I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

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

I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

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

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

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!

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

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.

Man has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.

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

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.