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Quotes about life and death

656 quotes from 337 people

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What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily?
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter I: On Saving Time
- Time
For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death’s hands.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter I: On Saving Time
The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXX: On the proper time to slip the cable, Line 4.
- Wisdom
On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Thyestes, lines 401-403; (Chorus).
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXII: On the futility of half-way measures, Line 17.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Anne Sexton1928–1974Live or Die (1966), “Wanting to Die”
To be, or not to be: that is the question.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (1600–1), Act III, scene i.In context
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Cymbeline (1610), Act IV, scene ii.
- Youth
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare1564–1616The Tempest (1611), Act IV, scene i.In context
- Sleep
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Macbeth (1606), Act V, scene vIn context
Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (c. 1600), Act I, Scene II, spoken by QueenIn context
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (c. 1600), Act I, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context
- Emotion
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns
William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (c. 1600), Act III, Scene I, spoken by HamletIn context
There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (c. 1600), Act V, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context
- God
The rest is silence.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (c. 1600), Act V, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context