You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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.

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

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.

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!

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. 

I think it makes small difference to the dead if they are buried in the tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.

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

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

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