C. S. Lewis Quotes

the brut first knows death when it dies, but man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives; and this makes his life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised this character of constant anaihilation in the whole of life.

I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.

Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.

Pain and Oblivion make mankind afraid to die; but all creatures are afraid of the one, none but mankind afraid of the other.

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

Death and sex are the dominant reality of our day.

Mortality applies to every aspect of life. The fear of death is the driving fear of life.

I was fascinated by mortality. Most people are, even if they don't admit it.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.

I lived for nearly seven years with the awareness that death was my everyday companion.

I've always been most drawn to fiction that wrestles with that death-fear. Sometimes I joke with my students, 'If no one is in danger of dying, I'm not interested,' but of course I'm not really joking.

I thought that we all were afraid of death, but I've talked to my wife and other people, and they're not afraid of death the way I am. I find that really confusing. I don't like the idea of nothingness - that's terrifying to me.

What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide, but existential authenticity each person must find on her own... the angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.

It is so hard for us little human beings to accept this deal that we get. It's really crazy, isn't it? We get to live, then we have to die. ... What spirit human beings have! It is a pretty cheesy deal - all the pleasures of life, and then death.

When you get older, then you feel death not at the end of the road, but death all around you, in everything. Life is saturated with death. I feel death everywhere.

I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put if off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born, it belongs to you and you belong to it.

Every fear is fear of death.

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

Anything that has to deal with our mortality is always going to be interesting to us. Life and death is always going to be something that draws our attention.

We are born knowing death.

We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain. We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, but we know that we rose and walked, that after a while we shall lie down again.

Ordinary men live in fear all the time. Didn't you know that? We're afraid of the weather, we're afraid of powerful men, we're afraid of the night and the monsters that lurk in the dark, we're afraid of growing old and of dying. Sometimes we're even afraid of living. Ordinary men are afraid almost every minute of their lives.

We mortals cross the ocean of this world Each in his average cabin of a life; The bests not big, the worst yields elbowroom.