Death and Mourning

I have lost friends, some by death … others through sheer inability to cross the street.

The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily.

I have firmly resolved to bite the dust, when my time comes, with a minimum of medical assistance, and up to then I will sin to my wicked heart’s content.

I have finished my task here.

The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.

A person starts dying when they stop dreaming.

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,

A suicide kills two people, Maggie, that’s what it’s for!

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

The bones of the Dead will be seen to govern the fortunes of him who moves them.

O Time with your teethy years! You swallow up all things little by little in a slow-motion, wrinkling process of dying.

Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.

I have seen slower people than I am and more deliberate... and even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I am. But they were dead.

I do see that there is an argument against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind, the awful famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release.

Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

A sweet thing, for whatever time, to revisit in dreams the dear dead we have lost.

God, these old men! How they pray for death! How heavy they find this life in the slow drag of days! And yet, when Death comes near them, You will not find one who will rise and walk with him, not one whose years are still a burden to him.

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

For he being dead, with him is beauty slain, And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.

Tamburlaine, the Scourge of God, must die.

The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom.

Thou [Death] setter up and plucker down of kings. 3