I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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

The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and, secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.

I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.

There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.

Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.

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.

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

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

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.

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!

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.