Archive

Quotes

It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.

—Oliver Cromwell, 1658

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

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

—Louis XIV, 1715

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

I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.

—Lord Byron, 1817

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

It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.

—Anaxandrides, c. 376

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

—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928

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

There 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

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

—Iris Murdoch, 1974

Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.

—Horace Walpole, 1784

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906