Whoever has died is freed from sin.
—St. Paul, c. 50Quotes
When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows and, looking at each other with grief and despair, await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.
—Blaise Pascal, 1669The play is the tragedy “Man,” And its hero the conqueror worm.
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1843I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928I 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, 1790Death keeps no calendar.
—George Herbert, 1640If 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. 420It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.
—Anaxandrides, c. 376I 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 BCLife is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
—Horace Walpole, 1784