Death doesn’t just make all the world kin, it makes all religions one

boo.” Maybe you just read my letters and laughed or maybe you didn’t read my letters or maybe you don’t even exist. It was pretty frustrating when I was young, but now I’m glad that...

We read off the ancient Hebrew words, with no idea of what they might mean, and the congregation responds with more words that they don’t understand either. We are gathered together on a Saturday morning...

The decision to be positive is not one that disregards or belittles the sadness that exists. It is rather a conscious choice to focus on the good and to cultivate happiness–genuine happiness. Happiness is not...

[Jesus] tilted His head back, pulled up one last time to draw breath and cried, “Tetelestai!” It was a Greek expression most everyone present would have understood. It was an accounting term. Archaeologists have found...

The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or...

I’m going to be with the Lord.”I wished I shared his confidence. For him, it was a priceless thing no one could take. I wished the fear of death was like the fear of a...

So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, I’d better not miss it, because once you’re dead, it’s too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is...

If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.

Cada suspiro es como un sorbo de vida del que uno se deshace.

Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and...

I felt that I did not really remember her except through the pain, and I longed for the nails that riveted her to my consciousness to be driven yet deeper.

If Christ is God, He cannot sin, and if suffering was a sin in and by itself, He could not have suffered and died for us. However, since He took the most horrific death to...

Keats was getting a reputation just when he was too ill to appreciate it or build on it: his country was taking notice of him just when he would have to leave it.

The prisoner of doubt ends his stint [through suicide], released to the custody of that final question mark which punctuates every life sentence.

We’ll squeeze every second that we can from our lives, because we’re young, and we have plenty of years to grow. We’ll grow until we’re braver. We’ll grow until our bones ache and our skin...

Listen, children:Your father is dead.From his old coatsI’ll make you little jackets;I’ll make you little trousersFrom his old pants.There’ll be in his pocketsThings he used to put there,Keys and penniesCovered with tobacco;Dan shall have the...

Why the Romans, Father?” I asked him one afternoon. “Because, my child, they teach us how to bear suffering in a world of injustice where all faith is dead,” he answered.

Me, I’m living under a sword too, as Jack may have told you. An old wino’s disease, which could lay me in the grave most anytime. Not that I mind too much; I’ve done everything...

Two weeks until your cure” she says finally. “Sixteen days” I say, but in my head I’m counting: Seven days. Seven days until I’m free and away from all these people and their sliding superficial...

… for overstrong was the command to hold fast to each smallest particle of time, to the smallest particle of every circumstance, and to embody all of them in memory as if they could be...

What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.And even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would...

I’m afraid of the dark.’ And his mother: ‘Don’t be silly. You know there’s nothing to be afraid in the dark.’ But he knew hte falsity of the reasoning; he knew how they taught also...

We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.

Era linistitor sa stiu ca seara nu voi mai trai.

I would have had to kill him, and Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman.

When the rich give a party and the meal is finished, a man carries round amongst the guests a wooden image of a corpse in a coffin, carved and painted to look as much like...

Don’t look shy if you wear rag and people gag, many are in the grave wearing skeleton, and you should even be happier for wearing a skin without clothes.

And Harry remembered his first nightmarish trip into the forest, the first time he had ever encountered the thing that was then Voldemort, and how he had faced him, and how he and Dumbledore had...

She was crouched in the corner of the room, eating something off the floor. It was the old woman dressed in endless black. When she looked up this time there was no question she was...

He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.

Not forever does the bulbul singIn balmy shades of bowers,Not forever lasts the springNor ever blossom the flowers.Not forever reigneth joy,Sets the sun on days of bliss,Friendships not forever last,They know not life, who know...

The realization of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow.”I’ve got to go back, haven’t I?””That is up to you.””I’ve got a choice?””Oh yes.” Dumbledore smiled...

As a species, tragedy dwells within us all. We push it to the back of our thoughts, but it is never so far gone that it cannot return, crashing and writhing into our souls: a...

Only God would adore his own death.

One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it – water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about...

Danny could see it in their faces when they shook Steve’s hand—they’d have preferred him dead. Death allowed for the illusion of heroism. The maimed turned that illusion into an uncomfortable odor.

(T)he cadet was too young to believe in death after life.

The two moments are much alike: birth and death are made of the same fabric.

We are killing, every one of us, every moment of the day – just by living. And if one realizes this, is this very realization itself not a conscious consent to murder? If a truly...

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and...

The day that I left my home, I had prayed that my children would forget me. I wanted to spare them the pain of remembering. But that night, as I crouched in the white mist,...

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life

Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The...

I sprained my knee. I was Elbowing at the time. Elbowing is a new dance I invented for those random moments of romance that break out at funerals.

Throw off your grief,’ doubters imply, ‘and we can all go back to pretending death doesn’t exist, or at least is comfortably far away.

You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the...

This is how the zombie apocalypse starts,” Cas said. “You don’t screw with death, yo!

End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take.

Grimly, she realized that clocks don’t make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of...