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

Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

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

Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them up with great passion. That is because human beings need stories.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

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.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

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.

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

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

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.

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

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

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.‘

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

How young can you die of old age?

Hell is other people.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

We fear that this moment will end, that we won’t get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think it’s like a battery: you’ve got to have the negative and the positive in order to be a complete person.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

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

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 can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.

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

It’s just human nature to try and figure things out. So, when we’re in the midst of a situation, we usually try to reason our way through it.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

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

We all gonna die eventually from something or other, but don’t be a wimp. Put up a good fight.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered.

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

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

Nature is not human hearted.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

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.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.