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.

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. 

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. 

Death renders all equal.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

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

Death keeps no calendar.