Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!

Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.

It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.

I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.

Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better, only the god knows.

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.