Over time, we came to accept that all good things in life must end: the seventh Harry Potter book; the last few hours of freedom on a Sunday night; the last grilled cheese flat sold in Dunkin Donuts (no, I'm still not over it). Endings are inevitable. And at some crucial point in our childhoods, we all came to realize this doesn't just apply to material objects, but also to ourselves. For the first time, we considered our mortality, and what exactly death meant. Do we cease existing after we take our last breath? After we spend this entire life carving a niche for ourselves, creating a seemingly infinite number of memories, and making countless meaningful human connections, does it all just...disappear?
I'm not even cracking the surface with questions like that, but even those are overwhelming enough for now. Because the truth is, we really can't know for sure what death means, and what it really is, until we experience it ourselves. Even more jarring is when it happens to somebody we know. Although it feels in some ways like they are still alive through memories, we can't help but wonder what has happened to them, or where they have gone. I think we've all had some morbid curiosity about what happens after we die, and along with it some major apprehension, even if we know it shouldn't be happening to us any time soon.
Whether you are struggling with grief for a loved one or fearing the great unknown in general, here are a few quotes that will make you feel better about death:
1. "Death is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time." - Susan Cheever
2. "We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, but to create something that will." - Chuck Palahniuk
3. "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." - Mark Twain
4. "Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality." - Emily Dickinson
5. "Life is eternal, and love is immortal;
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight." - Rossiter Worthington Raymond
6. “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” - François Rabelais
7. “Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.” - Mahatma Gandhi
8. "As a day well spent brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death." - Leonardo da Vinci
9. "I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life." - Jean Giraudoux
10. "Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it." - Haruki Murakami
11. "Death is the last enemy: Once we've got past that, I think everything will be alright." - Alice Thomas Ellis
12. "Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life." - Albert Einstein
13. "Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal." - Benjamin Franklin
14. "For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance." - Khalil Gibran
15. "Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion." - Dylan Thomas
16. "It's better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear." - Michael Crichton
17. "I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another." - John Lennon
18. "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." - Dr. Seuss
19. "To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." - J.K. Rowling
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