Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

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

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.

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

The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive. 

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

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

Death renders all equal.

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. 

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.

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

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.