a lean fellow beats all conquerors.
_Old Fortunatus_. T. DEKKER.

Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all.
_King Lear, Act v. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

This fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest.
_Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

We cannot hold mortality's strong hand.
_King John, Act iv. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

That we shall die we know: 't is but the time
And drawing days out, that men stand upon.
_Julius Caesar, Act iii. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.

Our days begin with trouble here,
Our life is but a span,
And cruel death is always near,
So frail a thing is man.
_New England Primer_.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
_Julius Caesar, Act ii. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

The hour concealed, and so remote the fear,
Death still draws nearer, never seeming near.
_Essay on Man, Epistle III_. A. POPE.

The tongues of dying men
Enforce attention, like deep harmony:
When words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain;
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
_K. Richard II., Act ii. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.

A death-bed's a detector of the heart:
Here tired dissimulation drops her mask,
Through life's grimace that mistress of the scene;
Here real and apparent are the same.
_Night Thoughts, Night II_. DR. E. YOUNG.

The chamber where the good man meets his fate
Is privileged beyond the common walk
Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven.
_Night Thoughts. Night II_. DR. E. YOUNG.

Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it; he died,
As one that had been studied in his death,
To throw away the dearest thing he owed,
As 't were a careless trifle.
_Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 4_. SHAKESPEARE.

The bad man's death is horror; but the just,
Keeps something of his glory in the dust.
_Castara_. W. HABINGTON.

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled;
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
_Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.

With mortal crisis doth portend
My days to appropinque an end.
_Hudibras, Pt. I. Canto III_. S. BUTLER.

Sure, 't is a serious thing to die!...
Nature runs back a