Nobody, sir, dies willingly.
—Antiphanes, c. 370 BCQuotes
Death renders all equal.
—Claudian, c. 395Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 43 BCWhat is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.
—Epictetus, c. 110Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
—Horace Walpole, 1784If 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. 420Whoever has died is freed from sin.
—St. Paul, c. 50A 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. 77I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.
—Book of Revelations, c. 90Death keeps no calendar.
—George Herbert, 1640The 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, 1879Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”
—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790