“The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.”

“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.”

“So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.”

“Immortal beings have been compared to stars, these are existences that linger on long after the death of the thing itself.”

“Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real? I remember at the time of the wreck-- people were so kind and helpful and solid. Everyone pretended that our lives until that moment had been every bit as real as the moment itself and that the future must be real too, when the truth was that our reality had been purchased only by Lyell's death. In another hour or so we had all faded out again and gone our dim ways.”

“When we reach out to pluck a flower the stem trembles, seeming both to shrink and to offer itself. The human body has something of this tremor at the moment when the mysterious hand of death reaches out to pluck a soul.”