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.

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

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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

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

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

The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive. 

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

Death keeps no calendar.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Whoever has died is freed from sin.