Death Quotes
The poets dominate here. Edward Young, Longfellow and Seneca are tied for the most entries, with Tennyson, Pope and Byron close behind. A few lines are better known than their authors. Samuel Johnson’s remark that when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully comes from Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791). Dryden’s “Death in itself is nothing; but we fear / To be we know not what, we know not where” is from Aureng-Zebe (1676).
The line most often credited to Stalin, that one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic, is flagged as misattributed. Wikiquote traces a version of it to a French satirical paper in 1924, where a diplomat says it in what is probably an invented anecdote. It was pinned on Stalin by a newspaper columnist in 1947, with no evidence offered.
Like a led victim, to my death I'll go,
And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.
His religion at best is an anxious wish, — like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
He first deceased; she for a little tried
To live without him, liked it not, and died.
Death must be an evil — and the gods agree;
for why else would they live for ever?
From the very jaws of death I have escaped to this condition.
He whom the gods love dies young, whilst he is full of health, perception, and judgment.