The most remembered line in the book is the last: "I had no children, I did not pass on to any creature the legacy of our misery." It closes chapter CLX, "Of Negatives", in which Brás Cubas, already dead, takes stock of his life by what he did not have: he did not reach the fame of the plaster, was not minister, was not caliph, did not know marriage. Adding everything up, he says he found on the other side a small balance, and the balance is this last negative.
Other lines of the book also circulate freely. In the very first chapter, Brás explains why he begins with his own death: "I am not properly a dead author, but a dead author, for whom the grave was another cradle." The dedication is to the worm "that first gnawed the cold flesh of my corpse". In the prologue to the reader, he says he wrote the work "with the pen of jest and the ink of melancholy". And, on his first love, he sums up: "Marcela loved me for fifteen months and eleven contos de réis; nothing less."
All share the same tone: the laughter of someone who has nothing more to lose, applied to the most serious matters, death, love, money, and the lack of children.