Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974Quotes
A 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 doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.
—Lord Byron, 1817If 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. 420Man 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, 1795Nobody, sir, dies willingly.
—Antiphanes, c. 370 BCI was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.
—Pierre Gassendi, 1655It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.
—Oliver Cromwell, 1658The 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, 1879I 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, 1887Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
—William Blake, c. 1790Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.
—John Osborne, 1956