John Evelyn Quotes

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead?

In the garden the door is always open into the "holy" - growth, birth, death. Every flower holds the whole mystery in its short cycle, and in the garden we are never far away from death, the fertilizing, good, creative death.

You can not kill that which is already dead.

In the ordinary, everyday understandings of the words involved, to say that someone survived death is to contradict yourself; while to assert that all of us live forever is to assert a manifest falsehood, the flat contrary of a universally known truth: namely, the truth that all human beings are mortal. For when, after some disaster, the 'dead' and the 'survivors' have both been listed, what logical space remains for a third category?

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

However, when it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no.

Among the poor, the approach of dissolution is usually regarded with a quiet and natural composure, which it is consolatory to contemplate, and which is as far removed from the dead palsy of unbelief as it is from the delirious raptures of fanaticism. Theirs is a true, unhesitating faith, and they are willing to lay down the burden of e weary life, in the sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality.

Immortality—dazzling idea! who first imagined thee! Was it some jolly burgher of Nuremburg, who with night-cap on his head, and white clay pipe in mouth, sat on some pleasant summer evening before his door, and reflected in all his comfort, that it would be right pleasant, if, with unextinguishable pipe, and endless breath, he could thus vegetate onwards for a blessed eternity? Or was it a lover, who in the arms of his loved one, thought the immortality-thought, and that because he could think and feel naught beside!—Love! Immortality!

The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear- Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year.

If 180 million people want to be undead, that’s their funeral, but I happen to like being alive.

For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.

This is earth again, the earth where I've lived and now will live once more ... I've been to eternity and back. I know how the dead would feel to live again.

I shall not completely die.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

Not all of me shall die.

Shoulda sent a thank you note, you little hoe Now Imma wrap your coffin wit a bow

Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage!

The true definition of a perennial: Any plant which, had it lived, would have bloomed year after year.

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue.

I have died too many deaths that were not mine.

E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me I will rise again in the people of El Salvador.