Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!

Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.

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. 

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

Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.

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. 

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

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

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

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.

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

We and the dead ride quick at night.