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.
I leave this rule for others when I'm dead
Be always sure you're right — THEN GO AHEAD!
I'm going to get that bloody bastard if I die in the attempt.
Everybody dies. So much of growing up consists of coming to grips with this fact.
The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow.
The death of our close friends and relatives proves that how close the death is to us!