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!

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.

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.

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

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.