Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.

The saying frames salvation as a movement upward, carried by two forces: love (charity, devotion, rightly ordered desire) and death (the necessary passage out of earthly life). In a Christian-Platonic register often associated with Renaissance spirituality, love lifts the soul by turning it toward the divine, while death severs attachments to the material world and completes the soul’s journey. Calling them “two wings” suggests they work together: love gives direction and longing; death provides release and transition. The “good man” implies moral preparation—only a life shaped by virtue can make these forces bear one heavenward rather than toward despair or loss.