How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I walked back with Phuong towards my flat. I was no longer on my dignity. Death takes away vanity—even the vanity of the cuckold who mustn't show his pain. (1.1.119)
"At least no one died!" is a phrase people sometimes say to put some offense or another into perspective. Most harms pale in comparison to death. Consider also that death often seems to call for reverence and respect. Vanity goes by the wayside, as do scorned lovers.
Quote #2
In Pyle's bathroom Vigot was washing his hands with Pyle's soap and drying them on Pyle's towel. His tropical suit had a stain of oil on the sleeve—Pyle's soil, I suppose. (1.2.2.6)
Is this guilt talking? Pyle is dead. He doesn't own the soap or the towel or the oil anymore. Vigot, the police officer, had no compunction about using them, but Fowler speaks as though Vigot should have asked for the dead man's permission.
Quote #3
From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year, Phuong would leave me. If not next year, then in three years. Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity. (1.3.2.78)
Fowler's an atheist, but like many religious believers, he values permanence more than transience. Love, life, and health all pass away: they're temporary, and so they're of less importance. Death is permanent. Death is forever. Death is certain. Therefore death is better than life. For Fowler, it is the great escape from pain and fear.