Quotes about life and death
656 quotes from 337 people
There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.
Kazuo Ishiguroborn 1954On growing up in England, having left Japan at age 5. Conversation with Lewis Burke Frumkes, The Writer, volume 114, number 5, May 2001, collected in Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro, p. 189I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life.
Abigail Adams1744–1818Letter to her sister, Mary Smith Cranch (1784)Our place is somewhere between being and nonbeing — between two fictions.
ECEmil Cioran1911–1995Anathemas and Admirations (1987)When a just man dies,
Lamentation and praise,
Sorrow and joy, are one.
W. H. Auden1907–1973“Elegy for J.F.K.” (22 November 1963)Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?MOMary Oliver1935–2019New and Selected Poems (1992)It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.
Betty Friedan1921–2006The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 14 “A New Life Plan for Women”.And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849“The Masque of the Red Death” (1842).No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.
H. P. Lovecraft1890–1937“Ex Oblivione”I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.
Jack Kerouac1922–1969The Dharma Bums (1958)Love stands opposed to death. It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
Thomas Mann1875–1955The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6What are clouds, but an excuse for the sky? What is life, but an escape from death?
JCJames Clavell1921–1994Shōgun (1975), Yabu-san’s death poem after being ordered to commit seppuku.The best of men cannot suspend their fate:
The good die early, and the bad die late.
Daniel Defoe1660–1731The Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley, by Way of Elegy (1697)Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death.
Jean Cocteau1889–1963Opium (1929)This life is a hospital where each patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed.
Charles Baudelaire1821–1867“Anywhere Out of the World”, Le Spleen de Paris (1869)Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963Last message to the world (written 1957); read at his funeral (1963)