Quotes about life and death
656 quotes from 337 people
Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one’s garden.
Voltaire1694–1778Letter to Pierre-Joseph Luneau de Boisjermain (21 October 1769)We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
Dag Hammarskjöld1905–1961Vägmärken · Markings (1963), 1950I think it’s important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.
Joseph Campbell1904–1987The Power of Myth (1988)For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.
Thomas Mann1875–1955The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.
Mary Wollstonecraft1759–1797Letters Written in Sweden (1796)Once in everyone’s life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep.
E. B. White1899–1985One Man’s Meat, foreword to the 1982 edition
Diane Ackermanborn 1948A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Postscript, p. 309
Germaine Greerborn 1939“Not a time to die” (3 December 1972), p. 147
Yoko Onoborn 1933Twitter messages, 9 June 2009.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 5 “The Domestication of Hunch” (p. 70)
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
Harry Emerson Fosdick1878–1969On Being a Real Person (1943)
Luis Buñuel1900–1983Mon Dernier soupir (My Last Sigh, 1983)
Jack Kerouac1922–1969Desolation Angels (1965)
John von Neumann1903–1957Keynote, first national ACM meeting (1947), as recalled by Franz L. Alt in Communications of the ACM 15:7 (July 1972), p. 694