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

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

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.

Death keeps no calendar.

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.

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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.