The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to
be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which
awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.
~ Ernest Becker
The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal
like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to
avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is
the final destiny of man. ~ Ernest Becker
We now know that the human animal is characterized by two
great fears that other animals are protected from: the fear of life and the fear
of death... Heidegger brought these fears to the center of his existential
philosophy. He argued that the basic anxiety of [humanity] is anxiety about
being-in-the-world, as well as anxiety of being-in-the-world. That is, both fear
of death and fear of life, of experience and individuation.
~ Ernest Becker
Religion is the human response to being alive and having to
die.
~ F. Forrester Church
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way,
that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning,
middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment
and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity. ~Gilda Radner
I don't think he's dead. He's just acting.
~ Anonimous
on Marcel Marceau's death
Too many people are thinking of security instead of
opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.
~ James F. Bymes
Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful
blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as
taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed
star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as
life. ~ John Muir
In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you
not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"~
Rabbi Zusya
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge --
myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope
always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is
stronger than death. ~ Robert Fulghum
...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient
beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense
of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this
can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side
of a leaf. ~Toni Morrison
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is
to have nothing whatever to do with it. ~ W. Somerset
Maugham
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
This entry continued ...
~William Shakespeare
