Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
—Horace Walpole, 1784Quotes
The 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 think it makes small difference to the dead if they are buried in the tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.
—Euripides, 415 BCUnder the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCDeath renders all equal.
—Claudian, c. 395I imagined it was more difficult to die.
—Louis XIV, 1715Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.
—Lord Byron, 1817I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.
—Book of Revelations, c. 90Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.
—Giuseppe Verdi, 1900Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”
—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790