Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
374
AUTHOR:
Alexander Smith (1830?–1867)
QUOTATION:
Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either.
ATTRIBUTION:
ALEXANDER SMITH, “Of Death and the Fear of Dying,” Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country, pp. 70–71 (1864, reprinted 1972).
