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Quotes

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1807

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

—William Blake, c. 1790

Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!

—Cotton Mather, 1728

Death renders all equal.

—Claudian, c. 395

I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.

—Pierre Gassendi, 1655

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

—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928

Death keeps no calendar.

—George Herbert, 1640

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773

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.

—Confucius, c. 500 BC

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

—Iris Murdoch, 1974

What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.

—Epictetus, c. 110

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.

—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175

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.

—Hermann Hesse, 1950