What we call death is both the destruction of life itself and the minutes or hours of dying. The former is outside of our control, whereas the latter, the dying, is the last and enormously important task of our life.
Death can be a matter of consent and therefore a moral act. The animal expires, the human being must hand over his soul to its maker.
— Amiel
The great word, attributed to Christ, is his prayer before his death about those who know not what they do.
The words and actions of a dying person have great power over people, and therefore it is scarcely more important to know how to live well than how to die well. A bad, rebellious death weakens the influence of a good life; a good, obedient, firm death redeems a bad life.
When stage decoration is changed from one scene to another, we see that what appeared to us to be reality is only a representation. Thus too at the time of death a human being should be able to see what was real and what was decoration.
A dying person finds it difficult to understand the living, but one can sense that it is not because he lacks comprehension that he does not understand the living, but because he understands something else, something which the living do not and cannot understand, and in which he is wholly absorbed.
In the last moments of a human being’s life, the candle, before which he was reading the realized book of anxieties, deceits, sorrow and evil, flashes with a light that is brighter than ever before, illuminates for him everything that was previously in the darkness, then crackles, fades and is forever extinguished.
That which is dying is already a part of eternity. It seems to us that a dying man is speaking to us from the grave. What he says to us seems like a command. We imagine him to be almost a prophet. It is clear that the time for important words has come for the one who feels the passing away of life and the opening of the grave. The essence of his nature must manifest itself. That which is divine within him can no longer remain concealed.
— Amiel
Do not prepare for death in the sense in which preparation is typically understood, which assumes readiness in terms of the performance of rites or the taking care of worldly affairs, but rather, prepare to die in the best way possible, i.e. prepare to make use of those solemn final minutes, when a human being is already almost in another world and his words and deeds acquire a special power over those who will remain.
