Passing Thoughts, I

A few favorites:

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.  - Sir Francis Bacon

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again and ever again, this soiled world. - Walt Whitman

A man dies ... only a few circles in the water prove that he was ever there. And even they quickly disappear. And when they're gone, he's forgotten, without a trace, as if he'd never even existed. And that's all. - Wolfgang Borchert, The Outsider 

Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say- here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. - Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture,
A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us. - John Ashbery, "A Last World"

BB