Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Quotes

63 Sourced Quotes

Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Live, so you do not have to look back and say: "God, how I have wasted my life."

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you will never see the beauty of their carvings.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Is war perhaps nothing else but a need to face death, to conquer and master it, to come out of it alive — a peculiar form of denial of our own mortality?

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
You may not get what you want, but God always gives you what you need.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Those who have been immersed in the tragedy of massive death during wartime, and who have faced it squarely, never allowing their senses and feelings to become numbed and indifferent, have emerged from their experiences with growth and humanness greater than that achieved through almost any other means.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you've lived.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow. When circumstances are at their worst, we can find our best.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Death is the final stage of growth in this life. There is no total death. Only the body dies. The self or spirit, or whatever you may wish to label it, is eternal.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Learning lessons is a little like reaching maturity. You're not suddenly more happy, wealthy, or powerful, but you understand the world around you better, and you're at peace with yourself. Learning life's lessons is not about making your life perfect, but about seeing life as it was meant to be.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Dying is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society. Perhaps it is that.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
There are dreams of love, life, and adventure in all of us. But we are also sadly filled with reasons why we shouldn't try. These reasons seem to protect us, but in truth they imprison us. They hold life at a distance. Life will be over sooner than we think. If we have bikes to ride and people to love, now is the time.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross