Death
On Saturday, April 27, 1996, Colby died in what appears to have been a boating accident near his home in Rock Point, Maryland. There was speculation that Colby's death was due to foul play or suicide. The Maryland state coroner, however, ruled that Colby had suffered either a heart attack or a stroke due to a discernible plaque build-up in his arteries, and had fallen into the water and drowned. Most of Colby's family and his biographer viewed a suicide as completely inconsistent with his character. However, in a biographical documentary developed by Colby's son Carl Colby, he speculated that Colby had simply, "...had enough of this life."
Read more about this topic: William Colby
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what one has wished, drawing the sum of one’s life—all in opposition to the wretched and revolting comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)