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Quotes about life and death

656 quotes from 337 people

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This is the real secret of life⁠—to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
Alan Watts1915–1973The Essence of Alan Watts (1977)
- Work
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXII: On the futility of half-way measures, Line 17.
It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard1813–1855Journals IV A 164 (1843)
- Philosophy
Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.
Jane Austen1775–1817Emma (1815)In context
- Marriage
What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.
Nelson Mandela1918–2013Speech at Walter Sisulu’s 90th birthday celebration, Johannesburg (18 May 2002)
The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A being that is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.
Thomas Aquinas1225–1274On The Perfection of the Spiritual Life (1269-1270), Chapter 14
- Freedom
We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
Charles Bukowski1920–1994The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors have taken over the Ship (1998)
- Love
Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death. Loving our mysterious blue planet, we resolve riddles and dissolve all enigmas in contingent bliss.
Edward Abbey1927–1989Down the River (1982)
- Love
In me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.
Samuel Beckett1906–1989Molloy (1951)
Old men’s prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.
Euripides481–407 BCAlcestis, ll. 669–672, Admetus (Bartlett’s, 1892)
- Age
The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast.
Napoleon1769–1821Statement at Montereau (17 February 1814)
- Courage
Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.
Bertolt Brecht1898–1956The Mother (1930)
- Fear
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
MOMary Oliver1935–2019New and Selected Poems, Volume 2 (2005), “When Death Comes”
We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.
Jimmy Carter1924–2024Addressing a Bible class in Plains, Georgia (March 1976), as quoted in Boston Sunday Herald Advertiser (11 April 1976)
- Christianity
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin
T. S. Eliot1888–1965Poems (1920), “Whispers of Immortality”