Thoughts Of Death

Bonhoeffer thought of death

Bonhoeffer thought of death as the last station on the road to freedom. Eric Metaxas

We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can’t allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it. I don’t think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old … Read more

The premonition of death

The premonition of death may for many be a stimulus to novelty of experience: the imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality. David Riesman

Fatigue dulls the pain,

Fatigue dulls the pain, but awakes enticing thoughts of death. So! that is the way in which you are tempted to overcome your loneliness — by making the ultimate escape from life. — No! It may be that death is to be your ultimate gift to life: it must not be an act of treachery … Read more

To be the father

To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase ‘terrible beauty.’ Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it’s a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else’s body. It also makes … Read more

Death is repose, but

Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose. Cesare Pavese

Death is easier to

Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril. Blaise Pascal

So love the thought

So love the thought of death, love it. Anthony de Mello

Old age diminishes our

Old age diminishes our strength; it takes away our pleasures one after the other; it withers the soul as well as the body; it renders adventure and friendship difficult; and finally it is shadowed by thoughts of death. Andre Maurois

A life-worshipper’s philosophy is

A life-worshipper’s philosophy is comprehensive. He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic: now haunted by the thought of death and now a Dionysian child of nature; now a pessimist and now, with a change of lover or liver or even the weather, an exuberant believer that God’s in his heaven … Read more