Better to flee from death than feel its grip.
HOMER, The Iliad
We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Medici
Death, in itself, is nothing; but we fear,
To be we know not what, we know not where.
JOHN DRYDEN, Aureng-Zebe
Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.
VICTOR HUGO, Intellectual Autobiography
You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.
IAN FLEMING, You Only Live Twice
Morn after morn dispels the dark,
Bearing our lives away;
Absorbed in cares we fail to mark
How swift our years decay;
Some maddening draught hath drugged our souls,
In love with vital breath,
Which still the same sad chart unrolls,
Birth, eld, disease, and death.
BHARTRHARI, “Against the Desire of Worldly Things”
(Ha! My death will take me to a better place. It will enable me to gird my loins – so to imagine – before I undergo my next phase of moral cleansing on Earth. So I have been told!)
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 