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

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

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

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

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.

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.

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.

What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.

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.

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

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

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