To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.

Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.

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.

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

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

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

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

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 do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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

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

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