I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1679Quotes
Death keeps no calendar.
—George Herbert, 1640I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.
—Book of Revelations, c. 90We and the dead ride quick at night.
—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.
—John Osborne, 1956What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.
—Epictetus, c. 110The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and, secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.
—Robert G. Ingersoll, 1879Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
—William Blake, c. 1790I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.
—Lord Byron, 1817A 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. 77Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911Death renders all equal.
—Claudian, c. 395