Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Death Quotations

Death is the great transition.

When you learn your lessons, the pain goes away.

There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning.

We bring a deeper commitment to our happiness when we fully understand, that our time left is limited and we really need to make it count.

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.

Death is simply a shedding of the physical body, like the butterfly coming out of a cocoon. . . . It's like putting away your winter coat when spring comes.

It's not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather our concern must be to live while we're alive.

When I die I'm going to dance first in all the galaxies...I'm gonna play and dance and sing.

I have learned there is no joy without hardship. There is no pleasure without pain. Would we know the comfort of peace without the distress of war?

Death is the final stage of growth in this life. There is no total death. Only the body dies. The self or the spirit, or whatever you may wish to label it, is eternal. You may interpret this in any way that makes you comfortable.

I always say that death can be one of the greatest experiences ever. If you live each day of your life right, then you have nothing to fear.

Begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had.

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 a graduation. When we're taught all the things we came to teach, learned all the things we came to learn, then we're allowed to graduate.

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.

I believe every person has a guardian spirit or angel. They assist us in the transition between life and death and they also help us pick our parents before we are born.

Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth.

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.

We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about 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. Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as real as your deeds. You will begin to realize that every word and every deed affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives.

I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.

There is no joy without hardship. If not for death, would we appreciate life? If not for hate, would we know the ultimate goal is love? At these moments you can either hold on to negativity and look for blame, or you can choose to heal and keep on loving.

How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.

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.

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.

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.

When we have passed the tests we are sent to Earth to learn, we are allowed to graduate. We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our souls.

dying nowadays is more gruesome in many ways, namely, more lonely, mechanical, and dehumanized; at times it is even difficult to determine technically when the time of death has occurred.

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.

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.

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.

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.

You have to temper the iron. Every hardship is an opportunity that you are given, an opportunity to grow. To grow is the sole purpose of existence on this planet Earth. You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.

It is very important that you only do what you love to do. you may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do. Otherwise, you will live your life as a prostitute, you will do things only for a reason, to please other people, and you will never have lived. and you will not have a pleasant death.

We run after values that, at death, become zero. At the end of your life, nobody asks you how many degrees you have, or how many mansions you built, or how many Rolls Royces you could afford. That's what dying patients teach you.

Death is staring too long into the burning sun and the relief of entering a cool, dark room.

I was destined to work with dying patients. I had no choice when I encountered my first AIDS patient. I felt called to travel some 250,000 miles each year to hold workshops that helped people cope with the most painful aspects of life, death and the transition between the two.

For years, I have been stalked by a bad reputation. Actually, I have been pursued by people who have regarded me as the 'Death and Dying' Lady. They believe that having spent more than three decades in research into death and life after death qualifies me as an expert on the subject. I think they miss the point.

When we grow older and begin to realize that our omnipotence is really not so omnipotent, that our strongest wishes are not powerful enough to make the impossible possible, the fear that we have contributed to the death of a loved one diminishes - and with it, the guilt.

Death is not painful. It is the most beautiful experience you will have.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no death the way we understood it. The body dies, but not the soul.

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.