I imagined it was more difficult to die.
—Louis XIV, 1715Quotes
It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.
—Oliver Cromwell, 1658I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.
—Pierre Gassendi, 1655I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.
—Nicharchus, c. 90Men 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, 1665Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
—William James, 1902Whoever has died is freed from sin.
—St. Paul, c. 50Is 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, 1728When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911Death renders all equal.
—Claudian, c. 395Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.
—Anaxandrides, c. 376Death keeps no calendar.
—George Herbert, 1640