Wisdom across time

“Nay, but as when one layeth His worn-out robes away, And taking new ones, sayeth, "These will I wear to-day!" So putteth by the spirit Lightly its garb of flesh, And passeth to inherit A residence afresh.”

Krishna uses the image of changing clothes to illustrate the soul's easy passage from one body to the next at death.

“Right life! And, in the hour when life is ending, With mind set fast and trustful piety, Drawing still breath beneath calm brows unbending, In happy peace that faithful one doth die,-- In glad peace passeth to Purusha's heaven.”

Krishna describes the manner of death of one who has truly known the divine — composure and inner peace as the mark of a life rightly lived.

“When wealth and honours lead to arrogancy, this brings its evil on itself. When the work is done, and one's name is becoming distinguished, to withdraw into obscurity is the way of Heaven.”

Laozi counsels knowing when to step back rather than clinging to success or status.

“When things have attained their strong maturity they become old. This may be said to be not in accordance with the Tao: and what is not in accordance with it soon comes to an end.”

“Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if we enter into the clefts of the mountains, is there known a spot in the whole world where death could not overcome (the mortal).”

“Death comes and carries off that man, praised for his children and flocks, his mind distracted, as a flood carries off a sleeping village.”

“When a bird is about to die, its notes are mournful; when a man is about to die, his words are good.”

The philosopher Tsang, speaking on his deathbed to a high-ranking visitor, prefaces his final counsel with this observation.

“If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret.”

“It is the part of a man endowed with a good understanding faculty, to consider what they themselves are in very deed, from whose bare conceits and voices, honour and credit do proceed: as also what it is to die, and how if a man shall consider this by itself alone, to die, and separate from it in his mind all those thi…”

Marcus encourages stripping death of its fearful associations and seeing it plainly as a natural process.

“Within a very little while, thou wilt be either ashes, or a sceletum; and a name perchance; and perchance, not so much as a name. And what is that but an empty sound, and a rebounding echo?... But still that time come, what will content thee? what else, but to worship and praise the Gods; and to do good unto men. To be…”

Marcus meditates on the nearness of death and asks what, given that fact, is actually worth doing with the time that remains.

“Against your will were you formed, against your will were you born, against your will you live, against your will you will die, and against your will you will give an account and reckoning before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.”

Rabbi Elazar Ha-kappar concludes a meditation on divine judgment by reminding the reader that all of life — birth to death to reckoning — lies outside one's own control.

“When a man passes away there accompany him neither gold nor silver, nor precious stones nor pearls, but Torah and good deeds alone.”

Rabbi Yose ben Kisma declines a vast fortune offered to relocate, explaining what truly endures beyond death.

“When death overtaketh one of the wicked, he saith, 'Lord, send me back again, That I may do the good which I have left undone.' 'By no means.' These are the very words which he shall speak.”

A vision of the moment of death, when the ungodly plead for a second chance that cannot be granted.

“On that day shall a man fly from his brother, And his mother and his father, And his wife and his children; For every man of them on that day his own concerns shall be enough.”

A description of the Day of Judgment, when even the closest family bonds will be abandoned as each person faces individual reckoning.

“If we must study, let us study what is suitable to our present condition, that we may answer as he did, who being asked to what end he studied in his decrepit age, 'that I may go out better,' said he, 'and at greater ease.'”

Montaigne is reflecting on what kinds of pursuits are fitting for old age and how one should prepare for death.

“For my part, I shall take care, if I can, that my death discover nothing that my life has not first and openly declared.”

Montaigne concludes his discussion of deathbed revelations and restitutions with a personal resolution about integrity.

“Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.”

Thoreau argues that societies consumed with building monuments are engaged in self-destruction rather than genuine flourishing.

“Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic.”

Thoreau aphoristically summarizes the lesson of spring's renewal.

“It is certainly a very melancholy thing that all a man's faculties tend to waste away as he grows old, and at a rate that increases in rapidity: but still, this is a necessary, nay, a beneficial arrangement, as otherwise death, for which it is a preparation, would be too hard to bear.”

Schopenhauer argues that the gradual decline of old age is not merely a loss but a mercy — a preparation that makes death more acceptable.

“The main difference between youth and age will always be that youth looks forward to life, and old age to death; and that while the one has a short past and a long future before it, the case is just the opposite with the other.”

Schopenhauer contrasts the temporal orientation of the young and the old as the defining asymmetry of life's stages.

“Life as a whole never takes death seriously. It laughs, dances and plays, it builds, hoards and loves in death's face. Only when we detach one individual fact of death do we see its blankness and become dismayed. We lose sight of the wholeness of a life of which death is part.”

“The passing of a great human institution before its work is done, like the untimely passing of a single soul, but leaves a legacy of striving for other men.”

Du Bois reflects on the dissolution of the Freedmen's Bureau before it fulfilled its mission.

“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

A dying artificial man spends his last moments not fighting but describing what will be lost with him. Rutger Hauer rewrote the speech on set, including this line.

Written by Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples.

“What we do in life echoes in eternity.”

A general tells his cavalry, before a battle many of them will not survive, about the only kind of permanence available to them.

Written by David Franzoni, John Logan and William Nicholson.

“A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories.”

A son who spent his life resenting his father's tall tales ends up telling one himself, and finds the funeral full of the people from the stories.

Written by John August.

“Death is just another path, one that we all must take.”

Asked by a frightened hobbit whether this is the end, a wizard describes death as a change of view rather than a stop.

Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson.

“Thanks for the adventure—now go have a new one!”

A widower finally opens his wife's book of unfulfilled plans and finds she did not consider them unfulfilled.

Written by Bob Peterson and Pete Docter.

“You disappear from this world. We call it the Final Death.”

In a film where the dead persist as long as they are remembered, a man explains what happens when the last person forgets.

Written by Adrian Molina and Matthew Aldrich.