The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

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.

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

Death renders all equal.

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

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. 

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

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

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

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

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

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.

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.