#so

The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life's intimacy does not reveal it's dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out. ↗

— Georges Bataille

#philosophy #death

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labour, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school where children played, Their lessons scarcely done; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then 'tis centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity. ↗

— Emily Dickinson

#emily-dickinson #death

Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel? ↗

— Kōbō Abe

#life-and-death #philosophy #death

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life. ↗

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

#broken #happy #his #life #loved

Those who have witnessed executions say there is no sound worse than the weeping of mother watching her son being put to death. They're wrong. There is one sound that is worse. There is silence. ↗

— Carolee Dean

#dean #dylan-dawson #execution #silence #take-me-there

Hope is a horrible thing, you know. It's a plague. It's like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and someone just keep pulling it and pulling it." STATE OF WONDER ↗

— Ann Patchett

#grief #missing-persons #death

We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone—crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions—one has to live with them, and we try. ↗

— Ekaterina Sedia

#decisions #mortality #regret #souls #death

No - no - no!" someone was shouting. "No! Fred! No!" And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#death #depressing #fred #harry-potter #j-k-rowling

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. ↗

— Lois McMaster Bujold

#glory #philosophy #power #war #death

The shame and the downfall of a modern materialistic society is her inability to treasure, care for, admire, adore, cherish, value, revere, respect, uphold, uplift, protect, shield, defend, safeguard, treasure and love her children. I praise all the cultures of this world that naturally harbor and actively manifest these instincts. If a nation or if a population of people fails to recognize the excellent value and distinction of the lives of her children and is defective enough to have lost the capability of expressing and acting upon these instincts then there is nothing that can save that nation or those people. The prosperity of a people is not measured in banks, financial markets, economy and the death of its humanity is evident not through the loss of life but in the loss of love for its children. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#child #children #death-of-a-nation #love-for-children #materialism