Wen Tianxiang 文天祥

Sima Qian 司馬遷

c. 91 BC · Han China · A letter explaining why, after his disgrace, he did not die but lived on to write his book

Everyone must die once. A death may be heavier than Mount Tai or lighter than a goose feather. The difference lies in what it is used for.

人固有一死，或重於泰山，或輕於鴻毛，用之所趨異也。

"Letter in Reply to Ren An"

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Lu You 陸游

1210 · Song China · At eighty-five, the last poem he wrote before he died

I have always known that once I am dead all things are empty. My only grief is not to have seen the land made one. On the day the king's armies take back the Central Plain in the north, do not forget, at the family sacrifice, to tell your father.

死去元知萬事空，但悲不見九州同。 王師北定中原日，家祭無忘告乃翁。

"To Show My Sons," in the Complete Song Poems

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Hadrian Publius Aelius Hadrianus

AD 138 · Roman Empire · Said to have been made just before his death

Little soul, little wanderer, little charmer, guest and companion of my body, where are you off to now, to places pale, stiff and bare, never again to make your usual jokes?

animula vagula blandula, hospes comesque corporis, quae nunc abibis in loca pallidula rigida nudula nec, ut soles, dabis iocos!

Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian 25

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Vespasian Titus Flavius Vespasianus

AD 79 · Roman Empire · Rome made gods of its dead emperors. Suetonius writes that even in fear of death and in the face of danger he never stopped joking

At the very first attack of his illness he said, "Dear me, I think I am becoming a god."

prima quoque morbi accessione: "Vae," inquit, "puto, deus fio."

Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Vespasian 23

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Mark Twain

1894 · Missouri, USA · Connecticut

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

Pudd'nhead Wilson, a chapter epigraph from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

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