#death

One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death, but I think now, as I thought then, that it's better to die violently and not too old. People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases? ‘Natural’ death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful ↗

— George Orwell

#death

Life moved, as inconstant and fickle as Wind Baby, frolicking, sleeping, weeping, but never truly still. Never solid or finished. Always like water flowing from one place to the next. Seed and fruit. Rain and drought, everything traveled in a gigantic circle, an eternal process of becoming something new. But we rarely saw it. Humans tended to see only frozen moments, not the flow of things. ↗

— Kathleen O'Neal Gear

#native-american-wisdom #death

With the snow piling up outside, the warm dry cabin hidden in its fold of the mountain felt like a safe haven indeed, though it had not been such for the people who had lived there. Soldiers had found them and made the cabin trailhead to a path of exile, loss, and death. But for a while that night, it was a place that held within its walls no pain nor even a vague memory collection of pain. ↗

— Charles Frazier

#native-americans #pain #death

Things that aren't important, that have nothing to do with winning and losing, don't have to be a rule. ↗

— Peter Richmond

#football #motivation #sports #death

Death stripes away many things, especially when it arrives at a temperature hot enough to vaporize iron ... The immortal remains of Brother Watchtower watched the dragon flap away into the fog .... ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#dragon #death

But in battle you cannot tell another when it is his time to enter the World-to-Come, nor is it possible to keep any man in this world when he wishes to leave it behind. ↗

— Alice Hoffman

#death

A reaper in a bubble bath? What an affront to the dignity of death. ↗

— Moira Rogers

#frostbite #moira-rogers #death

If only certain things had been preventable, his life would have unfurled in front of him as intended, like a lush Oriental carpet. No surprises, no detours. Just a thick tapestry of days and nights that at the end of his time on earth, he could roll up and proudly claim as his own. ↗

— Shilpa Agarwal

#haunting-bombay #life-and-death #regret #shilpa-agarwal #tapestry

... the vacuum left by the departing visitor seemed to echo along the hallway and into the walls. It was at those times, when her aloneness took on a darker hue, that she almost wished there would be no more guess, for then there would be no chasm of emptiness for her to negotiate when they were gone. ↗

— Jacqueline Winspear

#death

That's what it means to die, to not be able to stop looking at whatever's in front of you. Some darn thing placed directly there, with nothing you can do about it... ↗

— Philip K. Dick

#life-and-death #living #death