#ring

Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. ↗

— Paul Bowles

#death

But I am the real Strider, fortunately. I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#gallantry #heroes #lord-of-the-rings #oath #death

Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#comes #day #dead #forward #know

I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#maturity #melancholy #suffering #life

They say, 'The coward dies many times'; so does the beloved. Didn't the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined? ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#grief #hurt #injury #love #suffering

Keep me rather in this cage, and feed me sparingly, if you dare. Anything that brings me closer to illness and the edge of death makes me more faithful. It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure. You should never have agreed to be a god for me if you were afraid to assume the duties of a god, and we know that they are not as tender as all that. You have already seen me cry. Now you must learn to relish my tears. ↗

— Pauline Réage

#cruelty #dark #faith #god #love

Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer. ↗

— Willa Cather

#suffering #virgin-mary #woman #death

I am the foremost collector of velvet Elvii in the city of Chicago," I said at once. "Elvii?" Marcone inquired. "The plural would be Elvises, I guess," I said. "But if I say that too often, I start muttering to myself and calling things 'my precious,' so I usually go with the Latin plural. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#art-collection #elvis #gollum #lord-of-the-rings #art

Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet, all last winter we slept in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you. ↗

— Edward Payson Roe

#death

The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#suffering #death