Even though people may be well known, they hold in their hearts the emotions of a simple person for the moments that are the most important of those we know on earth: birth, marriage and death.
Jackie Kennedy

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.
Lord Byron

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.
Soren Kierkegaard

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.
Soren Kierkegaard

I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.
Douglas MacArthur

An unused life is an early death.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A useless life is an early death.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.
Mel Brooks

If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.
Mel Brooks

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.
John Steinbeck

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.
Epictetus

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
Carl Jung

Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.
Saul Alinsky

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
George Bernard Shaw

Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they'll say, 'God, he said exactly what I was thinking.' And when they begin to respect you, they'll follow you to the death.
Lee Iacocca

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

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

The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death.
Vladimir Lenin