Whoever has died is freed from sin.

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

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

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.

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

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

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.

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

Death keeps no calendar.

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. 

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

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.

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