Muriel Spark Quotes

Nothing quite brings out the zest for life in a person like the thought of their impending death.

Life begins when a person first realizes how soon it will end.

You've gotta know what death is to know life!

Severally on the occasion of everything that thou doest, pause and ask thyself, if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives thee of this.

Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by

It is not dying, but living, that is a preparation for Death.

Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely.

Everybody should do in their lifetime, sometime, two things. One is to consider death...to observe skulls and skeletons and to wonder what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up-never. That is a most gloomy thing for contemplation; it's like manure. Just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on, so the contemplation of death and the acceptance of death is very highly generative of creating life. You'll get wonderful things out of that.

Memento mori - remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die-what makes this any different from a half hour?

Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.

Only by being prepared for your death can you ever truly live.

We don't beat the reaper by living longer, but by living well, and living fully - for the reaper will come for all of us. The question is: what do we do between the time we're born and the time he shows up.

If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still

To really appreciate life you got to know you're going to die.

I see Death as the part of us that knows all the time that we're going to die, reminding us to live properly.

In your teens and twenties, death doesn't exist. In your thirties, you glance down the road occasionally. But then in your forties, it becomes a full-time job looking the other way.

I've been running from, and toward, death all my life, more aware of it than a person should be.

If we ignore our death, we end up just going around completely oblivious to why we do the things we do!

You realize that however much you don't think about death - or think that's for other people - you're just an organism living from day to day. I'm just grateful I'm here.

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.

When I was a child, I used to paint intently. The older I become, and the closer death approaches, the brighter my life gets day by day.

Humans may be the only creatures on Earth who spend significant time thinking about the fact that someday their lives will end.

The acceptance of death gives you more of a stake in life, in living life happily, as it should be lived. Living for the moment.

At the age of 31, I realized, 'Oh my God, I may die like everyone else.'