Black Elk Quotes

Believe me, if a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.

Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.

If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

I'm always aware of mortality.

Ageing destroys youth, sickness destroys health, degeneration of life destroys all excellent qualities and death destroys life. Even if you are a great runner, you cannot run away from death. you cannot stop death with your wealth, through your magic performances or recitation of mantras or even medicines. Therefore, it is wise to prepare for your death.

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

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

What makes us really human is it's in the presence of death that we start valuing life.

I think living in a way that's close to nature makes you feel like that - makes you feel how thin the veil is between life and death.

I know mortality exists, but I cannot do anything about it. So it does not make me anxious.

Consider in what condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of life, the boundless abyss of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter.

To me, man means awareness of death. I am not saying become afraid of death; that is not awareness. Just be aware of the fact that death is coming nearer and nearer and you have to be prepared for it.

Remember that life is short and death is long.

I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin.

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.

Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin.

Whatever we say and mean by life is just a journey toward death. If you can understand that your whole life is just a journey and nothing else, then you are less interested in life and more interested in death. And once someone becomes more interested in death, he can go deep into the very depths of life; otherwise, he is just going to remain on the surface.

Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.

I have the idea that lyric poetry is a poetry that's driven by a sense of the presence of death. That there's something unbearable about the fact that we're going to die and that we can't stand it and I think you find that out in childhood and you don't really - at least I found it out in childhood and I found it hard to get over.

I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long. You children are flies. You are roses. You multiply and die.

Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.

If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.

I learned early to keep death in my line of sight, keep it under surveillance, keep it on cleared ground and away from any brush where it might coil unnoticed.

If a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.