Quotes about life and death
656 quotes from 337 people
Elie Wiesel1928–2016Interview in O, The Oprah Magazine (November 2000)
John Calvin1509–1564Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551), Page 78.- MOMary Oliver1935–2019American Primitive (1983), “In Blackwater Woods”
Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
Horace Mann1796–1859Address at Antioch College (1859)
Homer900–800 BCIliad, Book XVII, 446–447 (tr. Richmond Lattimore)
Alan Mooreborn 1953“The Mustard magazine interview” (January 2005)By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden1907–1973Another Time (1940)We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Thornton Wilder1897–1975The Woman of Andros (1930), based on Terence’s Andria
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)
Richard Feynman1918–1988last words (15 February 1988), according to James Gleick, in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992), p. 438
Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology
John Quincy Adams1767–1848Last words (21 February 1848)
James Madison1751–1836Last words, to his niece, as told in Paul Jennings, A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison (1865), p. 20- AAli599–661Nahj al-Balagha