#death

Now if a man thus favoured died as he has lived, he will be just the one you are looking for: the only sort of person who deserves to be called happy. But mark this: until he is dead, keep the word "happy" in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky... ↗

— Herodotus

#happy #herodotus #history #life #lucky

Who would fardels bear, To groan and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all; ↗

— William Shakespeare

#death

Those of us who have seen violent death up close, who have seen what high-powered bullets can do to living human tissue, have a horror of inflicting that nightmarish, never forgotten damage on a fellow human being. Perhaps the only more terrifying prospect is that such a fate should befall us or our loved ones. This is why we, a representative cross-section of America's population, keep deadly weapons for personal defense. ↗

— Massad Ayoob

#lethal-force #regret #responsibility #death

Only fools insist upon life at any cost.... Others would say that life may be laid down when it becomes too heavy. Where does it go, after all, but into the keeping of the Powers who gave it and will give it once again? ↗

— Sheri S. Tepper

#death

What careful planning, what painstaking attention to detail, goes into extinguishing a man's life! Far more than the hit-or-miss, haphazard circumstances of igniting it. ("New York Blues") ↗

— Cornell Woolrich

#execution #killing #murder #death

Honey, I know you like to take a drink, and that's all right, but be forewarned that I ain't your maid and I ain't your punching-bag, and if you ever raise your hand to me you'd best kill me. Because otherwise I'll wait till you're asleep; sew you into the bed; and beat you to death with a frying pan. ↗

— Haven Kimmel

#haven-kimmel #zippy #death

The Captain looked at Fermina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glimmer of wintry frost. Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#death

His voice was oily and slick as it poured from his mouth like liquid acid, threatening to hook onto the woman's hair like a fishing hook and drag her back to death. ↗

— Stephen Craig

#death #disturbing #horror #killer #death

Death is nature's way of making things continually interesting. Death is the possibility of change. Every individual gets its allotted lifespan, its chance to try something new on the world. But time is called and the molecules which make up leaf and limb, heart and eye are disassembled and redistributed to other tenants. ↗

— Peter Steinhart

#cycle #death #ecology #life #change

...there's not enough of anything to go around except people and death. ↗

— Saša Stanišić

#people #scarcity #death