#un

It came to him that he had turned away from the buffalo not because of a womanish nausea at blood and stench and spilling gut; it came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of the dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of its self, swinging grotesquely, mockingly, before him. It was not itself; or it was not that self that he had imagined it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it. So he had turned away. ↗

— John Edward Williams

#buffalo #death #hunting #westerns #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

Visible objects therefore do not perish utterly, since nature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another's death. ↗

— Titus Lucretius Carus

#lucretius #nature #philosophy #universe #death

A job is like a politician struggling in the water. Be sure you hold it down.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#drown #drowning #economy #funny #humor

But it also had many large posters with messages of a more peaceful nature. These extolled the country’s economic achievement since the Cultural Revolution, which was supposed to have liberated the forces of production and increased productivity. Of course, the Cultural Revolution had done just the opposite. Official lies like this, habitually indulged in and frequently displayed by the authorities, served no purpose except to create the impression that truth was unimportant. Pg. 400 ↗

— Nien Cheng

#communism #lies #mao #death

Are you saying that he deserves to die?' I asked, chilled. 'We all deserve to die,' he answered. ↗

— Storm Constantine

#punishment #death

Sometimes, war being the unjust and drastic creature it is, those in whom he invested hopes took an arrow in the chest, the useless, by chance, thrived to irritate him another day. ↗

— Paul Hoffman

#death #drastic #hopes #paul-hoffman #sometimes

The dead are not always so dumb as you think, it takes much more to die than you would believe. ↗

— E.J. Koh

#death #fantasy #love #red #science-fiction

(ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I've used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then fear for someone else, a husband or a child. How can I bend this woman to my will? (ghost of)POLYXENA: I think I will not bend. IPHIGENIA: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead. ↗

— Sheri S. Tepper

#dead #dystopia #wome #death

In such a beast as this..." (he means the army)"...it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it was finished as a battle. ↗

— Paul Hoffman

#battle #beast #bravery #collaps #collective