Don’t strew me with roses after I’m dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
-Thomas F.Healey
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
–Romans 8:39, 39 (NIV)
…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
The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive – perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.
-Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
-Norman Cousins
Have the courage to live. Anyone can die
-Robert Cody
So many people tiptoe through life, so carefully, to arrive, safely, at death.
-Tony Campolo
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention
of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up,
totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming-
WOW-What A Ride!…
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. Glida Radner
For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, and a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
- Alfred D. Souza
And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
-Abraham Lincoln
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
-Emily Dickinosn