We talk about death knocking at our door…

• Never knock on death’s door. Ring the doorbell then run. He totally hates that. Darynda Jones
• Anyone can stop a man’s life, but no one his death; a thousand doors open on to it. Seneca the Younger
• When Life knocks at the door no one can wait, When Death makes his arrest we have to go. John Masefield
• Death knocks at your door, and before you can tell him to come in, he is in the house with you. Grace Ogot
• Pale death approaches with equal step, and knocks indiscriminately at the door of the cottage, and the portals of the palace. Horace
• Death, in its silent sure march is fast gathering those whom I have longest loved, so that when he shall knock at my door, I will more willingly follow. Robert E. Lee
• Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door. Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness. Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts. Irvin D. Yalom
• Death can sneak up on you like a silent kitten, surprising you with its touch and you have a right to act surprised. Other times death stomps in the front door, unwanted and unannounced, and makes its noisy way to your seat on the sofa. Hugh Elliot
• Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door; Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shore Where neither piping bird nor peeping dawn Disturbs the eternal sleep, But in the stillness far withdrawn Our dreamless rest for evermore we keep. Robert Louis Stevenson
• When Death lurks at the door, the physician is considered as a God. When danger has been overcome, the physician is looked upon as an angel. When the patient begins to convalesce, the physician becomes a mere human. When the physician asks for his fees, he is considered as the devil himself. Hendrik Goltzius

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…but it is more true to say that death, itself, is a door

• Death is a door. Anne Graham Lotz
• Death hath so many doors to let out life. John Fletcher
• Death is only passing through God’s other door. Edgar Cayce
• Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die. John Masefield
• Death hath a thousand doors to let out life. I shall find one. Thomas Browne
• There the door is always open into the “holy” — growth, birth, death. May Sarton
• …death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Death’s not a separation or alteration or parting; it’s just a one-handled door. Stevie Smith
• You don’t know how easy death is. It’s – it’s like a door. A person simply walks through it, and she’s lost to you forever. Eloisa James
• Be careful, then, and be gentle about death. For it is hard to die, it is difficult to go through the door, even when it opens. H. Lawrence
• I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. If I were to imagine heaven, I would imagine a door opening. And he would be waiting for me there. David Mitchell
• Wherever you feel death, feel it. Don’t escape. Death is beautiful; death is the greatest mystery, more mysterious than life. Through life you can gain the world, the futile world- meaningless, worthless. Through death you can gain the eternal. Death is the door. Rajneesh
• Death is only an old door Set in a garden wall; On quiet hinges it gives, at dusk When the thrushes call. Along the lintel are green leaves, Beyond, the light lies still; Very weary and willing feet Go over that sill. There is nothing to trouble any heart; Nothing to hurt at all. Death is only an old door In a garden wall. Nancy Byrd Turner
• Death is not a blotting-out of existence, a final escape from life; nor is death the door to immortality. He who has fled his Self in earthly joys will not recapture It amidst the gossamer charms of an astral world. There he merely accumulates finer perceptions and more sensitive responses to the beautiful and the good, which are one. It is on the anvil of this gross earth that struggling man must hammer out the imperishable gold of spiritual identity. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Autumn is the very soul of metamorphosis, a time when the world is poised at the door of winter – which is the door of death – but has not yet fallen. It is a world of contradictions: a time of harvest and plenty but also of cold and hardship. Here we dwell in the midst of life, but we know most keenly that all things must pass away and shrivel. Autumn turns the world from one thing into another. The year is seasoned and wise but not yet decrepit or senile. Catherynne M. Valente
• When death comes…. I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what it’s going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body as a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. Mary Oliver

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…from one room to another

• Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. Joanna
• Death … is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see. Helen Keller
• Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that’s all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet. C. S. Lewis
• Life does not end when we die. Death is a rebirth into a spirit world of light and love, a transition from the physical to the spiritual that is no more frightening or painful than passing between rooms through an open doorway. It is a joyful homecoming to our natural home, . . . Betty Eadie
• At death we cross from one territory to another, but we’ll have no trouble with visas. Erwin W. Lutzer
• Death to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father’s house into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining. Adam Clarke
• I believe there are two sides to the phenomenon known as death, this side where we live, and the other side where we shall continue to live. Eternity does not start with death. We are in eternity now. Norman Vincent Peale

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…from one dream to another…

• Birth and death are doors through which you pass from one dream to another. All you are doing is going back and forth between this gross dream world and the finer astral dream world; between these two chambers of dream nightmares and dream pleasures. Paramahansa Yogananda

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…from one life to another

• Death is the continuing of life … the next part of our life. It’s like walking through a door, you know? Walking through the door marked “Death”: It’s the beginning of a new part of our journey. Rosemary Altea
• Death is the door from the superficial life, the so-called life, the trivial. There is a door. If you pass through the door you reach another life – deeper, eternal, without death, deathless. So from so-called life, which is really nothing but dying, one has to pass through the door of death; only then does one achieve a life that is really existential and active – without death in it. Rajneesh
• Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new life. Yes, it is an end of something that is already dead. It is also a crescendo of what we call life, although very few know what life is. They live, but they live in such ignorance that they never encounter their own life. And it is impossible for these people to know their own death, because death is the ultimate experience of this life, and the beginning experience of another. Death is the door between two lives; one is left behind, one is waiting ahead. Rajneesh
• I am firmly convinced that there is life after death, not in a primitive sense but as the entry of my completely finite person into God’s infinity, as a transition into another reality beyond the dimension of space and time that pure reason can neither affirm nor deny. Hans Kung
• Take life as it comes and death as it comes. Death is really beautiful; if it were a bad thing, God would not let it happen to us. It is really freedom, an entry into another, higher life. We must utilize this life in order to realize the life beyond this one. Beyond this earth garden is the infinite land wherein we meet those whom we have thought lost. Although we must not seek death, when it comes we should know that it is the final examination for a great reward. Paramahansa Yogananda

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Death is a gateway

• Death is the gate of life. Bernard of Clairvaux
• And to the faithful: death, the gate of life. John Milton
• When we cross the gates of death, our karma is all we take with us. Tulku Thondup
• As soon as we have found the key of life, it opens the gates of death. Edward Young
• Pale Death beats equally at the poor man’s gate and at the palaces of kings. Horace
• Death is no punishment to the believer: it is the gate of endless joy. Charles Spurgeon
• What we call life is a journey to death. What we call death is the gateway to life. Wayne Triplett
• Death is but changing of our robes to wait in wedding garments at the Eternal’s gate. Sri Aurobindo
• Fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar. Shirley Jackson
• Perhaps passing through the gates of death is like passing quietly through the gate in a pasture fence. On the other side, you keep walking, without the need to look back. No shock, no drama, just the lifting of a plank or two in a simple wooden gate in a clearing. Neither pain, nor floods of light, nor great voices, but just the silent crossing of a meadow. Mark Helprin
• Unwearied, and with springing steps elate, I had conveyed my wealth along the road. The empty sack proved now a heavier load: I was borne down beneath its worthless weight. I stumbled on, and knocked at Death’s dark gate. There was no answer. Stung by sorrow’s goad I forced my way into that grim abode, And laughed, and flung Life’s empty sack to Fate. Ella Wheeler Wilcox
• I do not want to believe that death is the gateway to another life. For me, it is a closed door. I do not say it is a step we must all take, but that it is a horrible and dirty adventure. Albert Camus
• Let me arise and open the gate,
  to breathe the wild warm air of the heath,
  And to let in Love, and to let out Hate,
  And anger at living and scorn of Fate,
  To let in Life, and to let out Death.
  Violet Fane

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Death is a portal

• There is no death! What seems so is transition; this life of mortal breath is but a suburb of the life elysian, whose portal we call Death. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• When death comes, all our mortal tortures cease; they cannot go beyond the portals of death. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Our self (Soul), as a form of God’s joy, is deathless. For his joy is amritham, eternal bliss. We know that the life of a Soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its journey to realize the infinite. Rabindranath Tagore
• There is no death! What seems so is transition; this life of mortal breath is but a suburb of the life elysian, whose portal we call Death. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Death is a passage

• Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side. Alexander MacLaren
• Birth leads to death, death precedes birth. So if you want to see life as it really is, it is rounded on both the sides by death. Death is the beginning and death is again the end, and life is just the illusion in between. You feel alive between two deaths; the passage joining one death to another you call life. Buddha says this is not life. This life is dukkha – misery. This life is death. Rajneesh

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Death is an entrance

• …this death is in fact the entrance to a higher life. Thomas Merton

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Death is a bridge

• The grave is but a covered bridge Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Death is an exit

• Death is losing its terror. It is the emergency exit for a world that is becoming more frightening death ever was. Julian Green
• Death is my exit strategy. Craig Newmark
• Every exit is an entry to somewhere else. Tom Stoppard
• Death must simply become the discreet but dignified exit of a peaceful person from a helpful society that is not torn, not even overly upset by the idea of a biological transition without significance, without pain or suffering, and ultimately without fear. Philippe Aries