A Quote by Jane Addams

Even death itself sometimes fails to bring the dignity and serenity which one would fain associate with old age.

Jane Addams

Quote Topics

Age Associate Bring Death Dignity Even Fails Itself Old Old Age Serenity Sometimes Which Would

Quote Author

Jane Addams
American - Activist
September 6, 1860 - May 21, 1935

The great renunciation of old age as it prepared for death, wraps itself up in its chrysalis, which may be observed at the end of lives that are at all prolonged, even in old lovers who have lived for one another, in old friends bound by the closest ties of mutual sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know that they will communicate no more in this world.

Marcel Proust

We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.

Yukio Mishima

As the astronomer rejoices in new knowledge which compels him to give up the dignity of our globe as the centre, the pride, and even the final cause of the universe, so do those who have escaped from the Christian mythology enjoy their release from the superstition which fails to make them happy, fails to make them good, fails to make them wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies which it took the place of two thousand years ago.

Harriet Martineau

Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.

Euripides

She looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

That folly of old age which is called dotage is peculiar to silly old men, not to age itself.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

I have not seen much dignity in the process by which we die. The quest to achieve true dignity fails when our bodies fail.

Sherwin B. Nuland

All death in nature is birth, and at the moment of death appears visibly the rising of life. There is no dying principle in nature, for nature throughout is unmixed life, which, concealed behind the old, begins again and develops itself. Death as well as birth is simply in itself, in order to present itself ever more brightly and more like to itself.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.

Simone de Beauvoir

The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.

Seneca the Younger

What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity of their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion.

Michel de Montaigne

Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,--I mean good-nature,--are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.

John Dryden

I would fain die a dry death.

William Shakespeare

I think that, with age, people come to realize that death is inevitable. And we need to learn to face it with serenity, wisdom and resignation. Death often frees us from a lot of senseless sufferings.