Jean de la Bruyere Quotes

With 'Hereditary', I wanted to make a film about what bothers me about life.

Everyday I think about dying About disease, starvation, violence, terrorism, war, the end of the world. It helps keep my mind off things.

He who fears death dies every time he thinks of it.

You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?" called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed. "Above such brutality, are you?" "We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom," Dumbledore said calmly. "Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit - " "There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!" snarled Voldemort. "You are quite wrong," said Dumbledore, speaking as lightly as though they were discussing the matter over drinks. "Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness.

When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes--is ceasing to be. But when the dying one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror at the annihilation of life, there is a feeling of severance and a spiritual wound which, like a physical wound, sometimes kills and sometimes heals, but always hurts and fears any external, irritating touch.

I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.

We always say we are equal in front of death, but when you are rich, for example, and you have everybody taking care of you, I think that you suffer much less. It must be much more painful to die when you are poor than when you are rich. But when your heart is broken, you can be rich, poor, whatever - a broken heart, we are all equal in front of it. And I think there is no subject more serious.

The scariest thing in the world is thinking someone you love is going to die.

You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.

At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end?

So the first thing: become aware of death. Think about it, look at it, contemplate it. Do not be afraid, do not escape the fact. It is there and you cannot escape it! It has come into existence with you.

Every life is punctuated by deaths and departures, and each one causes great suffering that it is better to endure rather than forgo the pleasure of having known the person who has passed away. Somehow our world rebuilds itself after every death, and in any case we know that none of us will last forever. So you might say that life and death lead us by the hand, firmly but tenderly.

It would take less than a second for you to die. But that's quite long enough to be in mortal agony, don't you think?

The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.

If I'm dead," he murmured. "Why does it hurt so much?

When people are really suffering, and we know they're suffering, that question can be a very difficult one. Inadvertently, I think without anyone meaning it, it communicates a lack of empathy.

Fear of death is understandable, being that we are all going to die, but fear of life and suffering is more of an irrational fear because it's something that can be avoided. The torturous part is that suffering can be avoided if you have good luck. That's somewhat out of our hands, but is it? I don't know. "Is bad luck self-harm by another name?"

Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.

Birth is beastly - and death - and digestion, if it comes to that. Sometimes when I think of what's happening inside me to a beautiful suprème de sole, with the caviare in boats, and the croûtons and the jolly little twists of potato and all the gadgets - I could cry. But there it is, don't you know.

In youth alone, unhappy mortals live; But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive: Discolour'd sickness, anxious labour, come, And age, and death's inexorable doom.

We live in a bubble of the fantasy of death, but the reality of it is something that we obviously all face and have to deal with, at some point.

I know that whenever I think about death, I come up against a stone wall.

The only realities in life are that you are born, and that you die. We always think we are going to live forever. The dying aspect we will never accept. The one thing about having this kind of warning is how you appreciate every single day of life.

I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.

Personally, I'm afraid of suffering and afraid of dying. I'm also afraid of witnessing the suffering and death of those who are close to me. And no doubt I project these fears on those around me and those to come, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone isn't an antinatalist, just as I have to assume pronatalists can't understand why everyone isn't like them.