Archive

Quotes

Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887

I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.

—Book of Revelations, c. 90

Death renders all equal.

—Claudian, c. 395

I 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 BC

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

If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide—because he kills not merely a man but a near relative—without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself. 

—Saint Augustine, c. 420

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

—St. Paul, c. 50

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

—Epictetus, c. 110

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

—Tertullian, c. 215

Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”

—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790

I’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. 90

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.

—Pliny the Elder, c. 77