"Life being what it is in our world, the onset of death is often the first taste a man gets of freedom. At least the imagination can come into its own, and as a man yields to it his emotions take on a surprising depth and intensity."
-Isaac Rosenfeld, An Age of Enormity
"The dying man has probably lost during the course of life things more important than what he is about to lose by dying."
-Friederich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day.
"If even dying is to be made a social function, then, please, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party."
-Dag Hammarskjold, Markings.
"When I was analyzing I observed clearly that the fear of death was in proportion to not-living. The less a person was in life, the greater the fear. By being alive I mean living out of all the cells, all the parts of one's self. The cells which are denied become atrophied, like a dead arm, and infect the rest of the body. People living deeply have no fear of death."
-Anais Nin, The Diaries of Anais Nin, Vol II
"Few men ever drop dead from overwork, but many quietly curl up and die because of undersatisfaction."
-Sydney J Harris, Strictly Personal.
"As I follow some insignificant mortal along the pavement, I am always led to reflect that he even he, will at some moment be the very centre of the interest of humanity, viz: at the moment of his death."
-George Gissing, Commonplace Book.
"The wildest sorrow that comes at the thought of death is, I think, "Ages will pass over and no one ever again look on that nobleness or that beauty." What is this but to pity the living and to praise the dead?"
-W.B.Yeats, Autobiography.
"The event of death is always astounding; our philosophy never reaches, never posesses it; we are always at the beginning of our catechism; always the definition is yet to be made. What is death?"
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
"There is a kind of contempt of the land scape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it sets down over less worth in the population."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature" Essays.
"The dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality imparted to them by the living."
-Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes.
"It is death which gives gambling and heroism their true meaning."
-Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942.
"The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colors of life in all their purity."
-George Santayana, Soliloquies in England.
