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Quotes

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

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 43 BC

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

—Horace Walpole, 1784

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

—William Blake, c. 1790

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

Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”

—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

—Hermann Hesse, 1950

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

Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?

—Tertullian, c. 215

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

—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911

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

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819

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

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

—St. Paul, c. 50

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

—Jonathan Swift, 1706