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Quotes

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

—John Osborne, 1956

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

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

—Thomas Hobbes, 1679

Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?

—Tertullian, c. 215

I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.

—Nicharchus, c. 90

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

Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”

—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790

It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.

—Anaxandrides, c. 376

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

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

If 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. 420

I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

—Woody Allen, 1971

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706