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Quotes

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

—Edgar Allan Poe, 1843

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

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 43 BC

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BC

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

—Thomas Hobbes, 1679

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

—Louis XIV, 1715

I 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 BC

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 noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.

—Anaxandrides, c. 376

There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.

—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714

Death renders all equal.

—Claudian, c. 395

Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!

—Cotton Mather, 1728

Death keeps no calendar.

—George Herbert, 1640

Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.

—John Osborne, 1956