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

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

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. 

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.

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

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

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

The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and, secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.

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.

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

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

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