Quotes about life and death
656 quotes from 337 people
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
John Lennon1940–1980Double Fantasy (1980), “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost1874–1963Attributed in Ray Josephs, “Robert Frost’s Secret”, in William Nichols (ed.) Words to Live By (Simon and Schuster, 1959), pp. 172–73Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.
Isaac Asimov1920–1992Often credited to Jimi Hendrix
Stephen Kingborn 1947Different Seasons (1982)
J. R. R. Tolkien1892–1973The Two Towers, Gandalf (remembered by Frodo)
John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In contextGuns aren’t lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful. So you might as well live.
If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968Cobo Center speech (1963)The man who regards life as meaningless is not merely unfortunate, but almost disqualified for life.
Albert Einstein1879–1955The World As I See It (1949)And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
?UnattributedOften credited to Abraham LincolnDon’t take life too seriously; you’ll never get out of it alive.
Elbert Hubbard1856–1915A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 74
