Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.

In dealing with the dead, if we treat them as if they were entirely dead, that would show a want of affection and should not be done; or, if we treat them as if they were entirely alive, that would show a want of wisdom and should not be done.

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.

We and the dead ride quick at night.