Cowards die many times before their deaths The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.(William Shakespeare)
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.(William Shakespeare)
If the radiance of a thousand sunsWere to burst at once into the skyThat would be like the splendor of the Mighty one --I am become Death,The shatterer of Worlds.(Hindu Spiritual)
Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.(Francis Bacon)
It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.(Clive Staples Lewis)
The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.(Theodore Roosevelt)
What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal, who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him, and who from that moment onward had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.(Albert Camus)
Even when someone battles hard, there is an equal portion for one who lingers behind, and in the same honor are held both the coward and the brave man the idle man and he who has done much meet death alike.(Homer)
It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair. But when dogs shame the gray head and gray chin and nakedness of an old man killed, it is the most piteous thing that happens among wretched mortals.(Homer)
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.(Bertrand Russell)