Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying, where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief, also known as the “Kübler-Ross model”.
Kübler-Ross was a 2007 inductee into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, she was named by Time (magazine) as one of the “100 Most Important Thinkers” of the 20th Century and she was the recipient of nineteen honorary degrees. By July 1982, Kübler-Ross taught 125,000 students in death and dying courses in colleges, seminaries, medical schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions. In 1970, she delivered an Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University on the theme On Death and Dying. (via Wikipedia)
Lets take a look at a few of the quotes by one of the world’s greatest thinkers:
On Life:
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose.
It is very important that you only do what you love to do. You may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do.
On Death:
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.
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.
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.
It is very important that you only do what you love to do. you may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do. Otherwise, you will live your life as a prostitute, you will do things only for a reason, to please other people, and you will never have lived. and you will not have a pleasant death.
When I die I’m going to dance first in all the galaxies…I’m gonna play and dance and sing.
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.
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 mortality?
It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.
On Love:
There is within each one of us a potential for goodness beyond our imagining; for giving which seeks no reward; for listening without judgment; for loving unconditionally.
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
If we could raise one generation with unconditional love, there would be no Hitlers. We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives.
The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.
On Blessings:
All events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Other Quotes:
Today, in our “shut up, get over it, and move on” mentality, our society misses so much, it’s no wonder we are a generation that longs to tell our stories.
The more you learn, the harder the lessons get.
Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.
There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.
We think sometimes we’re only drawn to the good, but we’re actually drawn to the authentic. We like people who are real more than those who hide their true selves under layers of artificial niceties.
The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours.