humanity, and the Bible calls death an enemy – the last enemy to be destroyed.

You don’t see too many atheists on the deathbed. They all start cramming then.

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.

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.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

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

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.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

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

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

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

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.

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

From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

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.

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

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

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.

I’ve reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can’t do anything to change events anyway.

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

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.

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.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

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

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

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.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

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.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

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

It is natural to die as to be born.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime.

There’s something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.