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

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

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

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

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.

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking. 

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

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.

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.

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

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.