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

The play is the tragedy “Man,” And its hero the conqueror worm.

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.

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.

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

In dealing with the dead, if we treat them as if they were entirely dead, that would show a want of affection and should not be done; or, if we treat them as if they were entirely alive, that would show a want of wisdom and should not be done.

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 do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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

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. 

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.

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

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