Whoever has died is freed from sin.

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

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 call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

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

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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.

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

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

Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!

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

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