Deathly Quotes (page 65)
There is no such thing as originality. It has all been said before, suffered before. If a person knows that, is it any wonder love becomes mechanical and death just a scene to be shunned? There is no absolute knowledge to be gained from either. Just another ride on the merry-go-round, another blurred scene of faces smiling and faces grieved.
Clive Barker
Will his work survive? Alas, I worry that it will not. As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself. Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry,...
Pat Conroy
The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one’s boundaries, the more entrenched are one’s battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death...
Ken Wilber
I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:--Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast; And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past. To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare; And Youth, with still some single golden hair. Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last. Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast; And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear. Love's throne was not with these; but far above. All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I know his death could have been avoided with a doctor who was really on top of it. He had so much life in him. It was wrong. I played my way through that first show and did "Old Man" for Ben (Keith) at the end. I looked over to my right and he was out there somewhere, but not next to me anymore.
Neil Young
All has happened to her that will happen to her. She has felt everything, borne everything, experienced everything, suffered everything, lost everything, mourned everything. She is resigned, with that resignation which resembles indifference, as death resembles sleep. She no longer avoids anything. Let all the clouds fall upon her, and all the ocean sweep over her! What matters it to her? She is a sponge that is soaked.
Victor Hugo
Celibacy,fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude and the whole train of monkish virtues...Stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper...A gloomy hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delerious and dismal as himself.
David Hume
It seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with illness or senility; a heroic one when faced with torture or the avoidable deaths of others; a glamourous one in the fury of dissappointed love (see: Great Literature).
Julian Barnes