Death is humanity's oldest question. The sayings below come from different languages, faiths and centuries, yet they all meet in the same intuition: birth is not a beginning, and death is not an end. Do not hurry as you read; carry each one within you for a while, like a seed thought.
Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end.
— Chuang Tzu
Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.
— Rabindranath Tagore
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
— Kahlil Gibran
It is as clear to me as daylight that life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin. In fact tribulation and death seem to me to present a phase far richer than happiness or life... Death is as necessary for man's growth as life itself.
— Mahatma Gandhi
People who see life and death as an unbroken continuity, a swinging pendulum, have been able to move as freely in death as they walked in life. Socrates went to his death almost surprised at the tears of his friends.
— Voltaire
The thought of death leaves me in perfect peace, for I have a firm conviction that our spirit is a being of indestructible nature. It works on from eternity to eternity; it is like the sun, which, though it seems to set to our mortal eyes, does not really set, but shines on perpetually.
— Goethe
Being aware that we are approaching death can be a beautiful thing: a frame into which we can set the work of art called our life, our personal masterpiece.
— June Singer
Whether it is described in personal or transpersonal terms, whether it is called heaven, nirvana, the Happy Hunting Grounds or the Garden of Paradise, the whole weight and authority of tradition says this: death is only a change in our state of consciousness, and the quality of our existence in the next world depends on the quality of the life we live here and now.
— John Smith
We were not given only a body; we were also given the ability to see beyond the body and to realize that we are not bound to it forever.
— Anonymous
The reality of my life cannot die, for I am indestructible consciousness.
— Paramahansa Yogananda
Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;
Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever;
Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!— Sir Edwin Arnold, from his translation of the Bhagavad Gita
There are many levels of life that we cannot see and cannot know, but which certainly exist. There is a larger world, large enough to include immortality. Our spiritual nature belongs to this larger world... If death is an outward fact, immortality is an inward certainty.
— Manly P. Hall
When the soul, departing from the body, leaves earth life, it is not cut off from nature. On the contrary, it rises to a plane of nature that is in every respect fuller, richer and sweeter, a plane far more beautiful than the soul on earth could imagine. The dross of matter is burned away by the astral vibrations; the soul blossoms and bears spiritual fruit in its new life.
— Yogi Ramacharaka
What we call death is the breaking of forms. This breaking sets the consciousness within us free for the adventure of building new forms in which to grow further.
— Joy Mills
These bodies are said to be finite, but that which is embodied in them is eternal, indestructible and boundless... It is neither born nor does it die; having once come to be, it does not cease to be. Unborn, eternal, abiding, ancient, it is not slain when the body is slain... As a man casts off worn-out garments and puts on new ones, so the dweller in the body casts off worn-out bodies and enters into new ones... For to the one who is born death is certain, and to the one who dies birth is certain; therefore you should not grieve over what is inevitable.
— Bhagavad Gita
What remains is not this insignificant self but the Higher Self, which grasps far better the meaning of what we have lived through... How sad it would be to bring back this little self, when we could bring back our best qualities, a clean page and a better condition.
— Anonymous
The great wisdom traditions speak of a period of review that follows life in the physical body. It is said that what we can offer as we pass into the other planes of existence is the result of the choices we made on earth. Guardians greet us gently and help us see the effects of our choices, and sometimes how we might have chosen better. This is not a harsh judgment; it is simply a clear and lucid seeing.
— Anonymous
You cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall. You sustain the living with loving-kindness, and with great mercy You call the dead to eternal life.
— Jewish prayer
The more we know, the more we trust; for we feel with complete certainty that both we and our dead are in the hands of a perfect love.
— C. W. Leadbeater
We thank Thee for our brother Death,
Who yields the soul to the light of Thy gaze;
And with our final breath, even as we die,
We offer Thee our thanks and praise.— Saint Francis of Assisi
Perhaps the most astonishing common element in the accounts of near-death experiences is the encounter with a very bright light... The love and warmth that flow from this Being to the dying person are beyond words. The person feels completely at ease and accepted in the presence of this Being... He is irresistibly drawn toward it.
— Raymond Moody
The silver cord shall be loosed, the golden bowl be broken, the pitcher be broken at the fountain. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
— Ecclesiastes (Old Testament)
Beloved soul, when at last you awaken in My presence, you may return consciously and wholly to your own true source. This homecoming fills you with indescribable joy, even as it enfolds Allah Most High in deep delight. You will live in perfect union with Love, which is My highest paradise.
— Lex Hixon
I have got my leave. Bid me farewell, my brothers! I bow to you all and take my departure. Here I give back the keys of my door, and I give up all claims to my house. I only ask for last kind words from you. We were neighbours for long, but I received more than I could give. Now the day has dawned and the lamp that lit my dark corner is out. A summons has come and I am ready for my journey.
— Rabindranath Tagore
I often think that the people we love and who love us become a part of us, and that we carry them with us always, whether we see them or not. In a sense, we are the sum of those who love us and those to whom we have given ourselves.
— Anonymous
In the old days, when the time of death came, the elders would go off on their own. At the moment of death they felt that the bond between themselves and Mother Earth was as close as the bond between mother and child at the moment of birth. They would find a quiet place, pray there to the Great Spirit and thank Him for the life they had enjoyed. They would sing their songs and die.
— Sun Bear and Wabun
When we come to sing, Great Spirit,
when we come face to face with the sunset,
perhaps it will be the last song:
unashamed, singing,
"in beauty it is finished,
in beauty it is finished!"— Evelyn Eaton
I wish there were a place for graceful deaths as well,
a high place looking out into the distance,
a place where we could gather to celebrate
life, death, and friendships old and new.
I would want a place with good music,
good food, wine, laughter, play and joy;
where friends talk quietly and argue well
about what will happen when this life is over.— Helen Ansley
Letting the last breath come. Letting the last breath go. Dissolving; dissolving into boundless space. The light body freed from the heavy form. A sense of being connected with everything that exists; the sense of separateness dissolving in the vastness of being. Each breath melting into space as though it were the last.
— Stephen Levine
Existence has only two faces, birth and death, and life continues in both. Just as sunrise and sunset are not different in essence: everything depends on whether you are facing east or west.
— Joy Mills
Before such a mystery one must walk with gentle and reverent steps... As far as is humanly possible, it is the duty of the living to help toward a natural death worthy of the beauty and dignity of dying.
— Catherine Roberts
Words and tears are nature's most basic ways of helping us release our painful feelings.
— Du Page
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight;
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there, I did not die.— Anonymous
