I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

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.

It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

The play is the tragedy “Man,” And its hero the conqueror worm.

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.

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.

Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?

The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive. 

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

Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

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.