Yang Zhu - Death

Death

Yang Zhu agreed with the search for happiness, but he felt one should not strive for life beyond one’s allotted span, nor should one unnecessarily shorten one’s life. Death is as natural as life, Yang Zhu felt, and therefore should be viewed with neither fear nor awe. Funeral ceremonies are of no worth to the deceased. “Dead people are not concerned whether their bodies are buried in coffins, cremated, dumped in water or in a ditch; nor whether the body is dressed in fine clothes. What matters most is that before death strikes one lives life to the fullest” (Liu: 1967: 358).

Read more about this topic:  Yang Zhu

Famous quotes containing the word death:

    In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman’s premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, “until death doth part.”
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.
    Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)

    Can even death dry up
    These new delighted lakes, conclude
    Our kneeling as cattle by all-generous waters?
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)