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. 

I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.

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

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.

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.

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

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

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.

Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

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.

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