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

I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

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

Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

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

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

Death renders all equal.

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.

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.

There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.

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.