Most people, asked whether they fear death, either dodge the question or answer with something solemn. Winston Churchill did neither. "I am prepared to meet my Maker," he said. "Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." It is one of the most quoted lines ever said about mortality, and almost none of the usual gravity attached to the subject survives it. Churchill takes the biggest, most unavoidable fact of life and turns it into a joke at his own expense, without ever actually denying how serious the subject is. The line has outlived him by decades precisely because it manages both things at once, honesty and humour, in a single sentence most people would need a full paragraph to attempt.
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