I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1807Quotes
Death keeps no calendar.
—George Herbert, 1640If 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. 420There 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. 175The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better, only the god knows.
—Socrates, 399 BCA little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCAnyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.
—John Osborne, 1956I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1679Nobody, sir, dies willingly.
—Antiphanes, c. 370 BCThere 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, 1714Whoever has died is freed from sin.
—St. Paul, c. 50When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911I imagined it was more difficult to die.
—Louis XIV, 1715