“If death is as horrible as is claimed, how is it that after the passage of a certain period of time we consider happy any being, friend or enemy, who has ceased to live?”

“Every human being has two religions. The first is the religion of the body which ceases to exist after death. The second is the religion of the soul, which has existed since the beginning of time, the Love of God. It is by this religion that a human being is exalted.”

Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi (1941–2001) Pakistani Sufi spiritual leader, poet, author

“Has there ever been an Inquisitor who didn't die a horrible death?" Simon wondered out loud. " It's like being the drummer in Spinal Tap.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

“After the death of Stalin the town was renamed Grazhdansk. But this name didn’t hold out more than a couple of years: then was the town given the name of Khrushchev himself. For a certain period after the deposal of Khrushchev the town didn’t have any name at all.”

Aleksandr Zinovyev (1922–2006) Russian writer

“In some ways, I believe that we are moving into a post-historical period, for lack of a better term. A time when whatever functioned previously will cease to function, or at least will have to be re-thought and re-considered.”

Mark Pesce (1962) American writer

“Life is change, to cease to change is to cease to live; yet if you may shed a tear beside the death-bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving of a faith.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

“FUTURE, n.
That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

“After death the sensation is either pleasant or there is none at all. But this should be thought on from our youth up, so that we may be indifferent to death, and without this thought no one can be in a tranquil state of mind. For it is certain that we must die, and, for aught we know, this very day. Therefore, since death threatens every hour, how can he who fears it have any steadfastness of soul?”
Post mortem quidem sensus aut optandus aut nullus est. Sed hoc meditatum ab adulescentia debet esse mortem ut neglegamus, sine qua meditatione tranquillo animo esse nemo potest. Moriendum enim certe est, et incertum an hoc ipso die. Mortem igitur omnibus horis impendentem timens qui poterit animo consistere?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody's voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian