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

The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.

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

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.

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

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.

Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.

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

Death renders all equal.

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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.

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