To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.

Death keeps no calendar.

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows and, looking at each other with grief and despair, await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.

There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.

I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.

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

If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide—because he kills not merely a man but a near relative—without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself. 

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

Death renders all equal.