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.

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.

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.

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

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. 

Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?

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

Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.

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.

It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.

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

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.