“The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.”
Nobody gets out of here alive, and these quotes do not pretend otherwise. What they offer instead is honesty — about grief, legacy, fear, acceptance, and the strange way that thinking about death can make you more serious about living.
“The goal of all life is death.”
“The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.”
“The human consciousness is really homogeneous. There is no complete forgetting, even in death.”
“The desire to die was my one and only concern to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.”
“I wish to be a martyr, and I don't fear death.”
“To be immortal is commonplace except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.”
“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”
“The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death.”
“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.”
“And as long as you're subject to birth and death, you'll never attain enlightenment.”
“Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.”
“There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.”
“Grumbling is the death of love.”
“There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.”
“We live in grief for having left the womb, for having left the teat, then school, then home. In my case, it was leaving marriages, and the death of my wife.”
“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.”