W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Is this dying? Is this all? Is this what I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear this!

What can they suffer that do not fear to die?

I'm terrified I'm about to die, or that all the people I love are about to die, every second of every day.

It is not death, but dying, which is terrible.

Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise.

The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.

I would hate the thought of dying full stop; I've got to be honest with you.

I don't want to die.

There's worse things in life than death.

I do not fear death. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.

But come here, Fear. / I am alive! / And you are so afraid / of dying.

I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.

To my mind, there are two things that, in life, you can do about death. Either you can choose to ignore it, in which case you may have some success in making the idea of it go away for a limited period of time, or you can confront the prospect of your own death and try to analyze it and, in so doing, try to minimize some of the inevitable suffering that it causes. Neither way can you actually overcome it.

Meriwether Lewis's last words were, 'I am not a coward, but I am so strong. So hard to die.' I don't doubt that it is, but it cannot be much harder than being left behind.

We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.

Life is hard, but death is even harder.

And yet still I worried. I like being a person. I wanted to keep at it. Worry is yet another side effect of dying.

You have to learn to do everything, even to die.

A man must be prepared to face life, as well as death, there's no escape from either.

Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced.

I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.

But death doesn't scare me. To know exactly when I might expect it, up close and in my face, would actually be a comfort. Because to tell the truth, most of the time dying seems pretty much like my only means of escape.

Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything so he tries, without craving, all of everything.

Don't bemoan your fate. Everybody's not going to be dealt the same hand. Everybody's going to go through tough times.