What does this quote mean?

“They come weeping and go weeping—you only come laughing and go laughing.”

The grave-digger’s observation uses dark humor to contrast conventional responses to death with a narrator who approaches the cemetery from another perspective.

Source note: The Madman, “The Grave-Digger”; the line is spoken by the grave-digger to the narrator.

“As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.”

Death strips away rank and status, emphasizing a condition shared by every person regardless of position or wealth.

Source note: The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 1, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.”

Death becomes continuity with nature rather than simple disappearance, connecting mortality with renewal, earth, and the lives that follow.

Source note: Final section of “Song of Myself”; the speaker imagines returning physically to the earth.

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”

Wilde uses deliberate contradiction to suggest that solemnity is not the only way to take life seriously.

Source note: Lady Windermere’s Fan.

“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”

Mortality cannot be eliminated, so the practical answer is to make conscious use of the finite span between beginning and end.

Source note: Soliloquies in England, “War Shrines”; the sentence follows a contrast between strained worldliness and a more festive acceptance of life.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

The line emphasizes impermanence and the dreamlike brevity of human life.

Source note: Act 4, Scene 1.