You never really knew a man, he said, until you saw him die

Death never excites such sympathy as it does when it assumes the shape of murder.

I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.

No one would think he'd make such a beautiful corpse.

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

There was a very cautious man
Who never laughed or played
He never risked, he never tried,
He never sang or prayed.
And when he on day passed away,
His insurance was denied,
For since he never really lived,
They claimed he never really died.

(Anonymous poem)

I'm just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN.

We are dead men. Dead men should be quiet in their graves, but they never are.

Dead men don't bite

I don’t know whether it is that I am built wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself. I know that the proper thing to do, when you get to a village or town, is to rush off to the churchyard, and enjoy the graves; but it is a recreation that I always deny myself. I take no interest in creeping round dim and chilly churches behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs. Not even the sight of a bit of cracked brass let into a stone affords me what I call real happiness.

Never be glad that another man has died. Not ever. [...] It never ends. Never ... ever ... be glad to kill.

I was never so amazed in my life as when the Sniffer drew his concealed weapon from its case and struck me to the ground, stone dead.

In my eyes, murder will never be an object of admiration or an argument for freedom; I know of nothing more servile, more despicable, more cowardly, more narrow-minded than a terrorist.

I never knew a mocker who was not mocked, ... a deceiver who was not deceived, or a proud man who was not humbled.