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

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

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.

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

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

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

When anyone has the power to destroy the whole human race in a matter of hours, it becomes a moral issue. The church must speak out.

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.

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.

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.

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

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

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.

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.

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

One thing that I find very unmotivating is the kind of Plan B argument: when Earth gets destroyed, you want to be somewhere else. That doesn’t work for me. We have sent robotic probes now to every place in the solar system, and this is the best one.

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.

Even today we raise our hand against our brother… We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and war lead only to death.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

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.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

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.

Our words will either bring life and victory or death and destruction. If we want to be happy, we have to be serious about speaking words of life that line up with God’s Word.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

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

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

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

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

How young can you die of old age?

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

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

All diseases run into one, old age.

I don’t pick up toys. I crush them.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

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

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

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.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

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

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

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

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

Death is a fearful thing.

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

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

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.

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

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