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.

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

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

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

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.

I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.

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

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?

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

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. 

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