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

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

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

In dealing with the dead, if we treat them as if they were entirely dead, that would show a want of affection and should not be done; or, if we treat them as if they were entirely alive, that would show a want of wisdom and should not be done.

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

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

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

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.

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

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

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. 

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

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