Death, Defined
Death, Defined
- Death is a black camel, which kneels at the gates of all —Abd-el-Kader
- Death is like a fisherman who catches fish in his net and leaves them for a while in the water; the fish is still swimming but the net is around him, and the fisherman will draw him up when he thinks fit —Ivan Turgenev
- Death is like thunder in two particulars: we are alarmed at the sound of it and it is formidable only from that which preceded it —Charles Caleb Colton
- Death is simply a shedding of the physical body, like the butterfly coming out of a cocoon —Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross
- Death, like an overflowing stream, sweeps us away —Abraham Lincoln
- Death, like birth, is a secret of nature —Marcus Aurelius
- Death, like life, is an affair of being more frightened than hurt —Samuel Butler
- Dying is an art, like everything else —Sylvia Plath
- Dying is something ghastly, as being born is something ridiculous —George Santayana
- If a person has reached the “age of strength” [eighty years old] a sudden death is like dying from a kiss —Babylonian Talmud
- Like the dew on the mountain, like the foam on the river, like the bubble on the fountain, you are gone, and for ever —Sir Walter Scott
The above, taken from Scott’s famous The Lady of the Lake, substitutes “You are gone” for the old English “Thou art gone.”
- The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts, and is desired —William Shakespeare
’Desired’ has been modernized from ‘desir’d.’
- (I) think of death as a sort of deleterious fermentation, like that which goes on in a bottle of Chateau Margaux when it becomes corked —H. L. Mencken