I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
—Woody Allen, 1971Quotes
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, 1950I imagined it was more difficult to die.
—Louis XIV, 1715We and the dead ride quick at night.
—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706Nobody, sir, dies willingly.
—Antiphanes, c. 370 BCIf 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. 420The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 43 BCYou are dust, and to dust you shall return.
—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BCI do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1807Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1679Man 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