I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.

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.

Death renders all equal.

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.

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.

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

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

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

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

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

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

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.