It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.

When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead- When the cloud is scattered The rainbows glory is shed. When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot.

How little room Do we take up in death, that, living, know No bounds!

Death takes away the commonplace of life.

Nobody knows, in fact, what death is, nor whether to man it is not perchance the greatest of all blessings; yet people fear it as if they surely knew it to be the worst of evils.

Even the bold will fly when they see Death drawing in close enough to end their life.

For the dead there are no more toils.

Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

Death is a convention, a certification to the end of pain, something for the vital statistics book, not binding upon anyone but the keepers of graveyard records.

Death is not anything ... death is not ... It's the absence of presence, nothing more ... the endless time of never coming back ... a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound.