"It has been commonly observed that blood, wounds, cries and groans, the preparations for painful operations, and everything which directs the senses towards things connected with suffering, are usually the first to make an impression on all men. The idea of destruction, a more complex matter, does not have so great an effect; the thought of death affects us later and less forcibly, for no one knows from his own experience what it is to die; you must have seen corpses to feel the agonies of the dying. But when once this idea is established in the mind, there is no spectacle more dreadful in our eyes, whether because of the idea of complete destruction which it arouses through our senses, or because we know that this moment must come for each one of us and we feel ourselves all the more keenly affected by a situation from which we know there is no escape."

"When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, No shady cypress tree."

"Joy, shipmate, joy (Pleas'd to my soul at death I cry,) Our life is closed, our life begins, The long, long anchorage we leave, The ship is clear at last, she leaps! Joy, shipmate, joy!"

"O, I die, Horatio; The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit: I cannot live to hear the news from England; But I do prophesy the election lights On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice; So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited. The rest is silence."

"There is no music more for him: His lights are out, his feast is done; His bowl that sparkled to the brim Is drained, is broken, cannot hold."

"Sleep that no pain shall wake, Night that no morn shall break, Till joy shall overtake Her perfect peace."

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might, for there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, where you are going."

"Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas."

"Those that he loved so long and sees no more, Loved and still loves—not dead, but gone before, He gathers round him."

"Death calls ye to the crowd of common men."

"One may live as a conqueror, a king, or a magistrate; but he must die as a man."

"He that on his pillow lies, Fear-embalmed before he dies Carries, like a sheep, his life, To meet the sacrificer's knife, And for eternity is prest, Sad bell-wether to the rest."

"And so, you see, simplicity Requires that our lot Be that we exit, when we must, With only what we brought."

"The struggles, the disillusions, and the enmities of life are a part of daily experience. Either death should bring compensating oblivion, or it should throw the mantle of charity over our frailties."

"Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully — not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their hearts — watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with."

"Yet 'twill only be a sleep: When, with songs and dewy light, Morning blossoms out of Night, She will open her blue eyes 'Neath the palms of Paradise, While we foolish ones shall weep."

"However dreary we may have felt life to be here, yet when that hour comes — the winding up of all things, the last grand rush of darkness on our spirits, the hour of that awful sudden wrench from all we have ever known or loved, the long farewell to sun, moon, stars, and light — brother man, I ask you this day, and I ask myself humbly and fearfully, "What will then be finished? When it is finished, what will it be? Will it be the butterfly existence of pleasure, the mere life of science, a life of uninterrupted sin and self-gratification, or will it be, 'Father, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do?'""

"Dead is she? No; rather let us call ourselves dead, who tire so soon in the service of the Master whom she has gone to serve forever."

"Some people think that we are stuck in physical reality like flies in flypaper or victims in quicksand, so that each motion we make only worsens our predicament and hastens our extinction. Others see the universe as a sort of theater into which we are thrust at birth and from which we depart forever at death. In the backs of their minds people with either attitude will see a built-in threat in each new day; even joy will be suspect because it, too, must end in the body's eventual death. I used to feel this way. When I fell in love with Rob, my joy served to double the underlying sense of tragedy I felt, as if death mocked me all the more by making life twice as precious. I saw each day bringing me closer to a total extinction that I could hardly imagine, but which I resented with growing vehemence."

"Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either."

"The imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality."

": The long sleep of death closes our scars, and the short sleep of life our wounds."

"Der lange Schlaf des Todes schliesst unsere Narben zu, und der kutze des Lebens unsere Wunden."

"Death! to the happy thou art terrible; But how the wretched love to think of thee, O thou true comforter! the friend of all Who have no friend beside!"

"Death is mighty, and is no one's friend."

"Death is the waiting-room where we robe ourselves for immortality."

"But death we are, and death have always been."

"David: Lieutenant Saavik was right: you never have faced death --"

"Fort Belle, Elle Dort."

"Sorry about your Uncle Fred, but hey, sometimes you end up dead. Did somebody bonk him in the head? Did somebody pump him full of lead? What the...? Are they trying to be humorous? Betcha glad it wasn't you instead."

"On the contrary, death is the ultimate fairness; rich and poor, young and old, all are equal in death."

"A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life."

"He is the Angel of Death. Life lasts long, save for him; populations would rise up like tidal waves and inundate worlds, save for him; criminals would require trials and sentencing, save for him; and of course history might reflect unnecessary twisting and turnings, save for the Angel of Death."

"Hushed in the alabaster arms of Death, Our young Marcellus sleeps."

"O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far stretchèd greatness, all the pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and covered it all over with those two narrow words, Hic jacet!"

"Life and death merge in greatness."

": And greedy Acheron does not relinquish its prey."

"Et l'avare Achéron ne lâche pas sa proie."

"But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him, as the angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own."

"Everyone dies—the rearrangement of when is a matter of only statistical interest."

": I am going to seek a great perhaps; draw the curtain, the farce is played."

"Death, if thou wilt, fain would I plead with thee: Canst thou not spare, of all our hopes have built, One shelter where our spirits fain would be Death, if thou wilt?"

"Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée."

"And hands that wist not though they dug a grave, Undid the hasps of gold, and drank, and gave, And he drank after, a deep glad kingly draught: And all their life changed in them, for they quaffed Death; if it be death so to drink, and fare As men who change and are what these twain were."

"Withdrawn into the peace of this desert, along with some books, few but wise, I live in conversation with the deceased, and listen to the dead with my eyes."

"It is the lot of man but once to die."