Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906Quotes
The play is the tragedy “Man,” And its hero the conqueror worm.
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1843A 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. 77Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The 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.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1888I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1679Whoever has died is freed from sin.
—St. Paul, c. 50Death renders all equal.
—Claudian, c. 395If 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. 175I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1807I imagined it was more difficult to die.
—Louis XIV, 1715Man 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