The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I’ve – if it did occur – that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime.

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

I’m not resigned, but I’m realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it’s a certainty you’ll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it’s an awful process.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

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

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

Life is so, so short. Bible says it’s like a vapor.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Shall I, that have destroyed my Preservers, return home?

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

Death is a fearful thing.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows.

There’s something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

My gold, my money couldn’t stop cancer from appearing on my body. If they can’t save me, then I don’t need them.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

Every time I think that I’m getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.