Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
—William Blake, c. 1790Quotes
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928Man has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.
—Jean Paul, 1795It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.
—Oliver Cromwell, 1658Those 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. 400I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.
—Pierre Gassendi, 1655The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and, secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.
—Robert G. Ingersoll, 1879Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665I imagined it was more difficult to die.
—Louis XIV, 1715The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 43 BCWe and the dead ride quick at night.
—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773I think it makes small difference to the dead if they are buried in the tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.
—Euripides, 415 BCI don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
—Woody Allen, 1971