I've seen the phrase in a lot of different places.
The earliest I can find is Blaise Pascal in his 1670 Pensees.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl3...ml#SECTION%20IWe are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone. We should therefore act as if we were alone, and in that case should we build fine houses, etc.? We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.
In Romans 14:7 we find a related but seemingly opposing statement:
But it's probably not really the source of the quotation.For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.
Does anybody have any information or guesses?
Forgot to add: I'm also interested to hear people's thoughts about what it means. It's not clear to me.
It could mean that everyone dies without company. But that's obviously not true: Sometimes more than one person dies simultaneously, and sometimes dying people are surrounded by loved ones.
It could also mean that the experience of a given person's death can only be had by that one person (though everyone else is guaranteed a similar experience, only Alfred can experience Alfred's death). But that seems irrelevant because that's true of every experience a given person has.
Maybe it means we all feel lonely when we die. But that can't be true either, because people often die suddenly without time to feel anything, and sometimes die happy or die in their sleep.
Or do you think it means something else?