“It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.”
The Book of Ecclesiastes, 1611 · Ecclesiastes 7:2, King James Version
Chapter 4
On Death
“Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark.”
Francis Bacon, 1625 · English philosopher, from the essay Of Death
“The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty. He who has learned to die has unlearned to serve.”
Michel de Montaigne, 1580 · French essayist, from That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die
“It is a wonderful thing to learn thoroughly how to die.”
Seneca, c. 65 AD · Roman Stoic philosopher, in a letter to his friend Lucilius
“Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you will never entertain any abject thought.”
Epictetus, c. 125 AD · Greek Stoic philosopher, born a slave
“Never say of anything, I have lost it; but, I have returned it. While it is given to you to possess, take care of it; but do not view it as your own.”
Epictetus, c. 125 AD · Greek Stoic philosopher, born a slave
“No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.”
Socrates, c. 399 BC · Athenian philosopher, at his trial, as recorded by Plato
“End thy journey in content, as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.”
Marcus Aurelius, c. 170 AD · Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher
“That day, which you fear as being the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity.”
Seneca, c. 65 AD · Roman Stoic philosopher, in a letter to his friend Lucilius
“Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never. Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams.”
The Bhagavad Gita, c. 200 BC · chapter 2, Krishna speaking to Arjuna
“O thou the last fulfilment of life, Death, my death, come and whisper to me. Day after day I have kept watch for thee; for thee have I borne the joys and pangs of life.”
Rabindranath Tagore, 1912 · Bengali poet, in his own English rendering of Gitanjali
Patients who talked with their doctors about dying were no more depressed for it. They received gentler care at the end, and the families they left behind grieved better.
Alexi Wright and colleagues, 2008 · prospective study of 332 advanced cancer patients and their caregivers
Surveyed on what matters at the end, patients ranked being mentally aware, being at peace and not being a burden far higher than their physicians did.
Karen Steinhauser and colleagues, 2000 · national survey of 340 seriously ill patients, 332 bereaved families and 790 clinicians
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