It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.

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.

I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.

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

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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

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

Death keeps no calendar.

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.

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.

A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.

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