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Quotes

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911

Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

—St. Paul, c. 50

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773

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. 77

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BC

Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.

—Horace Walpole, 1784

I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.

—Book of Revelations, c. 90

Imagine 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, 1669

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

The 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, 1879

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

—Thomas Hobbes, 1679

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