SCHIAVO: When the Slave is Released, Even the Master Is Glad

For certain is death for the born
And certain is birth for the dead;
Therefore over the inevitable
Thou shouldst not grieve.

Bhagavad Gita

While you do not know life, how can you know about death?

Confucius

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

Shakespeare Julius Caesar

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

Saki

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Oscar Wilde

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare Macbeth

It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.

Virgil, Aeneid

I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.

Virginia Woolf, Diary

THE HERETIK WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER:

When one we hold dear dies, we weep not so much for the dead who have gone on to their rest. We weep for the living who remain in their unrest.

Unkind death cuts the living to the quick, not so much for the dying who leave this earth, but for our hearts.  For the dead beloved never die in our hearts, but a piece of our hearts does.

If death teaches us anything, it teaches us how small a life can be.  Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul remarked that "schiavo" is Italian for slave.  All of us in time are slave to some thing, some one, if only that one is our selves. ,

How much greater is the life when we admit a world of wonder, as our souls wander uncertain fields only to find relief and release in another.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,--'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
   
Shakespeare Hamlet

 

Comments

[Grace Nearing]

Chuck E. Cheese and "The Groundhog Day" of Death.... For both selfish and unselfish reasons, I'm glad it's over. Bon voyage, Terri. What I absolutely hate the most about the saturation coverage of these kinds of corpse-a-thons is that, one way or another, willing or not, I get emotionally invested. I resent that enormously, especially during the gray, gray days of a northeastern March, when my own life forces are running dangerously low. This time, in search of respite, I went and stood in front of the giant window of a local Chuck E. Cheese. Just to watch 3 and 4 and 5 year-olds go wild at some friend's birthday party. Lucky little bastards brought the sun back out.

[Kate S.]

Excellent -- both Heretik and Grace. Thanks.

[Kate S.]

Excellent -- both Heretik and Grace. Thanks.

[Amanda]

I enjoyed your quote from Macbeth today, Heretik. I think Macbeth's lesson, alas, might only be understood by poor Michael Schiavo today. It does make me weary.