„The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.“
— Emil M. Cioran Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911 - 1995
All Gall Is Divided (1952)
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„Great God, and you witnesses of my death, I have lived as a philosopher, and I die as a Christian.“
— Giacomo Casanova Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice 1725 - 1798
Last words, according to his friend the Prince de Ligne (Mémoires et mélanges historiques et littéraires, book IV, p. 42 http://www.google.com/books?id=upYBAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA42&q=%22Grand+Dieu%22, translated for instance in: The Freeman, p. 224 http://www.google.com/books?id=mmkQAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Great+God%22+%22and+I+die+as+a+Christian%22)
„I have to tell you it was the first time even after all these years of expecting my own death that i truly knew what it meant to die because with you gone there was nothing left for me to live for.“
— Julia Quinn American novelist 1970
Источник: The Viscount Who Loved Me
„If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.“
— Terry Pratchett English author 1948 - 2015
Final lines of his Richard Dimbleby lecture Shaking Hands With Death on euthanasia and assisted suicide, quoted in "Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal" in The Guardian (2 February 2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/terry-pratchett-assisted-suicide-tribunal
General sources
Контексте: I dare say that quite a few people have contemplated death for reasons that much later seemed to them to be quite minor. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable "early death" can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration.
Let us consider me as a test case. As I have said, I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.
„Stay with me to-night; you must see me die. I have long had the taste of death on my tongue, I smell death, and who will stand by my Constanze, if you do not stay?“
— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Austrian Romantic composer 1756 - 1791
Spoken on his deathbed to his sister-in-law, Sophie Weber (5 December 1791), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)
Вариант: The taste of death is on my tongue, I feel something that is not from this world (Der Geschmack des Todes ist auf meiner Zunge, ich fühle etwas, das nicht von dieser Welt ist).
„The Second came to my mind with contrition; Freely desiring that sickness so hard as to death, that I might in that sickness receive all my rites of Holy Church, myself thinking that I should die, and that all creatures might suppose the same that saw me: for I would have no manner of comfort of earthly life. In this sickness I desired to have all manner of pains bodily and ghostly that I should have if I should die, (with all the dreads and tempests of the fiends) except the outpassing of the soul. And this I meant for I would be purged, by the mercy of God, and afterward live more to the worship of God because of that sickness. And that for the more furthering in my death: for I desired to be soon with my God.“
— Julian of Norwich, книга Revelations of Divine Love
Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Chapter 2
„If, after I die, they should want to write my biography,
There's nothing simpler.
I've just two dates—of my birth, and of my death.
In between the one thing and the other all the days are mine.“
— Fernando Pessoa Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher 1888 - 1935
Se, depois de eu morrer, quiserem escrever a minha biografia,
Não há nada mais simples.
Tem só duas datas—a da minha nascença e a da minha morte.
Entre uma e outra coisa todos os dias são meus.
Alberto Caeiro (heteronym), "Se, depois de eu morrer" (8 November 1915), trans. Jonathan Griffin.
Источник: Poems of Fernando Pessoa
„He deserved to die except that nothing deserves death.“
— Orson Scott Card American science fiction novelist 1951
Treason (1988)
„I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next.“
— Haruki Murakami, книга Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Источник: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
„In a word, be it with reason or without reason or against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die out, I die altogether, then I shall not have died out of myself — that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human destiny shall have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my heart, I will not abdicate from life — life will be wrested from me.“
— Miguel de Unamuno 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher 1864 - 1936
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss
Контексте: I will not say that the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I am about to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture to say that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspires these doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed in strengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps when it is all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work, and above all, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reason or against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die out, I die altogether, then I shall not have died out of myself — that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human destiny shall have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my heart, I will not abdicate from life — life will be wrested from me.
„I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die.“
— Stephen Hawking British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author 1942 - 2018
As quoted in "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'" by Ian Sample, in The Guardian (15 May 2011) http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven
Контексте: I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first... I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
„Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.“
— John Cage American avant-garde composer 1912 - 1992
Quote of "Experimental Music", John Cage (1957)
1950s
„How many different deaths I can die?“
— Sylvia Plath American poet, novelist and short story writer 1932 - 1963
Источник: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
„The only way to live is to die. I must die. I deserve only death.“
— Robert Jordan American writer 1948 - 2007
Lews Therin Telamon
(15 October 1994)
„I wanted to live my life so that people would know unmistakably that I am alive, so that when I finally die people will know the difference for sure between my living and my death.“
— June Jordan Poet, essayist, playwright, feminist and bisexual activist 1936 - 2002
"Many Rivers To Cross" (1981); later published in Some of Us Did Not Die : New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002)
Контексте: I wanted to be strong. I never wanted to be weak again as long as I lived. I thought about my mother and her suicide and I thought about how my father could not tell whether she was dead or alive.
I wanted to get well and what I wanted to do as soon as I was strong, actually, what I wanted to do was I wanted to live my life so that people would know unmistakably that I am alive, so that when I finally die people will know the difference for sure between my living and my death.
And I thought about the idea of my mother as a good woman and I rejected that, because I don't see why it's a good thing when you give up, or when you cooperate with those who hate you or when you polish and iron and mend and endlessly mollify for the sake of the people who love the way that you kill yourself day by day silently.
And I think all of this is really about women and work. Certainly this is all about me as a woman and my life work. I mean I am not sure my mother’s suicide was something extraordinary. Perhaps most women must deal with a similar inheritance, the legacy of a woman whose death you cannot possibly pinpoint because she died so many, many times and because, even before she became my mother, the life of that woman was taken; I say it was taken away.
„I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace. They are medicine, and I would eventually die a lingering death. I had rather die on the field of battle.“
— Sitting Bull Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man 1831 - 1890
Recorded by Charles Larpenteur at Fort Union in 1867. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 73.
„That I shall sink in death, I know must be;
But with that death of mine what life will die?“
— Giordano Bruno Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer 1548 - 1600
As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, in The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
Контексте: That I shall sink in death, I know must be;
But with that death of mine what life will die? Across the air, I hear my heart's voice cry:
Where dost thou bear me reckless one? Descend!
Such rashness seldom ends but bitterly'
"Fear not the lofty fall" I answer "rend
With might the clouds, and be content to die,
If God such a glorious death for us intend."
