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.
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
Perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over may be meant to save.
Death is the universal salt of states;
Blood is the base of all things — law and war.
"Passing away" is written on the world and all the world contains.
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delay'd to strike, though oft invoked.
Death is the waiting-room where we robe ourselves for immortality.
One may live as a conqueror, a king, or a magistrate; but he must die as a man.