Death keeps no calendar.

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.

Death renders all equal.

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

Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.