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Quotes about life and death

656 quotes from 337 people

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I have never been able to see life as anything but a vast complicated practical joke, and it’s better to laugh than cry.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 25, p. 442
- Laughter
I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
Carrie Fisher1956–2016Postcards from the Edge (1987)
- Art
I have to start by telling you that my entire existence can be summed up in one phrase. And that is: If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.
Carrie Fisher1956–2016Wishful Drinking (2008)
- Humor
We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new?
Susan Sontag1933–2004Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
- Change
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
Václav Havel1936–2011Letters to Olga (1988), p. 237
This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.
Swami Vivekananda1863–1902“Our Duty to the Masses”, letter to the Maharaja of Mysore (23 June 1894), Complete Works, vol. 4
- Charity
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
Erich Fromm1900–1980Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 3 “Human Nature and Character”
- Philosophy
It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.
Cary Grant1904–1986Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)
- Happiness
My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between times, I occupy myself as best I can.
Cary Grant1904–19861978 interview with Roderick Mann, “Cary Grant: Doing What Comes naturally,” Los Angeles Times (June 11, 1978), p. 39; as quoted in “Quotable Cary” at American Masters (25 May 2005)
- Comedy
I witnessed the gruesome workings of the machinery of death; gear meshed with gear, like clockwork. It was the biggest and most enormous dance of death of all times.
Adolf Eichmann1906–1962CBC report (2000)
To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you, that’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lives not just for oneself but for one’s community.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg1933–2020About her legacy. As quoted in: Jay Croft (September 20, 2020): 10 quotes that help define the ‘Notorious RBG’ legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Charity
We’re only here for a little while, and you’ve got to have some fun, right? I don’t take myself seriously, and I think the ones that do, there’s some sickness with people like that. That’s why I live in Florida.
Burt Reynolds1936–2018“Burt Reynolds Has Made Mistakes. But He Regrets Nothing.” in The New York Times (23 March 2018). Chosen as the Quote of the Day for 6 September 2018.
- Comedy
I don’t think about art while I work… I try to think about life.
Jean-Michel Basquiat1960–1988On his artistic process in “Jean-Michel Basquiat on How to Be an Artist” in Artsy (2019 Jun 6)
- Art
I’m not looking forward to death; it’s important to live while we are here. But those who have died, my mother said, now they know the secret. And someday we all will.
Betty White1922–2021The TGB Interview: BETTY WHITE (30 June 2011)
Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.
Albert Einstein1879–1955“Why Socialism?”, Monthly Review (May 1949)