'Tis after death that we measure men.
'Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o'er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens.
A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.
A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.
A dead atheist is someone who is all dressed up with no place to go.
A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.
A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!
A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.
A good man dies when a boy goes wrong.
A human act once set in motion flows on forever to the great account. Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are.
A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
A man's death makes everything certain about him. Of course, secrets may die with him. And of course, a hundred years later somebody looking through some papers may discover a fact which throws a totally different light on his life and of which all the people who attended his funeral were ignorant. Death changes the facts qualitatively but not quantitatively. One does not know more facts about a man because he is dead. But what one already knows hardens and becomes definite. We cannot hope for ambiguities to be clarified, we cannot hope for further change, we cannot hope for more. We are now the protagonists and we have to make up our minds.
A person doesn't die when he should but when he can.
A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.
A useless life is an early death.
A wooden bed is better than a golden coffin.
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. Treason has done his worst. Nor steel nor poison, malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.