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Quotes about life and death

656 quotes from 337 people

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There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana1863–1952Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922), “War Shrines”
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
George Santayana1863–1952The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense
- Happiness
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
George Santayana1863–1952The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense
- Philosophy
Life has no meaning a priori … It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.
Jean-Paul Sartre1905–1980Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946), p. 58
Life is a business that does not cover the costs.
Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)
- Business
Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860Counsels and Maxims, Vol. 2, Ch. 26, § 310, as translated by Eric F. J. Payne
This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.
Erwin Schrödinger1887–1961My View of the World (written 1925, published 1961)
- Philosophy
Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage.
Albert Schweitzer1875–1965The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 164
Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.
Albert Schweitzer1875–1965Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2: Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26
True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: “I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.”
Albert Schweitzer1875–1965Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2: Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26 “The Civilizing Power of the Ethics of Reverence for Life”
- Philosophy
I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.
Robert Falcon Scott1868–1912“Message to the Public” (March 1912), in Scott’s Last Expedition (1913), vol. 1
- Courage
It’s no fish ye’re buying, it’s men’s lives.
Walter Scott1771–1832The Antiquary (1816), Volume I, Ch. 11.
- Work
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air⁠—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
Alan Seeger1888–1916I Have a Rendezvous with Death (1916)In context
- War & Peace
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Alan Seeger1888–1916I Have a Rendezvous with Death (1916)In context
- War & Peace
No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter IV: On the terrors of death, Line 4.