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.

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

The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive. 

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.

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. 

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

Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.

It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.

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

There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.

What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.