Tag: death (106 entries)

As the taxi took me through the city to the station, I felt as though I’d been dropped onto another planet, a cruel and hostile place. Inclined by character to silence and reflection, I’d always been repulsed by noise and uproar, by any manifestation of the excessive merriment that so often borders on violence. I’d always detested student revelry, as though death became even more menacing to me precisely in the rites meant to exorcise it.

Things change faster and faster and we keep keeping up because we are afraid to die.

– […] I’d say you’re confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives: we drink, or we smoke, we destabilize the good job… or the happy marriage. But these aren’t decisions, they’re… they’re impulses. In fact, you’re probably better equipped to explain this than I am.

– What does that mean?

– You’re a biologist. Isn’t self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?

I believe that we do not die because we fall ill, but we fall ill because we must die.

It’s like with human life: if you’re lucky enough to reach old age, the phases of your life will be: birth, childhood, puberty, masturbation, masturbation with a partner, pathetic attempts at masturbation, and death.

– Do you smoke a lot?

– As much as I can. As much as I can. I don’t even keep track. Whatever… I won’t die healthy, but it’s hard to die healthy. What really hurts is living, because by the sheer act of living, we die.

What does it mean – and I close with this somewhat pedagogical note – what does it mean to “anticipate death”? That is, to be persuaded that one must die; what is the advantage of the tragic dimension?, which consists in the fact that you have to die and there is nothing waiting for you in the afterlife? The advantage is that you work a relativization of the problems of the now. You don’t rush like a desperate man, you don’t argue like a madman. You don’t kill yourself for the worries of the world, because you are mortal; you are mortal, and when you have to retire you don’t despair, you don’t die two years after: because death is still there waiting for you, it’s not as if life ends: you’re the one who made it coincide with your work life and outside that you no longer know who you are. Because by now our identities are assigned by our social roles, right? We know who we are only because others recognize us in a role, outside that we no longer know who we are; and indeed all actors and actresses lead tragic lives, why is that? Because they didn’t anticipated death, because they didn’t assumed it as a condition… like a thickness of the soul, here – let’s use this word even if it refers to an entity that does not exist, the soul indeed.

But let’s keep this anticipation in mind, because by relativizing things we stop those typical dramas of those who believe in the immortality of the soul and therefore believe that this life has its own importance, their Ego becomes hegemonic and what depends on the Ego decides life and death; a love ends, and women are killed because it’s all over: no, no, no, stop. If you internalize death in advance then you relativize all things, and all things don’t have that thickness of despair anymore (despair, not tragedy). But who are these desperate people? Those who had hope. Because those who never had hope, never despair.

Animals live without feeling the least need of justification, as do the crushing majority of men. They live because they live, and then I suppose they die because they die, and for them that’s all there is to it.

This is how it always ends. With death. But first there was life, hidden beneath the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s all settled beneath the chitter chatter and the noise. Silence and sentiment. Emotion and fear. The haggard, inconstant flashes of beauty. And then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world. Blah, blah, blah, blah… Beyond there is what lies beyond. I don’t deal with what lies beyond. Therefore, let this novel begin. After all, it’s just a trick. Yes, it’s just a trick.

There are many ways of dying; the worst of them is to continue living.

– It’s the only theme. The passing of time.

Officially there are no fates worse than death. Unofficially, there is a profusion of such fates. For some people, just living with the thought that they will die is a fate worse than death itself.

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

– The ceiling is probably the last thing people see. At least for 90% of the people who die. Probably. And if you die, the last thing you see will be printed in your eye. Like a photograph. Imagine all those people with ceilings in their eyes.

Time destroys all things.

Madness is simply pain.

Despair is madness. Madness, the perception of the impossibility of living: being there, but as if not being there. Despair as an experience of madness is incompatible with life. It sees death, plans death, and kills the self and the other. Despair is a form of madness possible for man, for all men; it is, in fact, a human perspective, tied to his need to be with others, to the fact that he cannot live alone, because human life is not solitude but sharing, belonging, attachment.

[…] every living creature on Earth dies alone.

“What surprises you most about mankind?”

God answered:

“That they get bored of being children, are in a rush to grow up, and then long to be children again. That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health. That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither for the present nor the future. That they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they had never lived.”

We pass the time of day to forget how time passes.

We live with our dreams, but in the end, only the truth remains. And unfortunately we understand it only when we are gone.

[…]

You stand before the final dimension, and I am the darkness of eternity…

[…]

All life bears death from birth. Life fears death, but lives only to die. It starts with anxiety. Anxiety becomes fear. Fear leads to anger… anger leads to hate… hate leads to suffering… The only cure for this fear is total destruction. Kuja was a victim of his own fear. He concluded he could only save himself by destroying the origin of all things – the crystal.

[…]

…Now, the theory is undeniable. Kuja’s action proves it. All things live to perish. At last, life has uncovered this truth. Now, it is time to end this world.

[…]

I exist for one purpose… To return everything back to the zero world, where there is no life and no crystal to give life. In a world of nothing, fear does not exist. This is the world that all life desires.

[…]

Foolish creature… Your fears have already deluded you. One day, you will choose destruction over existence, as Kuja did. When he sought to destroy the crystal, the purpose of life ended. Now, come…

I am Ultimecia. Time shall compress, all existence denied…

Reflect on your childhood: your sensation, your words, your emotions…

Time… It will not wait.

No matter how hard you hold on. It escapes you.

And… [And you’re going to die. / And everything will be destroyed.]

Cloud: I’ve… been thinking too. About the universe… planet… ocean. How wide and big… No matter where I go and what I do it won’t change a thing.

Cid: Maybe you’re right. But I came up with something different. I always thought this planet was so huge. But lookin’ at it from space, I realized it’s so small. We’re just floatin’ in the dark. Kind of makes you feel powerless. […] That’s why I say this planet’s still a kid. A little kid sick and trembling in the middle of this huge universe. […]

Vincent: City of the Ancients… The Ancients… after a long time that is probably what others will come to call us… Hmm…hwa ha ha ha… It’s only a matter of time for us.

The sinking of the Titanic represented the end of an era, the broken dream of the belle époque. As with the fall of the Babylonian empire, the sinking of the Titanic represented the symbol of the crumbling of proud empires, with a similar mix of rich, bourgeois and poor all destined together for the abyss. It was the end of a legend that married technology to wealth, materialism to romance, illusion to fantasy.

Choose life; choose a job; choose a career; choose a family; choose a fucking big television; choose washing machines, cars, Compact Disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance; choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments; choose a starter home; choose your friends! Choose leisurewear and matching luggage; choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics; choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning; choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish fucked up brats that you’ve spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future; choose life.

But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life […]

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[…] the job, the family, the fucking big television, the washing machine, the car, the Compact Disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three-piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.

And time will destroy all those as well. Why do people insist on creating things that will inevitably be destroyed? Why do people cling to life, knowing that they must someday die? …Knowing that none of it will have meant anything once they do?

[…]

Bleh! You people make me sick! You sound like lines from a self-help book! If that’s how it’s going to be… I’ll snuff them all out! Every last one of your sickening, little happy reasons for living!

In ancient times a story could end only in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and the heroine married, or else they died. The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.

Horror and mortal terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.

[…]

The horror… The horror…

I took my bottle and went to my bedroom. I undressed down to my shorts and went to bed. Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

I took my choice. I raised the fifth of vodka and drank it straight. The Russians knew something.

– I saw the ocean, and I saw a mountain, and there were many people climbing up the mountain. It was like a procession. There was a lot of fog. I couldn’t see it very clearly, but at the very top was Death.

A thought which is not secretly stamped by fatality is interchangeable, worthless, is merely thought…

In paradise, objects and beings, assaulted by light from all sides, cast no shadow. Which is to say that they lack reality, like anything that is unbroached by darkness and deserted by death.

An obsession with the precarious accompanies me in every circumstance: mailing a letter this morning, I told myself it was addressed to a mortal.

In five hundred thousand years, it appears that England will be entirely submerged. If I were an Englishman I should lay down my arms at once.

Each of us has his unit of time. For one it is the day, the week, the month, or the year; for another, it is a decade, or a century… These units, still on the human scale, are compatible with any plan, any task.

There are some, however, who take time itself for their unit, and sometimes raise themselves above it: for them, what task, what plan deserves to be taken seriously? A man who sees too far, who is contemporary with the whole future, can no longer act or even move…

I was alone in that cemetery overlooking the village when a pregnant woman came in. I left at once, in order not to look at this corpse-bearer at close range, nor to ruminate upon the contrast between an aggressive womb and the time-worn tombs—between a false promise and the end of all promises.

Death belongs to the realm of faith – you’re right to believe you will die, mind you… It sustains you. If you didn’t believe it, could you bear the life you have? If we couldn’t totally rely on the certainty that it will end, how could you bear all this?

We should give the sense of death back to people.

He who has never thought about death is perhaps immortal. This is how you can see the Virgin Mary.

We asked the woman if there was one thing she wanted more than anything else in life. She looked at us, puzzled. Then, in a half voice, she said: “To sleep. Three days in a row.” “Nothing else?” we asked. She nodded. “To die,” she replied; and she wasn’t joking.

Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.

Life is a sexually transmitted disease that slowly leads to death.

The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.

As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die.

Life does resemble sickness a bit, as it proceeds by crises and lyses, and has daily improvements and setbacks. Unlike other sicknesses, life is always fatal. It doesn’t tolerate therapies.

An old legend has it that King Midas hunted a long time in the woods for the wise Silenus, companion of Dionysus, without being able to catch him. When he had finally caught him the king asked him what he considered man’s greatest good. The daemon remained sullen and uncommunicative until finally, forced by the king, he broke into a shrill laugh and spoke: “Ephemeral wretch, begotten by accident and toil, why do you force me to tell you what it would be your greatest boon not to hear? What would be best for you is quite beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best is to die soon.”

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth – look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

[…] deep, deep, and forever, into some ordinary and nameless grave.

Two truths that men will generally never believe: one, that they know nothing; the other, that they are nothing. Add a third, which is closely related to the second: that they have nothing to hope for after death.

The World as Will and Representation

[…]But, besides all this, death is the great opportunity no longer to be I;—to him who uses it. During life the will of man is without freedom: his action takes place with necessity upon the basis of his unalterable character in the chain of motives (ed. cause-effect chain). But every one remembers much that he has done, and on account of which he is by no means satisfied with himself. If now he were to go on living, he would go on acting in the same way, on account of the unalterable nature of his character. Accordingly he must cease to be what he is in order to be able to arise out of the germ of his nature as a new and different being. Therefore death looses these bonds; the will again becomes free; for freedom lies in the Esse, not in the Operari[…]

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Unfortunately, I shall have to say, my mother, why did you conceive me, son of bitterness and sorrow? Why did I not die in the womb? Having come forth from the womb, why did I not perish immediately? Why was I taken up on the knees? Why was I nursed at the breasts? Born to be burnt and to be fuel for the fire? Would that I had been slain in the womb so that my mother might have been my grave and her womb an everlasting conception. For I should have been as if I had not been, brought from the womb to the tomb.

Omnia fui, nihil expedit.

Memento mori.

(Remember that you have to die.)

See the gulf of time behind and another infinite time ahead. What difference is there in this respect between an infant who lives three days and someone who lives three times as long as Nestor?

I said to myself concerning the sons of men, “God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts.

Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless.

Both go to the same place—they came from dust and they return to dust.

For who can prove that the human spirit goes up and the spirit of animals goes down into the earth?”

He whom the gods love dies young.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly, and of their own accord, preparing themselves for dying and death. If this is true, and they have actually been looking forward to death all their lives, it would of course be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes for which they have so long been preparing and looking forward.