- “Live, so you do not have to look back and say: ‘God, how I have wasted my life.”
- “People are like stained – glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
- “The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.”
- “Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”
- “I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.”
- “Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth.”
- “It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.”
- “To do service, you don’t have to be a doctor working in the slums for free, or become a social worker. Your position in life and what you do doesn’t matter as much as how you do what you do.”
- “We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.”
- “It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.”
- “Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow.”
- “Dying is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society.”
- “It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.”
- “As far as service goes, it can take the form of a million things. To do service, you don’t have to be a doctor working in the slums for free, or become a social worker. Your position in life and what you do doesn’t matter as much as how you do what you do.”
- “I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them – you don’t even have to talk. You don’t have to do anything but really be there with them.”
- “And after your death, when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about, you will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total of every choice you have made during every moment of your life.”
- “Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.”
- “Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you have lived.”
- “I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but the goal of my life was profoundly molded by this experience – to help produce, in the next generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers.”
- “Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”
- “Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.”
- “For those who seek to understand it, death is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate from the thought and study of death.”
- “Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.”
- “For those who seek to understand it, death is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate from the thought and study of death.”
- “Throughout life, we get clues that remind us of the direction we are supposed to be headed if you stay focused, then you learn your lessons.”
