Tolstoy on Death and Dying (Anna Karenina)

In Part Five, Chapters 19 - 20, Tolstoy holds forth on death and dying.  These are eloquent chapters with much wisdom.

Levin could not help knowing that he had more intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and he could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with all the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many great men, whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet knew not a hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew about it.

[The women] knew for a certainty the nature of death lay in the fact that they knew without a second of hesitation how to deal with the dying, and were not frightened of them. Levin and other men like him, though they could have said a great deal about death, obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and were absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying.  

Much, much more... Anna Karenina on Death and Dying.