For
those who live neither with religious consolations
about death nor with a sense of death (or of
anything else) as natural, death is the obscene
mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot
be controlled. It can only be denied.
-- Susan Sontag
1933-, American
Essayist
For
the dead there are no more toils.
-- Sophocles
BC 495-406, Greek
Tragic Poet
If I
had my life over again I should form the habit of
nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I
would practice, as it were, the remembrance of
death. There is no other practice which so
intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought
not to take one by surprise. It should be part of
the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present
sense of death life is insipid. You might as well
live on the whites of eggs.
-- Muriel Spark
1918-, British
Novelist
When
it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I
shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and
whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to
lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at
least, if not divine.
-- Robert Louis
Stevenson
1850-1895, Scottish
Essayist, Poet, Novelist
