#afterlife

Sweet Evelyn, I think, I should have loved you better. Possessing perfect knowledge I hover above him as he hacks me to bits. I see his rough childhood. I see his mother doing something horrid to him with a broomstick. I see the hate in his heart and the people he had yet to kill before pneumonia gets him at eighty-three. I see the dead kid's mom unable to sleep, pounding her fists against her face in grief at the moment I was burying her son's hand. I see the pain I've caused. I see the man I could have been, and the man I was, and then everything is bright and new and keen with love and I sweep through Sam's body, trying to change him, trying so hard, and feeling only hate and hate, solid as stone. ↗

— George Saunders

#compassion #empathy #forgiveness #hatred #change

And here we see again that we do not decide our own lives. Dieneke, even if we won't see each other again on earth, we will never be sorry for what we did, that we took this stand. ↗

— Diet Eman

#no-regrets #surrender #unpredictability-of-life #diet

Human knowledge hasn't been complete enough to understand the afterlife if it hasn't been through the valley of death. ↗

— Toba Beta

#death

I told you before, Jem, that you would not leave me," Will said, his bloody hand on the hilt of the dagger. " And you are still with me. When I breath, I will think of you, for without you I would have been dead years ago. When I wake up and when I sleep, when I lift up my hands to defend myself or when I lie down to die, you will be with me. You say we are born again. I say there is a river that divides the dead and the living. What I do know is that if we are born again, I will meet you in another life, if there is a river, you will wait on the shores for me to come to you, so we can cross together." Will took a deep breath and let go of the knife. He drew his hand back. The cut on his palm was already healing- the result of the half dozen iratzes on his skin. " You hear that, James Carstairs? We are bound, you and I, over the divide of death, down through whatever generations may come. Forever." He rose to his feet and looked down at the knife. The knife was Jem's, the blood was his. This spot of ground, whether he could ever find it again, whether he lived to try, would be theirs. He turned around to walk to Balios, towards Wales and Tessa. He did not look back. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#death #jem #will #death

Time," the Captain said, "is not what you think." He sat down next to Eddie. "Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#death-and-dying #death

Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all. ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#death #hope #prayer #death

When it all comes to an end, please let it be the very end. ↗

— the Farce

#death #death

If I lie down on my bed I must be here, But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere. ↗

— Stevie Smith

#afterworld #death #death

I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing. ↗

— Albert Camus

#compassion #life #religion #life

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#atheism #immortality #love