Quotes about life and death
656 quotes from 337 people
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Harriet Beecher Stowe1811–1896Little Foxes (1865), Ch. 3.Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Cymbeline (1610), Act IV, scene ii.We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Simone de Beauvoir1908–1986Conclusion, p. 541He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live.
Michel de Montaigne1533–1592Essais, Book I, “That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die” (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842)
Virgil70–19 BCAeneid (29–19 BC), Book XII, Line 646 (tr. Alexander Thomson)
Eckhart Tolleborn 1948A New Earth (2005)
Lord Byron1788–1824Marino Faliero, Act II, Scene 2, reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Homer900–800 BCIliad, Book XV, 496–497 (tr. Lord Derby)To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.
Paulo Coelhoborn 1947Aleph (2011)
Bertrand Russell1872–1970A Free Man’s Worship (1903)
Arthur C. Clarke1917–20082001: A Space Odyssey (1968) “Foreword”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882The Rainy Day, originally in Bentley’s Miscellany (Dec. 1841) p. 626
Norman Mailer1923–2007“Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Posthumous publications