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

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

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

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.

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

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.

If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide—because he kills not merely a man but a near relative—without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself. 

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

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.

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

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

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!