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

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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.

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.

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.

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

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

To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.

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.

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better, only the god knows.

Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.