Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.

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

Death keeps no calendar.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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.

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

Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking. 

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.