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.

There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

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 do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

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

The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.

Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.

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

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.

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.