The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive. 

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

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

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.

I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.

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

Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

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

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.