A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.

A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.

Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a "good thing" to read more

Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a "good thing" to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.

There are in fact four very different stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man read more

There are in fact four very different stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.

The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, read more

The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.

I have heard it said that the first ingredient of success -- the earliest spark in the dreaming youth -- read more

I have heard it said that the first ingredient of success -- the earliest spark in the dreaming youth -- if this; dream a great dream.

It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own read more

It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own image. Rather does he create Him in the image of his cravings and dreams- in the image of what man wants to be. God making could be part of the process by which a society realizes its aspirations: it first embodies them in the conception of a particular God, and then proceeds to imitate that God. The confidence requisite for attempting the unprecedented is most effectively generated by the fiction that in realizing the new we are imitating rather than originating. Our preoccupation with heaven can be part of an effort to find precedents for the unprecedented.

Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.

Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.

There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the read more

There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network. •Guy Almes A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist. •Steward Alsop I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death. •Francis Bacon When one by one our ties are torn, and friend from friend is snatched forlorn; When man is left alone to mourn, oh! then how sweet it is to die! •Anna Letitia Barbauld Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children. •Henry Ward Beecher Loss and possession, Death and life are one. There falls no shadow where There shines no sun. •Hilaire Belloc Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is dead. Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable. •Bhagavad Gita How long after you are gone will ripples remain as evidence that you were cast into the pool of life? •Grant M. Bright No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness. •Hermann Broch Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death. •Sir Thomas Browne Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely. •Albert Camus Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other. •Miguel De Cervantes Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console. •Charles Caleb Colton I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat. •Joseph Conrad While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. •Leonardo Da Vinci Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow. Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. •John Donne A dead atheist is someone who is all dressed up with no place to go. •James Duffecy Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet •George Eliot Death is the last enemy: once we've got past that I think everything will be alright. •Alice Thomas Ellis The pride of dying rich raises the loudest laugh in hell. •John W. Foster Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life. •Charles Frohman Plan for this world as if you expect to live forever; but plan for the hereafter as if you expect to die tomorrow. •Ibn Gabirol Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling. •Andre Gide Death is the only inescapable, unavoidable, sure thing. We are sentenced to die the day we're born. •Gary Mark Gilmore Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time. •Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing. •George Gurdjieff Oh you who have been removed from God in his solitude by the abyss of time, how can you expect to reach him without dying? •Hallaj Death is like an arrow that is already in flight, and your life lasts only until it reaches you. •Georg Hermes The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation. •Hermann Hesse Death is feared as birth is forgotten. •Doug Horton Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh? •Aldous Huxley In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave. •John J. Ingalls We are but tenants and shortly the great landlord will give us notice that our lease has expired. •Joseph Jefferson It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time. •Samuel Johnson 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. •C. S. Lewis But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet; And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end. •James Russell Lowell Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying. •Martin Luther There is no such thing as death. In nature nothing dies. From each sad remnant of decay, some forms of life arise so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it. •Charles Mackay We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning. •Marcus Manilius There is no death. the stars go down to rise upon some other shore. And bright in Heaven's jeweled crown, they shine for ever more. •John Luckey McCreery At birth man is offered only one choice -- the choice of his death. But if this choice is governed by distaste for his own existence, his life will never have been more than meaningless. •Jean-Pierre Melville Death is delightful. Death is dawn, the waking from a weary night of fevers unto truth and light. •Joaquin Miller Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good. •William Mitford We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death. •Charles De Montesquieu I hate funerals and would not attend my own if it could be avoided, but it is well for every man to stop once in a while to think of what sort of a collection of mourners he is training for his final event. •Robert T. Morris One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. •Friedrich Nietzsche Life is a dream walking; death is a going home. •Chinese Proverb Every man goes down to his death bearing in his hands only that which he has given away. •Persian Proverb Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality. •Jean Paul Richter Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives. •A. Sachs When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never. •Antoine De Saint-Exupery Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening. •Sir Walter Scott 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 God's finger touched him and he slept. •Lord Alfred Tennyson Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art. •Paul Theroux Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead. •James Thurber Death is not a period, but a comma in the story of life. •Amos Traver Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. •Henry Van Dyke Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details. •Andy Warhol Death is nature's way of saying, Your table's ready. •Robin Williams I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death. •William Butler Yeats In any man who dies there dies with him, his first snow and kiss and fight. Not people die but worlds die in them. •Yevgeny Yevtushenko No evil is honorable: but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. read more

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.