Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) We die. All of us — atoms to atoms, stardust to stardust, the mountain to the sea — you and I. The dual awareness of our improbable life and our inevitable death is what allows us to animate the interlude with love and beauty, with poems and fairy tales …
Emily Levine On Life, Death And Dying
Emily Levine (October 23, 1944 - February 3, 2019) I love being in sync with the cyclical rhythms of the universe. That’s what’s so extraordinary about life — it’s a cycle of generation, degeneration, regeneration. “I” am just a collection of particles that is arranged into this pattern, then will decompose and be available, all …
Seneca On Living And Dying
Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man; yet there is nothing which is harder to learn… Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.
Jhumpa Lahiri On Dying
Jhumpa Lahiri (July 11, 1967 -) “This is the worst part,” she told me once. “You’re holding your breath, thinking it’s still ahead, but this really is the worst of it, for you and for her.” At the time, her words had not soothed me; I could imagine nothing worse than the moment my mother …
Oliver Sacks On The Sabbath
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 – August 30, 2015) And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I …
