“love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.”

“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens.

I'm a comedian. I make comic films and there are certain ideas that occur to me that are comic, with heavy, serious undertones. There are some ideas that are more frivolous to me. The next idea that could occur to me could be comedy about death and famine or something.

War's a profanity because, let's face it, you've got two opposing sides trying to settle their differences by killing as many of each other as they can.

“I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong.” 

“When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.” 

“Dying seems less sad than having lived too little.” 

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

“The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.”

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

“A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.” 

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.” 

“Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.

“What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business.”

“All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.”

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

When I'm dead, I want to be remembered as a musician of some worth and substance.

My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies, Fairy tales of yesterday will grow but never die, I can fly, my friends...

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death. The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, not to anticipate the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.