Pithy Sayings

Death

Funeral Instructions: No fuss or bother. Above all, minimal cost. If you can get away with digging a hole in your back garden then do so. Alternatively, have me stuffed and placed in your living room as a conversation piece. (If I am holding a tray, people can put things on me.)
[From the Last Will of Martin Jabez Leese, 1954 to ?]

When I go, just skin me and put me on top of Trigger.
[Roy Rogers, quoted in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins, 1976]

This dying is boring.
[The last words of Richard Feynman, 1918 to 1988]

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.
[Edmund Kean, 1787 to 1833, Shakespearean actor, on his death bed]

It's funny how most people love the dead. Once you're dead you're made for life.
[Jimi Hendrix, 1942 to 1970, quoted in Youth is Wasted on the Young by Stephen Blake and Andrew John, 2003]

If the rich could hire others to die for them, the poor could make a good living.
[An old Yiddish saying, quoted in The Brothers K by David James Duncan, 1992]

I have been dead for two years, but I don't choose to have it known
[Lord Chesterfield, 1694 to 1773, quoted in Youth is Wasted on the Young by Stephen Blake and Andrew John, 2003]

Don't take life so seriously. It isn't permanent.
[Original author unknown]

To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
[Lady Bracknell in the play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, 1894]

Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo.
I was not, I was, I am not, I care not.
[A popular epitaph on Roman tombstones]