The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

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

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

All men are born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with a knowledge of God.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

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.

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

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

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.

For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows.

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?

We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.

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

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

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

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

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.

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.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

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

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

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.

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.

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.

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

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

I have little bones.

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.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

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.

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

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.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

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.

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

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

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.

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

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.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.

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

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

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.

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

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

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.

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

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

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.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

Life is wasted on the living.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

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.

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.

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

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

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

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