What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.

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

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.

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

Death renders all equal.

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.

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!

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.

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. 

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

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