Cake or Death?

("Cake or Death?" from the enormously entertaining Eddie Izard's comedy skit)

While writing my most recent post on the death of my friend and fellow skeptic, I found a number of quotes on death that resonated with me. I want to share them with you, because ... well, maybe because it will be of note to you, dear reader. Because death is as much a part of life as birth is; it is the one thing we are all doing, together. 

May we all live fully in the meantime.

~~~

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.~ Steve Jobs 

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.~ Gustave Flaubert 

Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men.~ Quintus Ennius 

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero 

Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.~ David Gerrold 

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.~ George Eliot 

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.~ Leonardo da Vinci 

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.~ Mark Twain 

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.~ Albert Einstein