Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

There are two things which Man cannot look at directly without flinching: the sun and death.

I tried to think about these two issues very freely. With sex, I think I can manage with that. With death, this is a more difficult theme for me. I'm not a believer, even though I'm baptized. I don't practice. I don't believe in God, so I feel very alone facing death. What I discovered is that the only way to recognize death is if you are part of life, if you are part of sexual pleasure, if you link it with sexual pleasure.

We all have to die, and I preferred to have just one death. It seems to me that to suffer insult without response is to die many deaths.

L'ide e qu'on mourra est plus cruelle que mourir, mais moins que l'ide e qu'un autre est mort. The idea of dying is worse than dying itself, but less cruel than the idea that another has died.

Death happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives; it is worse to dread it than to suffer it.

Any man who has seen the face of death knows better than to seek him out a second time.

In childhood, death stirred me not; in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road; now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.

A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, and suchlike accidents; but as to death, we can experience it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it

Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality

Understand death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you.

No art is possible without a dance with death.

Oh Death where is thy sting! It has none. But life has.

Blood and death. That moves me.

What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

I don't fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach.

They were afraid, never having learned what I taught myself: Defeat the fear of death and welcome the death of fear.

I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.

To be in touch with death, and the darker side of life, makes the lighter side more enjoyable.

There's worse things in life than death.

Fear was the knowledge of pain, the awareness that you could be hurt, that you could die.

Once to die is better than length of days in sorrow without end.

The living will envy the dead.

As one gets older, this question of death, becomes more vexing and urgent.

Death is part of who we are. It guides us. It shapes us. It drives us to madness. Can you still be human if you have no mortal end