Death and Mourning

WE ARE SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON; AND OUR LITTLE LIFE IS ROUNDED WITH A SLEEP.

Death is softer by far than tyranny.

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Not even old age knows how to love death.

Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead.

Light be the earth upon you, lightly rest.

Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.

Not to be born surpasses thought and speech. The second best is to have seen the light And then to go back quickly whence we came.

Death is not the worst; rather, in vain To wish for death, and not to compass it.

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be.

And, live we how we can, yet die we must.

The worst is death, and death will have his day.

When all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that is not Heaven.

I could have better spar’d a better man.

His cares are now all ended.

What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous; 32 and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

The rest is silence.

Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave, But not remember’d in thy epitaph!

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones.

Sweets to the sweet: farewell!

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Hector is dead; there is no more to say.

Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!