Archive

Quotes

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.

—Iris Murdoch, 1974

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

—Horace Walpole, 1784

I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

—Woody Allen, 1971

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

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

It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.

—Oliver Cromwell, 1658

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

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 43 BC

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928

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

—Edgar Allan Poe, 1843

Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

—William James, 1902

I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.

—Nicharchus, c. 90

I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.

—Book of Revelations, c. 90

It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.

—Anaxandrides, c. 376