The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better, only the god knows.
—Socrates, 399 BCQuotes
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCBereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.
—John Osborne, 1956I imagined it was more difficult to die.
—Louis XIV, 1715I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.
—Bhartrihari, c. 400It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.
—Anaxandrides, c. 376Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1679In 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 BCDeath renders all equal.
—Claudian, c. 395There 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.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714