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Quotes about life and death

656 quotes from 337 people

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As an actor, I’m thankful I have lived not one life, but many.
Charlton Heston1923–2008Video farewell (2002)
- Acting
Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.1841–1935Often credited to Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Art
Death tugs at my ear and says: “Live, I am coming.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.1841–1935
Life is action, the use of one’s powers. As to use them to their height is our joy and duty, so it is the one end that justifies itself.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.1841–1935Speech to the Bar Association of Boston, in Speeches (1913), p. 85.
Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894
Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894
A glorious death is his
Who for his country falls.
Homer900–800 BCIliad, Book XV, 496–497 (tr. Lord Derby)
- Patriotism
Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.
Homer900–800 BCThe Iliad (750 BC), Iliad, Book X, 173–174 (tr. Samuel Butler)In context
Among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it
there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is.
Homer900–800 BCIliad, Book XVII, 446–447 (tr. Richmond Lattimore)
Alike the idlers and the active die.
Homer900–800 BCIliad, IX. 320 (tr. Lord Derby); Achilles to the embassy
Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees. Those of autumn the wind sheds upon the ground, but when spring returns the forest buds forth with fresh vines. Even so is it with the generations of mankind, the new spring up as the old are passing away.
Homer900–800 BCThe Iliad (8th century BC), Book VIIn context
- Nature
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Gerard Manley Hopkins1844–1889Spring and Fall (1880)In context
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
A. E. Housman1859–1936To an Athlete Dying Young (1896)In context
- Sports
It is not pleasant to come upon Death in a lonely place at midnight.
Robert E. Howard1906–1936“The God in the Bowl” (1952)
Were I still in death and you fighting for life, I would come back to the abyss to aid you⁠—aye, whether my spirit floated with the purple sails on the crystal sea of paradise, or writhed in the molten flames of hell!
Robert E. Howard1906–1936“Queen of the Black Coast” (1934)
- Love