Finality Quotes

“I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire: Confessions Of A Girl Gang

“Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“I didn't mean I'd seen everything, John Grady said.
I know you didn't.
I just meant I'd seen some things I'd as soon not of.
I know it. There's hard lessons in this world.
What's the hardest?
I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back.
Yessir.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain

“Death. What a brief word for the extinguishing of life. To be no more. To have days cut off and at their end. To never again..........anything.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Secrets of a Noble Keykeeper

“And now she had run into an emptiness more final than any words of rejection. He was gone and would make himself a stranger to her for ever.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

“Life's final lesson,the only truthful one buried beneath a layered skein of delusions.
Sooner or later,she now understood,we are all naught but food.Wolves or worms,the end abrupt or lingering,it matter not in the least.”
― Steven Erikson

“Though now, of all that could have been, there is nothing.”
― James Richardson, By the Numbers

“The calmness was the final tone of despair.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good

“Then there they were… the last words.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Because I don’t want my final days in this universe to be filled with pity and sorrow. I want to spend this time doing what I like best for the people I care about most.”
“But… you don’t even know me.”
“Maybe not, but lord do you ever talk in your sleep. It’s clear you love my boy very much.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Volume 2

“It was too late to go back. There was a hand which could never, in grace and healing, be laid upon him now.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good

“Last days are always the same. One part sadness, two parts excitement.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“We experience this emotional roller coaster because we can never find stability and lasting peace until our attachment and dependency is on what is stable and lasting. How can we hope to find constancy if what we hold on to is inconstant and perishing.”
― Yasmin Mogahed

“To stand in the heart of Dragnipur, to stand above the very Gate of Darkness, this was, for Anomander Rake, a most final act. Perhaps it was desperation. Or a sacrifice beyond all mortal measure.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“In calligraphy, as in life, we do not retouch strokes, Master Wang often said. We must accept that what is done is done.”
― Jenny Tinghui Zhang, Four Treasures of the Sky

“Another potential challenge to my thesis is that I myself would be hypocritical to continue in biblical studies. However, while I concede that this would be true if I were pursuing biblical studies for the sake of keeping the field alive, I have instead used my work in biblical studies to persuade people to abandon reliance on this book. I see my goal as no different from physicians, whose goal of ending human illness would lead to their eventual unemployment. The same holds true for me. I would be hypocritical only if I sought to maintain the relevance of my profession despite my belief that the profession is irrelevant. If I work to inform people of the irrelevance of the Bible for modern life, then I am fully consistent with my beliefs.

From a different angle, our work is part of the proliferation of books preoccupied with the finality of different aspects of the human experience. Perhaps the most famous recent example is Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man (2002), in which he argued that liberal democracy constitutes the "end point of mankind's ideological evolution," so that we should expect no new historical developments in world history. Fukuyama's thesis, of course, has been misunderstood to mean that historical events would end. However, the truth is that he has a more Hegelian view of history, in which history ends when a sort of stasis in the development of new ideas is reached. According to Fukuyama, liberal democracy cannot be superseded and will triumph over any other competing political idea; people will see its advantages and will universally adopt it. And so, in that sense, history will end.”
― Hector Avalos, The End of Biblical Studies

“And that is what we do with a lover
And no you're not that
That you made sure”
― Dorothea Lasky, Rome: Poems

“Climate crisis is the final crisis of capitalism.”
― Unknown A

“There is a faltering scream, or something that sounds like a scream. There is a sound that I cannot or have never been able to identify: a sound that's not human or is more than human, the sound of lives being extinguished but also the sound of material things breaking. It's the sound of things falling from on high, an interrupted and somehow also eternal sound, a sound that didn't ever end, that kept ringing in my head from that very afternoon and still shows no sign of wanting to leave it, that is forever suspended in my memory, hanging in it like a towel on a hook. That sound is the last thing heard in the cockpit of Flight 965.”
― Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Sound of Things Falling

“The party is almost over.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Through the rain, Daisy could see another life, a life where she lived out here full-time, with Beatrice, and Diana nearby. Where she could walk her dog on the beach every morning, with her friend, and spend her days cooking in a restaurant. Where Diana could spend time with Beatrice, where Beatrice could go to public school and figure out for herself who she wanted to be, if she wanted to go to college or not. Maybe Daisy could even help at the restaurant and give Diana and her husband time to travel, to see the world. Maybe she had gifts she could give them, ways to repair the damage, and stitch up what had been torn. The only thing she knew for sure was that there was no way forward with Hal, not knowing what she knew about what he'd done. Her life as his wife, Daisy Shoemaker, was over. I divorce thee.”
― Jennifer Weiner, That Summer

“Death is an ultimate release, that I am looking forward to. I am prepared to meet my creator, and I know for certain that they are most definitely not prepared to deal with me.”
-Philip Hamill Jr.”
― Joshua Isbell, Power & Influence

“Finality has a particular way of making you see every small, precious thing. It opens your eyes with a newfound appreciation for everything that is present and tangible.”
― Jennifer Hartmann, The Wrong Heart

“Nothing to lose is so empty, so light, that the sand you crumble to at last blows away in a gust, so insubstantial it’s carried upwards to shirr into the sandstorm of the stars. That’s where we all get to. The rest is just wearing thin waiting for the wind.”
― Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

“A song can't be heard for the first time twice and a book can't be unread so as to be read anew.”
― Ioannis Loukopoulos, Kaleidoscope

“Splat. Crack. Thud”
― Richard Pickles Common, RED

“you killed us all John, the hunter is home from the hill”
― ― Dan Wells, Nothing Left to Lose

“Would death be like that: Endless liquid silence?”
― Nick Cutter, The Troop