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

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

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

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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

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

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

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

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.

Death renders all equal.

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.