Rita Mae Brown Quotes

It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds. Then can we turn to life and fill the whole horizon of our souls with it, turn with added zest to all the serious tasks which it imposes and to the pure delights which here and there it affords.

Don't live in fear of dying.

When I nearly died it made me think – this can happen again any second. I better hurry and do what I want. I started to live like I never lived before. When the fear of death is gone, then nothing can bother you and nobody can stop you.

Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

If I live the life I'm given, I won't be scared to die.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

A man afraid of death will never play the part of a live man.

When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid.

Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.

I know my time will come soon enough, but I will not dwell on it. What is the purpose? We might as well dwell on the work of our teeth or on the mechanics of our walk. It is there, it will always be there, and I don't intend to spend my glorious hours looking over my shoulder to see death's icy face.

If you live your life fully, you will die only once. But if you are scared, fear will kill you day after day

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death.

If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.

There are dreadful moments when death comes very near those we love, even if for the time being it passes by. But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living.

It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

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.

I'm not afraid of life and I'm not afraid of death: Dying's the bore.

one should be afraid of life, not of death.

If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.

This is why we shouldn't be afraid. There are two possibilities: One is that there's more to life than the physical life, that our souls "will find an even higher place to dwell" when this life is over. If that's true, there's no reason to fear failure or death. The other possibility is that this life is all there is. And if that's true, then we have to really live it - we have to take it for everything it has and "die enormous" instead of "living dormant," as I said way back on "Can I Live." Either way, fear is a waste of time.

To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to.

It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

I have no fear of death, except I hate waiting for it.

Your life is the one place you have to spend yourself fully--wild, generous, drastic--in an unrationed profligacy of self ... And in that split second when you understand that you finally are about to die-to uncreate the world no time to do it over no more chances--that instant when you realize your conscious existence is truly flaring nova, won't you want to have used up all-all-the splendor that you are?