Quotation by

Sophocles

For death is not the worst, but when one wants to die and is not able even to have that.

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Understanding this quote AI Analysis

Sophocles is saying that the greatest suffering is not death itself, but the pain of desperately wishing to die and being unable to do so. This highlights a torment worse than death—feeling trapped in life without the release that death would bring.

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I start thinking about life after death. I've got to quit thinking about it because it's very deep. Very deep. Sometimes you start thinking about it, and you don't feel like you want to be alive, so …
What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.

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So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to …
I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted.
Planning to play: that's what saving for retirement is today - and it is antithetical to the nature of play, fully within the definition of work, and blissfully ignorant of the reality of death.