I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.

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

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.

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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.

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

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

The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and, secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

Death keeps no calendar.

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.

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.