~Samuel Butler~
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
~Seneca~
The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.
~Sigmund Freud~
The goal of all life is death.
~Socrates~
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
~Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky~
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
~Steven Stiles~
God made death so we’d know when to stop.
~Steven Wright~
I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
~Stewart Alsop~
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.
~Tennessee Williams, “The Rose Tattoo”~
Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
~Thomas Browne, An Essay on Death~
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
~Toni Morrison~
Birth, life, and death — each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.
~Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain~
A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.
~The Epic of Gilgamesh~
You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping.
~W. Somerset Maugham~
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
~Wilson Mizner~
I want a priest, a rabbi, and a Protestant clergyman. I want to hedge my bets.
~Willa Cather~
I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
~Winston Churchill~
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
~Wilfred Sheed, The Good Word, 1978~
Suicide is… the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
~Witter Bynner, “The Patient to the Doctors”~
Name me no names for my disease,
With uninforming breath;
I tell you I am none of these,
But homesick unto death.
~William Penn~
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.