Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[WT Sharpe]

Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.
— Alfonso the Wise (1221-1284), Castilian king. Attributed in History of Frederick the Great (1858-1865) by Thomas Carlyle.

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by kennyc

"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
- Dylan Thomas born on this date in 1914

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Superbly crafted, great-sounding poem, but I can't agree with the sentiment. I prefer Tennyson's approach:

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Those are both lovely! I was named after Dylan Thomas' wife, by the way, a couple of decades before that name because so popular, but I do agree more with the Tennyson's sentiment. Here is an ancient one I learned of through Sandman but it is a real Egyptian poem:

Death is before me to-day
like the recovery of a sick man,
like going forth into a garden after sickness.
Death is before me today:
like the odor of myrrh,
like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today:
like the course of a stream;
like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.
Death is before me today:
like the home that a man longs to see,
after years spent as a captive.

[bfisher]

Thanks for the beautiful poems about death.

Here is D.H.Lawrence's take in Bavarian Gentians, written shortly before his death:

lead me then, lead me the way.
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
down the way Persephone goes, just now, in first-frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is married to dark

[John K]

All these death quotes are depressing me. How about some humor?
I'll compromise, a quote from a dead comedian:

"I'm not addicted to cocaine, I just like the smell of it"
--Robin Williams

[eschwartz]

I'm not much of one for death poems.

But I always remember Terry Pratchett's famous line:

Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day. But set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

[WT Sharpe]

The camel has its virtues—so much at least must be admitted; but they do not lie upon the surface. My Buffon tells me, for instance, that he carries a fresh-water cistern in his stomach; which is meritorious. But the cistern ameliorates neither his gait nor his temper—which are abominable. Irreproachable as a beast of burden, he is open to many objections as a steed. It is unpleasant, in the first place, to ride an animal that not only objects to being ridden, but cherishes a strong personal antipathy to his rider. Such, however, is his amiable peculiarity. You know that he hates you, from the moment you first walk round him, wondering where and how to begin the ascent of his hump. He does not in fact, hesitate to tell you so in the roundest terms. He swears freely while you are taking your seat; snarls if you but move in the saddle; and stares you angrily in the face, if you attempt to turn his head in any direction save that which he himself prefers. Should you persevere, he tries to bite your feet. If biting your feet does not answer, he lies down. Now the lying-down and getting-up of a camel are performances designed for the express purpose of inflicting grievous bodily harm upon his rider. Thrown twice forward and twice backward, punched in his "wind" and damaged in his spine, the luckless novice receives four distinct shocks, each more violent and unexpected than the last. For this "execrable hunchback" is fearfully and wonderfully made. He has a superfluous joint somewhere in his legs, and uses it to revenge himself upon mankind. His paces, however, are more complicated than his joints and more trying than his temper. He has four:—a short walk, like the rolling of a small boat in a chopping sea; a long walk which dislocates every bone in your body; a trot that reduces you to imbecility; and a gallop that is sudden death. One tries in vain to imagine a crime for which the peine forte et dure of sixteen hours on camel-back would not be a full and sufficient expiation. It is a punishment to which one would not willingly be the means of condemning any human being—not even a reviewer.
— Amelia B. Edwards (1831–1892), A Thousand Miles Up the Nile.

[BenG]

Everyone in our town has a story—but it’s not the one he tells himself. Its author has a thousand eyes, a thousand ears, and five hundred pens that never stop scribbling.
— Carsten Jensen; We, the Drowned

[WT Sharpe]

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there.
— John Florence Sullivan (1894-1956), U.S. comedian. Written in a letter to Groucho Marx dated June 12, 1953.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there.
— John Florence Sullivan (1894-1956), U.S. comedian. Written in a letter to Groucho Marx dated June 12, 1953.

Smart Man....I almost got trapped there many years ago by a job offer from a computer company.

[WT Sharpe]

The words on NASA's plaque that was left on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin (Michael Collins stayed aboard the Columbia in lunar orbit): "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."

Three and a half years later, Gene Cerman, the last human so far to leave the moon bid farewell with these words: "We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace, and hope for all mankind."

[kennyc]

"It is better to have more space than you need and not need it than to not have enough space and have the need."
- Apache

[timebug]

“Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.”
― Richard Dawkins

[covingtoncat73]

"I'm a bit retarded, like most Americans."
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

[covingtoncat73]

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

[covingtoncat73]

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King