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

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

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

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

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

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.

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.

There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.

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

I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.

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.

Death renders all equal.