“Death is the Number One Killer in the world today!”
“On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.”
- Woody Allen
“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
- Albert Einstein
"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”
- George Washington Carver
- George Washington Carver
A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin where he would go after he died.
“How am I supposed to know?” Master Hakuin replied.
“Because you're a Zen master!” exclaimed the samurai.
“Yes, but not a dead one,” Hakuin answered.
“Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die. Health fanatics are going to be disappointed someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.”
“I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”
- Sir Winston Churchill
“I’m bored with it all.”
- Churchill’s last words
Last lines attributed to Groucho Marx:
“Die, my dear? Why that's the last thing I'll do!”
“Either I'm dead, or my watch has stopped.”
“This is no way to live.”
“I always go to other peoples funerals. Otherwise they won't come to mine.”
- attributed to Yogi Berra
“When I die, I would like to go peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandfather ... Not screaming in terror like all the other passengers in the car he was driving.”
- Jack Handey
“Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.”
- Carl Gustav Jung
"Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once."
- George Carlin
“We are here on earth to help others.
What the others are here for, I have no idea.”
- W.H. Auden
“To die would be an awfully big adventure”.
- Peter Pan
“After all, to the well-organized mind,
death is but the next great adventure.”
- J.K. Rowling
“One way to think of death is like a thrill ride at an amusement park. The roller coaster may look daunting, scary, challenging, but you know that you aren’t the first to take the ride, and you won’t be the last. Everyone goes on it sooner or later. So take a deep breath, and dive into it. Get ready for the adventure of your life ... and after-life.”
- Atmanand Douglas
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
- Mark Twain, 1897
“We may have days, we may have hours.
But sooner or later, we all push up flowers.”
- Membrillo from Grim Fandango
Benjamin Franklin’s Gravestone
“The Body of B. Franklin, printer,
Like the Cover of an old Book -
Its Contents torn out
And stripped of its lettering & gilding
Lies here, food for worms;
For it will, as he believed, appear once more
In a new and more elegant edition
Corrected and improved by the Author.”
“Death is not extinguishing the light.
It is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.”
- Rabindranath Tagore
“Death is for many of us the gate of hell,
but we are on the way out, not on the way in.”
- George Bernard Shaw
“Never born. Never died.
Only visited this planet earth
between December 11, 1931
and January 19, 1990.”
- Osho (Rajneesh)
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
- Holy Bible, New Testament, Matthew 6:21 Also on Dumbledore family's tomb, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Gravestone of Dean Martin:
“Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime”
Gravestone of Rodney Dangerfield:
“There goes the neighborhood.”
Gravestone in Nanuet, New York:
“Remember Man, as you walk by,
As you are now so once was I,
As I am now, so you shall be,
So bow your head and pray for me.”
Gravestone in Tasmania, Australia:
“Stop, ye travelers as you pass by.
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, soon you shall be.
Prepare yourself to follow me.”
(And glimpse at Immortality)
Graffiti response:
“To follow you
I’m not content;
How do I know
which way you went?”
Gravestone in Perth, Scotland:
“Reader. For a moment, stop and think,
I’m in eternity, and you’re on the brink.”
Gravestone in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia:
“Death is a debt to Nature due,
Which we have paid, and so must you.”
“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live, and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
“This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be.
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
- Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894
“If I could drop dead right now,
I'd be the happiest man alive!”
- Samuel Goldwyn
Asked where he wanted to be buried, Bob Hope replied:
"Surprise me."
Asked about going to heaven, Bob Hope replied, "I have done benefits for ALL religions. I would hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality."
“The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever....
If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.”
- Woody Allen, in Love and Death (1975); also in What Do Jews Believe? The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism (2007) by Edward Kessler, p. 66
“To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.”
- Woody Allen, in Stardust Memories (1980)
Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife.
The first question was, 'Did you bring joy to the world?’
The second was, 'Did you find joy in the world?’
- Leo Buscaglia
“The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.”
- Seneca
“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
- Socrates
“Death never takes the wise man by surprise.
“Death never takes the wise man by surprise.
He is always ready to go.”
- Jean de La Fontaine
“As a well-spent day brings contented sleep,
“As a well-spent day brings contented sleep,
so a life well used brings contented death.”
- Leonardo da Vinci
“Start every day with a smile, and get it over with.”
- WC Fields
“Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another.”
“Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another.”
- Socrates, in Plato's Apology, 41
“Strange—is it not?—that of the myriads who
Before us passed the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the road
Which to discover, we must travel, too.”
- Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120),
Stanza 68. FitzGerald's translation.
Atmanand’s translation:
“Strange it is, that all humanity
who passed through life's insanity,
None returns to tell us the way.
that we, too must travel
without any delay.”
“If you knew the Truth (about the afterlife), you would celebrate the onset of death, and morn the day of birth.”
I AM NOT THERE
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awake in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of soaring bird’s circled flight.
I am the stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awake in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of soaring bird’s circled flight.
I am the stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.
- Robert Hepburn, in memory of Norbert C. Gessner
Also:
“Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality.”
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality.”
- Emily Dickinson
“Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon
as the end of the ocean.”
-David Searls
“The transmigration of souls is no fable. I would it were; but men and women are only half human.” “The soul comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew; it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The mistake is identifying with the body.
The mistake is identifying with the world.
Unless this mistake is corrected, death will haunt you.
Identify with your infinite, immortal Self.
And be free from fear.
- Atmanand Douglas
Jesus on Reincarnation: Alexandrian Jews and Pharisees hailed Christ as the incarnation of an earlier prophet. Christ Himself asserted that John the Baptist was the Prophet Elias reincarnated. “If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was fore to come.”
- Jesus, Matthew 11.14
“To be, or not to be, —that is the question:—
. . . To die. to sleep.
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, —'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, —to sleep;—
To sleep! perchance to dream: —ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause . . . . Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt 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 naught of?”
- Hamlet's soliloquy, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
“Hey Ram”
- Mahatma Gandhi’s last words. 1869-1948
“Jagadeesha Jagadeesha Jagadeesha”
- Neeb Karori Baba’s last words, before he stopped breathing at 1:15 AM on 11 September 1973, Ananta Chaturdasi in RamaKrishna Hospital in Vrindavan. He was cremated the following day at 9:00 PM in his Vrindavan ashram on a sandalwood funeral pyre following a memorial parade.
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
- Pierre Teihard de Chardin
“I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.”
- Albert Einstein, Letter to Edgar Meyer, 2 Jan 1915
“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to... If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked... If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?... If he is unable to do either, then why call him 'God’?”
- Epicurus
“I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.”
- Diogenes of Sinope
“If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.”
- Woody Allen
“Eternal nothingness is OK, if you're dressed for it.”
- Woody Allen
“I cannot say for certain that God does not exist; I think the worst thing that can be said about him is that he's a bit of an underachiever.”
- Woody Allen
“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God`s. But remember; that which you render unto God is tax deductible.”
- Church circular
“It often happens that I wake up at night and think about a serious problem and decide that I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and realize that I am the Pope.”
- Pope John XXIII
“Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.”
- Robert Heinlein
“I sometimes think that God somewhat overestimated his ability when He created man.”
- Oscar Wilde
“The preacher charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too.”
- Mark Twain
“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.”
- Laurence J. Peter
“I’ve never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.”
- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
“The most preposterous notion that man has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive their flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in history.”
- Robert Heinlein
“It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just, omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists, it operates like the board of a corporation that is losing money.”
- H.L. Mencken
“I desire to go to Hell and not to Heaven. In the former I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks and apostles.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli on his deathbed at age 58 in 1527
“God is dead. Marx is dead.
And I don’t feel so well myself.”
- Eugène Ionesco, quoted in Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2000) by Jules Chametzky, "Jewish Humor", p. 318
“Don’t worry about God intervening to reward or punish you. The universe runs according to set, mathematical laws. According to the law of action and reaction, 'As you sow, so shall you reap.' Our present world is the result of our past actions, and our future is determined by how we respond to the present. We determine our own fate - without any need for divine intervention. Nevertheless, realize that Someone is always watching your every move, and that you are accountable for your actions. So Meditate and bless the world, but without attachment.”
- Atmanand Douglas
“You invested so much in this world.
What have you saved for the next?”
- Ramakrishna
“This too shall pass.”
- Advisor to King Soloman
“And in the end,
the love that you take
is equal to the love you make.”
- Lennon-McCartney, Abbey Road
Miscellaneous:
Maybe the worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of Charades.
I started out with nothing. I still have most of it.
There's nothing scarier than that split second when you lose your balance in the shower and think "Oh damn. They're gonna find me naked."
"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”
- George Washington Carver
