Surrounded by rives of mercury the [Chinese] emperor could reign over his replica kingdom for eternity ... To ensure the safety of himself and his belongings ... booby trap defences ... The Emperor commissioned an body-guard of thousands to accompany him into the next world. ibid.
The first Emperor’s paranoia and ego demanded that he be surrounded by an elite bodyguard. ibid.
The end of life: it’s a reality that terrifies us and motivates us. Now cutting edge science embarks on a bold mission to extend human life … Will death remain inevitable or can we live for ever? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s2e9, Can We Live For Ever? Science 2011
Anything and everything in the universe has the tendency to go from order to disorder … Nothing is immune to the power of entropy. ibid.
Death is our ultimate destination: a place from which no-one ever returns. But what if death wasn’t the end? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s3e6, Can We Resurrect the Dead?
What if we could grow the dead back to life? ... Can we cultivate a garden of resurrected humans? ibid.
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sudden Light, 1870
They die not, – for their life was death, – but cease;
And round their narrow lips the mould falls close. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The House of Life
I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
‘I am thyself, – what hast thou done to me?’
‘And I – and I – thyself,’ (lo! each one saith,)
‘And thou thyself to all eternity!’ ibid.
9,383. When vain desire at last and vain regret
Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
And teach the unforgetful to forget? ibid.
Ain’t it grand to be blooming well dead? Leslie Sarony, song 1932
Death for the people of the Middle Ages wasn’t the end but the doorway to everlasting life. Helen Castor, Medieval Lives III: Birth, Marriage and Death: A Good Death, BBC 2013
Purgatory was a real place of physical torment. ibid.
An unprepared death was a terrifying prospect. ibid.
The plague reached the south coast of England in the summer of 1348. ibid.
We can certainly estimate that at least fifty million Americans had have one or more ADC [after-death contact] experiences. Bill Guggenheim, after-death contact researcher
Experts estimate that 20% of Americans have had an ADC. Unexplained Mysteries
And shall I die, and this unconquered? Christopher Marlowe, dying Tamberlane
I never go through a day without thinking sometime of death. It just comes into everything that you do. Into everything that you see. Francis Bacon, cited The Art of Francis Bacon
It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid
When you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody. J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for. Martin Luther King junior
It’s better to burn out than to fade away. Neil Young
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome. Isaac Asimov
Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. Ernest Hemingway
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you. Ernest Hemingway
The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective. James Patterson, The Angel Experiment
No-one here gets out alive. Jim Morrison
A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they’ve all let him down. Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down
After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. E B White, Charlotte’s Web
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. Joseph Stalin
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains. Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead. Hans Christian Andersen
Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams. I’ve heard people talk about the sleep of the dead. Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that’s what it's like, I wouldn’t mind. If that’s what dying is like, I wouldn’t mind that at all. Gayle Forman, If I Stay
What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying. Albert Camus, The Myth of Susyphus and Other Essays
Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn’t the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain ...Try living for someone. Through it all – good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing. Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever
Dying should come easy:
like a freight train you
don’t hear when
your back is
turned. Charles Bukowski, The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems
I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn’t,
So I jumped in and sank. Langston Hughes
Even in the grave, all is not lost. Edgar Allan Poe
Sometimes dead is better. Stephen King, Pet Sematary
Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living. Mother Jones
I thought about suicide all the time, but it seemed too much effort, swallowing all those pills or jumping off things. If I’d lived out in the country I would have found a quiet stretch of railway track, and lain on it, fallen asleep, so that I would never have known when my last moment came. In London, the minimum tube fare had gone up so much that even to get near the line cost a fortune. Suicide seemed an extravagance I couldn’t afford. People never leave you alone, either; I knew that if I’d tried to lie down on the line, any number of commuters would have pulled me off again, so that I didn’t delay their train.