Book: When death enters your home

Strive not, my soul, for an immortal life, but make the most of what is possible.”  

Pythian Odes, 518 – 438BC

"Life's a voyage that's homeward bound." 

Herman Melville

"Everyone can master a grief but he that has it." 

Shakespeare

"Tears are the words the heart can't express"  

Author unknown

“The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.”  

Ernest Hemingway, a few weeks before committing suicide.

"Fly, fly little wing, fly beyond imagining. Past the planets and the stars, leave this lonely world of ours. Escape the sorrow and the pain. And fly again"

Celine Dion

I never held her, or heard her cry, and I wasn't ready to say goodbye.

Amy Douglas - stillbirth/miscarriage poetry

“To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable”   

Erich Fromm

“The idea is to die young as late as possible.”  

Ashley Montagu, (1905 –1999)

"It is said that life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life" 

Terry Pratchett

"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy." 

eskimo proverb

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”  

Richard Bach, (Illusions)

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them"  

Henri Matisse

"with silent lifting mind I've trod, the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand, and touched the face of God."  

from  'high flight' by John Gillespie Magee, see condolence poetry

"And when I saw you sleeping,  so peaceful and free from pain, I could not wish you back to suffer that again"

Author unknown,  see - child loss poems

"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds"

from 'high flight' by John Mcgee see condolence poetry

“Don’t be dismayed at good-byes.  A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.  And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”  

Richard bach, (Illusions)

"Where there is sorrow there is holy ground." 

Oscar Wilde

"I am awake, I see the sun. I am going to give my gratitude to the sun and to everything and everyone, because I am still alive and this might be the last day that I can tell you that I love you"

Don Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)

"If you live to one hundred, I want to live to one hundred minus one day - so I never live a day without you!" 

Winnie the Pooh

"I wrote your name in the sand, but the waves washed it away. I wrote your name in the sky, but the wind blew it away. So I wrote your name in my heart, and that's where it will stay, always"

Author unknown  poetry

"I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.”  

Og Mandino

"And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation" 

Kahlil Gibran

“I saw him now going the way of all flesh.”  

John Webster

"Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain" 

Author unknown

"Walk tall as the trees; live strong as the mountains; be gentle as the spring winds, keep the warmth of summer in your heart, and the Great Spirit will always be with you." 

anonymous, native American 

Death plucks my ear and says, “live – I’m coming.”  

Virgil, 70-19BCE

“His innings is over, his bat is laid down. Bowled out by deaths unerring ball.” 

Unknown

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”  

(Little Foxes, 1866)

"When we are forgotten, we cease to exist." 

Lady of the lake, from the movie 'Merlin'

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it" 

W.M. Lewis

“It was not frightening to die sometime, it was frightening to die right now.”   

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, (cancer ward)

"Death is delightful.  Death is dawn, the waking from a weary night of fevers unto truth and light."

Joaquin Miller

"We understand death only after it has laid its hands on someone we love."

Anne L. de Stael

"Death is the beginning of the soul's new journey"  

from poem by Sri Chinmoy, see condolence poetry

“The soul takes flight to a world that is invisible, and there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.”  

Lady Jane Grey, the movie

“Life is like the desert, life the solitude, death joins us to the great majority”  

Edward Young, 1683 –1765

“We meet but briefly in life, if we touch each other with stardust – that is everything.”  

Author unknown.

"Don't die with your music still inside you" 

Wayne Dyer

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love." 

Washington Irving

"The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation." 

Herman Hesse

"Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today"  

James Dean

"We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong - the amount of work is the same" 

Carlos Castanada

"The harder you fall the higher you bounce"

Doug Horton

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." 

A. Sachs

“Suicide is what the death certificate says when one dies of depression.”  

Peter D. Kramer, psychiatrist.

"Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality." 

Jean Paul Richter

“Across the years I will walk with you - in deep green forests, on shores of sand and when our time on earth is through, in heaven too, you will have my hand!”  

Robert Sexton

"When you are born you cry and the world is happy, when you die the world cries and you are happy."

from the movie: One Last Thing

"What we have once enjoyed, we can never lose.  All that we love deeply becomes part of us." 

Helen Keller

“The family with an old person in it possesses a jewel.”  

Chinese saying

"Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep." 

Mary Frye, see condolence poetry

“After the game the king and the Pawn go into the same box.”  

Italian saying

"God saw you getting tired, when a cure was not to be, so he wrapped his arms around you, and whispered - come to me." 

author unknown, see child loss poems

“Dear world, I am leaving you because I am bored. I am leaving you with your worries. Good luck."   

George Sanders, suicide note 25 April 1972

“He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt”  

Joseph Heller, 1923

"If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you've made me smile, the entire evening sky would be in the palm of my hand"

unknown

"I wasted time, now doth time waste me"

William Shakespeare

“Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re still alive, it isn’t.”  

Richard Bach, (Illusions)

"Tonight I feel so very small by the enormous loss of you"

Kate Shand

“It's natures way of telling you to slow down.”  

Anonymous, (Cited as Madison Avenues latest definition of death.)