Reader > Reader's Quotes

“Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est.

(Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.)

[Said on his deathbed]”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“She is here. And she comes to you, and she does not speak, and the others do not notice her, and she takes your hand, and you ready yourself to die, eyes open, aware that this is all an illusion, a last aroma cast up by the chemical stew that is your brain, which will soon cease to function, and there will be nothing, and you are ready, ready to die well, ready to die like a man, like a woman, like a human, for despite all else you have loved, you have loved your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your son, and yes, your ex-wife, and you have loved the pretty girl, you have loved beyond yourself, and so you have courage, and you have dignity, and you have calmness in the face of terror, and awe, and the pretty girl holds your hand, and you contain her, and this book, and me writing it, and I too contain you, who may not yet even be born, you inside me inside you, though not in a creepy way, and so may you, may I, may we, so may all of us confront the end.”
― Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

“For, in those centuries, when numbers of children died in the cradle and half the women in childbirth, when epidemics ravaged adult life, when wounds were but rarely cured, and sores did not heal, when the Church’s teaching was ceaselessly directed towards a consciousness of sin, when the statues in the sanctuaries showed worms gnawing at corpses, when each one carried throughout his life the spectre of his own decomposition before his eyes and the idea of death was habitual, natural and familiar, to be present at a man’s last breath was not, as it is for us, a tragic reminder of our common destiny.”
― Maurice Druon, The Iron King

“Before I continue, I just want to write about living every day like your last one. I don’t agree with it at all. You will die one day but you will live thousands of days. So, living your thousands of days according to just one, seems like a bad idea to me.”
― Cave Man, Modern Human's Handbook

“What would I have wanted to say if I had had the opportunity to see him one more time? I would like to think that I would have kept it simple and said, “I love you,” then just held his hand in silence, letting that thought linger in the space of the time we had left together.”
― Lisa J. Shultz, A Chance to Say Goodbye: Reflections on Losing a Parent

“Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things—either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again.”
― Socrates, Apology, Crito And Phaedo Of Socrates.

“I shall stay here as long as I may, I don't want to think — I needn't think. I don't care for anything but you, and that's enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on my knees, with you dying in my arms, I'm happier than I've been for a long time. And I want you to be happy — not to think of anything sad; only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be pain? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there's something deeper.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“How long is this posthumous life of mine to last?”
― John Keats

“She wished to say everything; she was afraid he might die before she had done so.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“If you have few days to live your life, what will be your passion for last days?”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

“Each man lives in his own universe and when he dies the world is over”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom

“We die a day at a time”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom

“I live nearby a graveyard, that's where I get all my inspiration for wisdom and life”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“We all want to become more than we are, we want to live forever, that is why we hate death and create the afterlife.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Dreams, just dreams, it's all illusion”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“I love you. If you remember nothing else for the rest of your life, if you fall and hit your head and can’t remember my name, if you get so sick you’re unrecognizable, if you hate me, if you’re on your deathbed and can’t manage to even lift a finger — remember this. I. Love. You. Always. Forever. Eternally. Is that kind of love something you can handle, Saylor?”
― Rachel Van Dyken, Toxic

“Love was holding someone's hand when you wanted to escape.”
― Krista Van Dolzer, The Sound of Life and Everything

“What's the use in prolonging life if you don't do anything with it?”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of death; to know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible; and to sit and count the dreary hours through long, long, nights - such nights as only watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart, the pent-up, hidden secrets of many years, poured forth by the unconscious helpless being before you; and to think how little the reserve, and cunning of a whole life will avail, when fever and delirium tear off the mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the wanderings of dying men; tales so full of guilt and crime, that those who stood by the sick person's couch have fled in horror and affright, lest they should be scared to madness by what they heard and saw; and many a wretch has died alone, raving of deeds, the very name of which, has driven the boldest man away.

("The Drunkard's Death")”
― Charles Dickens