#th

I died last night. Seventy years too young. ↗

— Colin Thompson

#early-death #famine #global #ignorance #niger

Her past anguish. How do I know that all her anguish is past? I never believed before-I though it immensely improbable- that the faithfulest soul could leap straight into perfection and peace the moment death has rattled in the throat. It would be wishful thinking with a vengeance to take up that belief now. H.was a splendid thing; a soul straight, bright, and tempered like a sword. But not a perfected saint. A sinful woman married to a sinful man; two of God's patients, not yer cured. I know there are not only tears to be dried but stains to be scoured. The sword will be made even brighter. ↗

— C. S. Lewis

#life-after-death #death

La vida es un ruido entre dos grandes silencios ↗

— Isabel Allende

#isabel-allende #life #death

This is shitty to say, but there's not much pathos involved in a case like that. Think about it: Little So-and-so the Fourth drowns himself Tuesday night after receiving his midterm grades in the school of civil engineering. The body goes back to Westchester, and a lounge in the library or a nature path gets named after him, and a bunch of blue-blood kids remember him fondly. Sorry. There's about one story a year like that. Poor Billy Fuckup, Jr., in his Gap khakis, the pressure of going to classes all day really got to him. If I were a better person, I would have felt badly having seen things like that. ↗

— Cara Hoffman

#death

.....listening means learning to hear someone's inner world and deepest feelings with far greater attention in order that we don't let our own assumptions get in the way. The dying may speak in images far more akin to dreamland than the world of everyday reality. In order to understand them we have to make adjustments to comprehend a poetic form of expression that is sometimes elusive but actually far more expressive than the world of facts. ↗

— Robert L. Wise

#death #dying #heaven #hell #hospice

When he presses himself to the earth, long and violently, when he urges himself deep into it with his face and his limbs, under fire and with the fear of death upon him, then the earth is his only friend, his brother, he groans out his terror and screams into its silence and safety, the earth absorbs it all and gives him another ten seconds of life, ten seconds to run, then takes hold of him again - sometimes for ever. ↗

— Erich Maria Remarque

#death

War was so many things, and not the least of which confusion. What was wrong? What was right, for that matter? Was killing right or wrong? Brave or cowardly? Human nature or unnatural behavior of creatures too smart for their own good? Loyalty, betrayal, hate, love, fear, friendship, teamwork, violence. War was connected to all of these. Hard work, sadness, suffering, discipline, chaos, questions, few answers, strategy, bravery, foolishness, death, life. And both winning and losing were only two small aspects of the word war. ↗

— Kenzie Kovacs-Szabo

#dragon-claws #inspirational #life #twelfth-strike-trilogy #war

...for he had learned from others of their kind that death seemed to bring small comfort from the worrisome sphere of life.... ↗

— Neal Barrett Jr.

#death

When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly. ↗

— Patrick Overton

#faith #risk #unknown #faith

Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, unanimously passed, explicitly recognized the right of the United States to self-defense and further called upon all member states 'to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks. It added that 'those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of those acts will be held accountable.' In a speech the following month, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly acknowledged the right of self-defense as a legitimate basis for military action. The SEAL unit dispatched by President Obama to Abbottabad was large enough to allow for the contingency of bin-Laden's capture and detention. The naïve statement that he was 'unarmed' when shot is only loosely compatible with the fact that he was housed in a military garrison town, had a loaded automatic weapon in the room with him, could well have been wearing a suicide vest, had stated repeatedly that he would never be taken alive, was the commander of one of the most violent organizations in history, and had declared himself at war with the United States. It perhaps says something that not even the most casuistic apologist for al-Qaeda has ever even attempted to justify any of its 'operations' in terms that could be covered by any known law, with the possible exception of some sanguinary verses of the Koran. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#al-qaeda #assassination #barack-obama #death-of-osama-bin-laden #international-law