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.

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

I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.

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

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

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. 

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

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 think it makes small difference to the dead if they are buried in the tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.

Death renders all equal.

A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.

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

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