death

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

Better to die once and for all, than live in continual terror.

Aesop, that master storyteller of old, told this fable: A jar of honey was upset in a housekeeper's room, and a number of flies were attracted by its sweetness. Placing their feet in it, the flies ate greedily. Their feet, however, became so smeared with honey that they could not use their wings, nor release themselves, and they were suffocated. Just as they were dying, they exclaimed: "Oh, foolish creatures that we are, for the sake of a little pleasure we have destroyed ourselves."

Only cowards insult dying majesty.

Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.

Death is better, a milder mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?

Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts: Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed By hymns of praise. From him alone of all The powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof.

O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray, To come to me: of cureless ills thou art The one physician. Pain lays not its touch Upon a corpse.

But if you ever come to a road where danger; Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share. Be good to the lad who loves you true, And the soul that was born to die for you; And whistle and I'll be there.

Here dead lie we because we did not choose To live and shame the land from which we sprung Life to be sure, is nothing much to lose; But young men think it is, and we were young.