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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

In dealing with the dead, if we treat them as if they were entirely dead, that would show a want of affection and should not be done; or, if we treat them as if they were entirely alive, that would show a want of wisdom and should not be done.

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.

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

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.