Philosopher Quotes on Death

Marcus Aurelius on Death

121 – 180 · Roman

• “Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.”

  Meditations, Book IX | IX, 3

• “Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?”

  Meditations, Book IX | IX, 21

• “The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.”

  Meditations, Book II | II, 14

• “Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal.”

  Meditations, Book IV | IV, 4

• “Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able—be good.”

  Meditations, Book IV | IV, 17

Read all 6 Marcus Aurelius quotes on Death →

Jean-Paul Sartre on Death

1905 – 1980 · French

• “He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”

  L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945)

• “I do not give a damn about the dead. They died for the [Communist] Party and the Party can decide what it wants. I practice a live man's politics, for the living.”

  Dirty Hands(1948) | Act 5, sc. 3

• “It is the same thing: killing, dying, it is the same thing: one is just as alone in each. He is lucky, he will only die once. As for me, for ten days I have been killing him at every minute.”

  Dirty Hands(1948) | Hugo to Jessica, on his plans to kill Hoederer, Act 5, sc. 2

• “If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth: die light.”

  The Devil and the Good Lord(1951) | Act 1

• “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.”

  Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | Book 2, "The Melodious Child Dead in Me"

Read all 7 Jean-Paul Sartre quotes on Death →

Seneca the Younger on Death

4 BC – 65 · Roman

• “On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.”

  Thyestes | lines 401-403; ( Chorus ).

• “Alternate translation: Death weighs on him who is known to all, but dies unknown to himself. ( The Philisophical Life by James Miller).”

  Thyestes

• “Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.”

  Letter IV: On the terrors of death

• “Before I became old I tried to live well; now that I am old, I shall try to die well; but dying well means dying gladly.”

  Letter LXI: On meeting death cheerfully | Line 2.

• “Great also are the souls of the defenders—men who know that, as long as the path to death lies open, the blockade is not complete, men who breathe their last in the arms of liberty.”

  Letter LXVI: On Various Aspects of Virtue

Read all 7 Seneca the Younger quotes on Death →

Albert Camus on Death

1913 – 1960 · French

• “Don't let them tell us stories. Don't let them say of the man sentenced to death "He is going to pay his debt to society ," but: "They are going to cut off his head." It looks like nothing. But it does make a little difference. And then there are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye .”

  Entre oui et non" in L'Envers et l'endroit (1937), translated as "Between Yes and No", in World Review magazine (March 1950), also quoted in The Artist and Political Vision (1982) by Benjamin R. Barber and Michael J. Gargas McGrath

• “We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. A Happy Death (written 1938), first published as La mort heureuse (1971), as translated by Richard Howard (1972)”

  Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d'abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage.

• “Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.”

  "The Sea Close By" in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)

• “Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.”

  Absurd Creation

• Attributed to Albert Camus:

  “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

Read all 5 Albert Camus quotes on Death →

Rumi on Death

1207 – 1273 · Persian

• “Anyone in whom the troublemaking self has died, sun and cloud obey. As his heart is afire with knowledge and love, the sun cannot burn him.”

  Masnavi | I, 3004-5 (tr. Helminski, 1990)

• “For love of our Almighty God, the Lord of all, Who would not die; a stock, a block, we needs must call.”

  A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 26 (Redhouse)

• “The generous die but their kindness remains, O happy he who drove this chariot (of kindness), The unjust die and their injustice remains, Alas for the soul that commits deceit and fraud.”

  A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 196

• “Argue not from the condition of common men, Stumble not at severity and mercy; For mercy and severity, joy and sorrow are transient And transient things die; God is heir of all.”

  A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 237 (Whinfield)

• Attributed to Rumi:

  “Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

Read all 5 Rumi quotes on Death →

Albert Einstein on Death

1879 – 1955 · German-American

• “Unser ganzer gepriesener Fortschritt der Technik, überhaupt die Civilisation, ist der Axt in der Hand des pathologischen Verbrechers vergleichbar.”

  1910s | Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal. Letter to Heinrich Zangger (1917), as quoted in A Sense

• “Liebe Mutter! Heute eine freudige Nachricht. H. A. Lorentz hat mir telegraphiert, dass die englischen Expeditionen die Lichtablenkung an der Sonne wirklich bewiesen haben.”

  1910s | Dear mother! Today a joyful notice. H. A. Lorentz has telegraphed me that the English expeditions have really proven the deflection of light at the sun. Postcard to his mother Pauline Einstein (1919)

• “Insofern sich die Sätze der Mathematik auf die Wirklichkeit beziehen, sind sie nicht sicher, und insofern sie sicher sind, beziehen sie sich nicht auf die Wirklichkeit.”

  1920s | In so far as theories of mathematics speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not speak about reality. Geometrie and Erfahrung (1921) pp. 3-4 link.springer

• “Die Diktatur bringt den Maulkorb und dieser die Stumpfheit. Wissenschaft kann nur gedeihen in einer Atmosphäre des Freien Wortes.”

  1930s | A dictatorship means muzzles all round and consequently stultification. Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech . "Science and Dictatorship," in Dictatorship on Its Trial, by Eminent

• Attributed to Albert Einstein:

  “Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.”

Read all 5 Albert Einstein quotes on Death →

Thomas Carlyle on Death

1795 – 1881 · Scottish

• “Speech is human , silence is divine , yet also brutish and dead : therefore we must learn both arts .”

  Notebooks (1830).

• “That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.”

  Sartor Resartus(1833–1834) | Bk. III, ch. 4.

• “The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.”

  Latter-Day Pamphlets(1850) | Latter Day Pamphlet , No. 8.

• “Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity: men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.”

  The French Revolution. A History(1837) | Pt. I, Bk. VII, ch. 4.

• “Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.”

  Sir Walter Scott(1838)

Read all 5 Thomas Carlyle quotes on Death →

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Death

1749 – 1832 · German

• “The folly! Every man in turn would still His own peculiar notions magnify! If Islam mean submission to God’s will, May we all live in Islam, and all die.”

  West–östlicher Divan(West–Eastern Diwan)(1819/1827) | The West–Eastern Divan , translated by Edward Dowden, VI. Book of Maxims, p. 86.

• “Wer nichts wagt, gerwinnt nichts. Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß, Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte Auf seinem Bette weinend saß, Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte.”

  Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre(Apprenticeship)(1786–1830) | Nothing venture, nothing gain. Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours Weeping upon his bed has sate, He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers. Bk. II, Ch. 13; translation

• “Die Kunst ist lang, das Leben kurz, das Urteil schwierig, die Gelegenheit flüchtig.”

  Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre(Apprenticeship)(1786–1830) | Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient. Bk. VII, Ch. 9 Cf. Hippocrates , Ars longa vita brevis , Aphorisms 1:1

• “Es gibt kein äußeres Zeichen der Höflichkeit, das nicht einen tiefen sittlichen Grund hätte. Die rechte Erziehung wäre, welche dieses Zeichen und den Grund zugleich überlieferte.”

  Elective Affinities(1809) | There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together. Bk. II, Ch. 5, R. J. H

• “Wenn die Menschen recht schlecht werden, haben sie keinen Anteil mehr als die Schadenfreude.”

  Maxims and Reflections(1833) | People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it.

Read all 6 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes on Death →

Martin Luther on Death

1483 – 1546 · German

• “If a woman becomes weary and at last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, she is there to do it.”

  Sermon Von dem ehelichen Stande (1519), p. 41 — as quoted in The Ethic of Freethought: A Selection of Essays and Lectures (1888) by Karl Pearson , "The Sex-Relations in Germany", p. 424 | The quote actually comes from Von dem eelichen Leben (1522). It can be seen in an original edition here , in a 19th century reissue here , and in English translation (as " On the Estate of Marriage ") here .

• “A theologian is born by living, nay dying and being damned, not by thinking, reading, or speculating.”

  Table Talk(1569) | 352

• “Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.”

  On Marriage (1530)

• “The works of the righteous would be mortal sins if they would not be feared as mortal sins by the righteous themselves out of pious fear of God.”

  "Heidelberg Disputation: Thesis 7" (1518), http://bookofconcord.org/heidelberg.php#7

• “A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing. Our helper He amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing.”

  Psalm. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (1529), translated by Frederic H. Hedge, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations , 10th ed. (1919)

Read all 5 Martin Luther quotes on Death →

Liezi on Death

c. 450 BC – c. 375 BC · Chinese

• “Many people sweat and toil and feel satisfied that they have accomplished many things. However, in the end we are not all that different from this polished piece of bone. In a hundred years, everyone we know will be just a pile of bones. What is there to gain in life, and what is there to lose in death?”

  Wikiquote

• “When we are rich and famous and powerful, we do not want to die. On the other hand, if we are miserable and suffering, we want to die and leave it all. But can joy or misery last forever?”

  Passage 70:The King Who Wanted to Live Forever

• “Life and death will come of their own. Why be greedy about life and afraid of death?”

  Passage 70:The King Who Wanted to Live Forever

• “Someone asked Yang Zhu, "What do you think of people who pray for immortality?" Yang Zhu replied, "Everyone must die sometime. Praying won’t help."”

  Passage 79:Everyone Must Die Sometime

• “When you live, you should accept life and let it run its course. When you die, you should accept death and go to it peacefully.”

  Passage 79:Everyone Must Die Sometime

Read all 9 Liezi quotes on Death →

Georges Bataille on Death

1897 – 1962 · French

• “Today, I am overjoyed at being an object of horror and repugnance to the one being whom I am bound to... The blank head in which ‘I’ am has become so frightened and greedy that only my death could satisfy it.”

  Wikiquote

• “I sank into the moist body the way a well-guided plough sinks into earth. The earth beneath that body lay open like a grave; her naked cleft lay open to me like a freshly dug grave... our bodies were quivering like two rows of teeth chattering together.”

  Wikiquote

• “Inevitably linked with the moment of climax, there is a minor rupture suggestive of death; and conversely the idea of death may play a part in setting sensuality in motion.”

  Erotism: Death and Sensuality(1962) | p. 107

• “There is no better way to know death than to link it with some licentious image.”

  Erotism: Death and Sensuality(1962) | The Marquis de Sade , cited by Bataille in Erotism: Death and Sensuality

• “Against this rising tide of murder, far more incisive than life (because blood is more resplendent in death than in life), it will be impossible to set anything but trivialities – the comic entreaties of old ladies.”

  Blue of the Noon(1935)

Read all 7 Georges Bataille quotes on Death →

Yamamoto Tsunetomo on Death

1659 – 1719 · Japanese

• “Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.”

  Hagakure

• “Commentary on the tale of The Forty-Seven Samurai (or the "Forty-seven Ronin ", or Akō Rōshi , the Akō "vendetta"), emphasizing his view that Bushido demands prompt action, and not delay, or concern about success and failure. Variant: "What if, nine months after Asano's death, Kira had died of an illness?”

  Concerning the night assault of Lord Asano's ronin, the fact that they did not commit seppuku at the Sengakuji was an error, for there was a long delay between the time their lord was struck down and the time when they struck down the enemy. If Lord Kira had died of illness within that period, it would have been extremely regrettable.

• “I have found that the Way of the samurai is death. This means that when you are compelled to choose between life and death, you must quickly choose death.”

  Hagakure(c. 1716)

• “The supreme style of love is unknown love. If the affection is known by the beloved, that love is snob. If you sacrifice your life for the beloved, and she recognises your love after you die, your soul would be appraised.”

  Hagakure(c. 1716)

• “By the Way of the warrior is meant death. The Way of the warrior is death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. It means nothing more than this. It means to see things through, being resolved.”

  Hagakure(c. 1716)

Read all 8 Yamamoto Tsunetomo quotes on Death →

Johann Gottfried Herder on Death

1744 – 1803 · German

• “Wir leben immer in einer Welt, die wir uns selbst bilden.”

  We live in a world we ourselves create. | Übers Erkennen und Empfinden in der menschlichen Seele (1774); cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913) vol. 8, p. 252. Translation from Roy Pascal The German Sturm und Drang (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959) p. 136

• “Am sorgfältigsten, mein Freund, meiden Sie die Autorschaft darüber. Zu früh oder unmäßig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf wüste und das Herz leer, wenn sie auch sonst keine üblen Folgen gäbe. Ein Mensch, der die Bibel nur lieset, um sie zu erläutern, lieset sie wahrscheinlich übel, und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstößt, durch Feder und Presse versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, und wird bald ein blosser Diener der Druckerey, ein Buchstabensetzer werden.”

  With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty; even were there no other worse consequences. A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss ; and he, who sends away through the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will bec

• “Die zwei größten Tyrannen der Erde, der Zufall und die Zeit.”

  Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man(1784-91) | The two grand tyrants of the Earth, Time and Chance . Vol. 1, p. x; translation vol. 1, p. xi

• “Jeder liebt sein Land, seine Sitten, seine Sprache, sein Weib, seine Kinder, nicht weil sie die besten auf der Welt, sondern weil sie die bewährten Seinigen sind, und er in ihnen sich und seine Mühe selbst liebt.”

  Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man(1784-91) | Every one loves his country, his manners, his language , his wife, his children; not because they are the best in the World, but because they are absolutely his own, and he loves himself and his own l

• “Der Appetit nach einer schönen Frucht ist angenehmer als die Frucht selbst.”

  The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself. Christoph Martin Wieland (ed.) Der deutsche Merkur vol. 20 (1781) p. 214; cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin Weidmann, 1888) vol. 15, p. 30

Read all 5 Johann Gottfried Herder quotes on Death →

Empedocles on Death

c. 490 BC – c. 430 BC · Greek

• “I have already once been a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird and a mute fish in the sea.”

  ἤδη γάρ ποτ’ ἐγὼ γενόμην κοῦρός τε κόρη τε θάμνος τ’ οἰωνός τε καὶ ἔξαλος ἔλλοπος ἰχθύς.

• “Hear first the four roots of all things: shining Zeus, life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus, [ 2 ] and Nestis, [ 3 ] who wets with tears the mortal wellspring.”

  τέσσαρα γὰρ πάντων ῥιζώματα πρῶτον ἄκουε· Ζεὺς ἀργὴς Ἥρη τε φερέσβιος ἠδ’ Ἀιδωνεύς Νῆστίς θ’, ἥ δακρύοις τέγγει κρούνωμα βρότειον.

• “And I will tell you something else: there is no birth of all mortal things, nor any end in wretched death, but only a mixing and dissolution of mixtures ; 'birth' is so called on the part of mankind.”

  ἄλλο δέ τοι ἐρέω· φύσις οὐδενός ἐστιν ἁπάντων θνητῶν, οὐδέ τις οὐλομένου θανάτοιο τελευτή, ἀλλὰ μόνον μίξις τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων ἐστί, φύσις δ’ἐπὶ τοῖς ὀνομάζεται ἀνθρώποισιν.

• “But, when the elements have been mingled in the fashion of a man and come to the light of day, or in the fashion of the race of wild beasts or plants or birds, then men say that these come into being; and when they are separated, they call that woeful death . They call it not aright; but I too follow the custom, and call it so myself.”

  οἱ δ᾿ ὅτε μὲν κατὰ φῶτα μιγέντ᾿ εἰς αἰθέρ᾿ ἵ⟨κωνται⟩ ἢ κατὰ θηρῶν ἀγροτέρων γένος ἢ κατὰ θάμνων ἠὲ κατ᾿ οἰωνῶν, τότε μὲν τὸ ⟨λέγουσι⟩ γενέσθαι, εὖτε δ᾿ ἀποκρινθῶσι, τὸ δ᾿ αὖ δυσδαίμονα πότμον· ἥ θέμις ⟨οὐ⟩ καλέουσι, νόμωι δ᾿ ἐπίφημι καὶ αὐτός.

• Attributed to Empedocles:

  “There is no birth in mortal things, nor any end in ruinous death; there is only mingling and interchange of what is mingled.”

Read all 5 Empedocles quotes on Death →

Nikolai Fyodorov on Death

1829 – 1903 · Russian

• “[The] transformation of the blind course of nature into one that is rational [...] is bound to appear to the learned as a disruption of order, although this order of theirs brings only disorder among men, striking them down with famine, plague, and death.”

  Quoted by Ed Tandy in " N.F. Fedorov, Russian Come-Upist

• “How unnatural it is to ask, ‘Why does that which exist, exist?' and yet how completely natural it is to ask, ‘Why do the living die?”

  Quoted by Ed Tandy in " N.F. Fedorov, Russian Come-Upist

• “The problem of the force which brings the two sexes to unite and give birth to a third being is also a problem of death.”

  Part I, § 9, p. 43

• Attributed to Nikolai Fyodorov:

  “The common task of humanity is the conquest of death.”

• Attributed to Nikolai Fyodorov:

  “Science must serve the resurrection of the dead, not the destruction of the living.”

Read all 5 Nikolai Fyodorov quotes on Death →

Voltaire on Death

1694 – 1778 · French

• “I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.”

  1770s | Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière (28 February 1778)

• “Satire lies about men of letters during their life, and eulogy after their death.”

  A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 105

• “A single part of physics occupies the lives of many men, and often leaves them dying in uncertainty.”

  1730s | "A Madame la Marquise du Châtelet, Avant-Propos", Eléments de Philosophie de Newton (1738)

• “One dies twice: to cease to live is nothing, but to cease to love and to be loved is an insupportable death.”

  A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 113

Read all 4 Voltaire quotes on Death →

Swami Vivekananda on Death

1863 – 1902 · Indian

• “India is immortal if she persists in her search for God . But if she goes in for politics and social conflict, she will die.”

  A few hours before his death, as quoted in Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture , Volume 14 (1963), p. 469

• “Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battle-field than to live a life of defeat.”

  Call to the Nation

• “Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.”

  Pearls of Wisdom

• “Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?”

  Pearls of Wisdom

Read all 4 Swami Vivekananda quotes on Death →

Karl Marx on Death

1818 – 1883 · German

• “Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern. [2]”

  1840s | The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. "Theses on Feuerbach " (1845), Thesis 11, Marx Engels Selected Works,(MESW), Volume I, p. 15; th

• “Die Gesellschaft besteht nicht aus Individuen, sondern drückt die Summe der Beziehungen, Verhältnisse aus, worin diese Individuen zueinander stehn.”

  Grundrisse(1857-1858) | Any society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of relationships [and] conditions that the individual actor is forming. MEW Vol. 42, p. 176.

• “Denn der Kapitalismus ist schon in der Grundlage aufgehoben durch die Voraussetzung, daß der Genuß als treibendes Motiv wirkt, nicht die Bereicherung selbst.”

  Das Kapital(Buch II)(1893) | For capitalism is abolished root and branch by the bare assumption that it is personal consumption and not enrichment that works as the compelling motive. Vol. II, Ch. IV, p. 123.

Julian of Norwich on Death

1343 – 1416 · English

• “I understood by my reason and by my feeling of my pains that I should die; and I assented fully with all the will of my heart to be at God's will. Thus I dured till day, and by then my body was dead from the middle downwards, as to my feeling. Then was I minded to be set upright, backward leaning, with help, — for to have more freedom of my heart to be at God's will, and thinking on God while my life would last.”

  Wikiquote

• “Now behoveth me to tell in what manner I saw sin deadly in the creatures which shall not die for sin, but live in the joy of God without end.”

  Chapter 72

• “The Enemy is overcome by the blessed Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

  Chapter 13

Mahatma Gandhi on Death

1869 – 1948 · Indian

• “The human body is meant solely for service, never for indulgence . The secret of happy life lies in renunciation . Renunciation is life. Indulgence spells death.”

  1940s | Harijan , (24 February 1946), p. 19

• “"Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others… to do the work of defense for him."”

  1920s | Young India, 11 August 1920, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi , Vol. 21, p. 133.

• “"There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for."”

  1920s | Young India, 15 November 1920, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi , Vol. 22, p. 169.

Epicurus on Death

341 BC – 270 BC · Greek

• “Don't fear god , Don't worry about death ; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure. (tr. D. S. Hutchinson, 1994 ) The Tetrapharmakos , or "four-part cure", a summary of the first four Principal Doctrines . Composed by an unidentified Epicurean philosopher ( Usener 1887:69 ); reported by Philodemus , P.Herc. 1005, IV.10–14.”

  ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος, καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐεκκαρτέρητον.

• “Death , therefore, the most awful of evils , is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”

  τὸ φρικωδέστατον οὖν τῶν κακῶν ὁ θάνατος οὐθὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς͵ ἐπειδήπερ ὅταν μὲν ἡμεῖς ὦμεν͵ ὁ θάνατος οὐ πάρεστιν͵ ὅταν δὲ ὁ θάνατος παρῇ͵ τόθ΄ ἡμεῖς οὐκ ἐσμέν.

• Attributed to Epicurus:

  “Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.”

John Chrysostom on Death

347 AD – 407 AD · Greek

• “Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness. Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Saviour's death has set us free.”

  Wikiquote

• “By descending into hades , He made hades captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. ... It took a body, and met God face to face. ... Christ is risen, and you are overthrown! Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen! Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is risen, and life reigns! Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb! For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that have slept.”

  Paschal Homily Both English Wikipedia and English Wikisource contain the whole text of this homily. In Byzantine Rite churches, the whole homily is read out annually as part of Paschal Matins service.

• “I do not think there are many among Bishops that will be saved, but many more that perish : and the reason is, that it is an affair that requires a great mind.”

  Homily III on Acts 1:12

Martin Heidegger on Death

1889 – 1976 · German

• “Warum ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts? Das ist die Frage.”

  Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing? That is the question. | What is Metaphysics? (1929), p. 110 | Cf. Gottfried Leibniz , De rerum originatione radicali (1697)ː " cur aliquid potius extiterit quam nihil .

• Attributed to Martin Heidegger:

  “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”

• Attributed to Martin Heidegger:

  “Being-toward-death is essentially anxiety.”

Werner Heisenberg on Death

1901 – 1976 · German

• “Die Quantentheorie ist so ein wunderbares Beispiel dafür, daß man einen Sachverhalt in völliger Klarheit verstanden haben kann und gleichzeitig doch weiß, daß man nur in Bildern und Gleichnissen von ihm reden kann.”

  Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables .

• “Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik (1969); also in "Kein Chaos, aus dem nicht wieder Ordnung würde", Die Zeit No. 34 (22 August 1969) ; as translated in Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971)”

  Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables .

• “Ein Fachmann ist ein Mann, der einige der gröbsten Fehler kennt, die man in dem betreffenden Fach machen kann, und der sie deshalb zu vermeiden versteht.”

  An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.

Friedrich Schelling on Death

1775 – 1854 · German

• “Wie zugleich die objektive Welt nach Vorstellungen in uns, und Vorstellungen in uns nach der objektiven Welt sich bequemen, ist nicht zu begreifen, wenn nicht zwischen den beiden Welten, der ideellen und der reellen, eine vorherbestimmte Harmonie existiert. Diese vorherbestimmte Harmonie aber ist selbst nicht denkbar, wenn nicht die Tätigkeit, durch welche die objektive Welt produziert ist, ursprünglich identisch ist mit der, welche im Wollen sich äußert, und umgekehrt.”

  How both the objective world accommodates to presentations in us, and presentations in us to the objective world, is unintelligible unless between the two worlds, the ideal and the real, there exists a pre-determined harmony . But this latter is itself unthinkable unless the activity, whereby the objective world, is produced, is at bottom identical with that which expresses itself in volition, and

• “Alle Regeln, die man dem Studieren vorschreiben könnte, fassen sich in der einen zusammen: Lerne nur, um selbst zu schaffen.”

  All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create. | On University Studies (1803), Third Lecture . Cited by Patrick Dunleavy, Authoring a PhD (Basingstoke: Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. vi.

• “Die Scheu vor der Spekulation, das angebliche Forteilen vom bloß Theoretischen zum Praktischen, bewirkt im Handeln notwendig die gleiche Flachheit wie im Wissen. Das Studium einer streng theoretischen Philosophie macht uns am unmittelbarsten mit Ideen vertraut, und nur Ideen geben dem Handeln Nachdruck und sittliche Bedeutung.”

  The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge . It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with vigour and ethical meaning. | Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums ( Seventh Lecture ), Friedric