Archive

Quotes

To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

—Thomas Hobbes, 1679

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

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773

Man has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.

—Jean Paul, 1795

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

—Lord Byron, 1817

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

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 43 BC

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

The play is the tragedy “Man,” And its hero the conqueror worm.

—Edgar Allan Poe, 1843

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

The 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 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

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

—Horace Walpole, 1784