Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great is pass'd away.

We are in truth but pieces on this chess board of life,which in the end we leave,only to drop one by one into the grave of nothingness.

So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.

We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little Styrofoam. Maybe. A little Styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

Death is here and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere,
All around, within, beneath,
Above is death - and we are death.

Death has set his mark and seal
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear,

First our pleasures die - and then
Our hopes, and then our fears - and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust - and we die too.

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot -
Love itself would, did they not.

"In many instances nothing marked the spot where lay the vestiges of some poor mortal-who, leaving "a large circle of sorrowing friends," had been left by them in turn-except a depression in the earth, more lasting than that in the spirits of the mourners."

Tis but a day we sojourn here below,
And all the gain we get is grief and woe,
Then, leaving our life's riddles all unsolved,
And burdened with regrets, we have to go.

Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

What we lose with each death, though, is more like stars falling out of the sky and into the sea and gone. The something undone, the something that won’t ever be done, always remains unendurable to consider. A permanent loss of possibility, so that what is left is only ever better than nothing, but the loss is limitless.

Grief is the honour we pay to that which is dear to us.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral.

This world
that was our home
for a brief spell
never brought us anything
but pain and grief;
its a shame that not one of our problems
was ever solved.
We depart
with a thousand regrets
in our hearts.