Laurence Sterne Quotes

You don't see too many atheists on the deathbed. They all start cramming then.

I bet the worst part about dying is the part where your whole life passes before you.

I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman.

When I got out of the hospital, it was one of those classic things - you're looking death in the eye, and it changes you. I thought, I ought to go back on the road.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.

We don't know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths. As death comes to embrace you, you will realize what you are. That's what death is, don't you think?

I think you die the way you live.

No one looks back and regrets leaving this world. What's regretted is how real we thought it was.

If we knew we were to die at twelve o'clock tomorrow night, would we have to step up our evangelistic program, or could we in all good conscience carry on just as we are?

Before the final curtain goes down On my life, I shall say to my Mother-Earth, "My gratitude-heart is all for you, All for you."

It's important to have a spiritual side because tomorrow's no promise to us. We have to pay homage to our saviour and put him in our life more because, without him, you don't know where you're going to go.

Death is the only monastery; the tomb is the only cell, and the grave that adjoins the convent is the bitterest mock of its futility.

We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.

A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur.

Death is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul.

What is our death but a night's sleep? For as through sleep all weariness and faintness pass away and cease, and the powers of the spirit come back again, so that in the morning we arise fresh and strong and joyous; so at the Last Day we shall rise again as if we had only slept a night, and shall be fresh and strong.

What it must feel like, I thought, to look at something, anything really, and know that it’s for the last time?

Reaching 50, I've started to conjure up thoughts of my own mortality.

We never know when we too will be called into eternity. I doubt if even one of those people who got on those planes or walked into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon last Tuesday morning thought it would be the last day of their lives. They didn't - it didn't occur to them. And that's why each of us needs to face our own spiritual need and commit ourselves to God and his will now.

We are not as we were. Death has been our pentecost.

Oh yes!...The sweet summons of God to man. That's when He calls you up to His arms. And it's the most beautiful thing, a rebirth, a new life. But, just the same I'm in no rush to find out.

it so often happens that, when men are convinced that they have to die, a desire to bear themselves well and to leave life's stage with dignity conquers all other sensations.

Death is but a word to us. One's own experience alone can teach us the real meaning of the word. The sight of the dying does little. What one sees of them is merely what precedes death: dull unconsciousness is all we see. Whether this be so,--how and when the spirit wakes to life again,--this is what all wish to know, and what never can be known until it is experienced.

When you die, are you ever allowed to come back?" "Only if you had your hand stamped.