Death and Mourning

The doctor found, when she was dead,—

Souls of poets dead and gone,

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

Vital spark of heav’nly flame!

I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls

I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and my coming down let me shift for my self.

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.

The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

I’ve been so preoccupied with what would happen in the event of my death that I’m surprised to find myself still alive.

It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.

[ Deleted dedication of Twain’s book RoughingIt:] To the Late Cain, This Book is Dedicated, Not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little respect; not on accountof sympathy with him, for his bloody deedplaced him without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking; but out of a mere humancommiseration for him in that it was hismisfortune to live in a dark age that knew notthe beneficent Insanity Plea.

Death tugs at my ear and says: "Live, I am coming.

I that in heill wes and gladnes Am trublit now with gret seiknes And feblit with infermite: Timor Mortis conturbat me. 1

 

She said, “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!”

 

God’s finger touched him, and he slept.

 

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of death Rode the six hundred.

 

Our life is made by the death of others.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

The fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and not of the man who possessed it, remains.

No real estate is permanently valuable but the grave.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, And we been pilgrymes, passing to and fro. Deeth is an ende of every worldly soore.