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Quotes about life and death

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Live, and be happy, and make others so.
Mary Shelley1797–1851Frankenstein (1818), Chapter VIIIIn context
- Happiness
All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life?
Mary Shelley1797–1851Frankenstein (1818), Chapter XIn context
- Emotion
Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?
Mary Shelley1797–1851Frankenstein (1818), Chapter XVIn context
- Philosophy
I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.
Mary Shelley1797–1851Frankenstein (1818), Chapter XXIVIn context
How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Queen Mab (1813), Canto I
- Sleep
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Adonais (1821), St. LII
I weep for Adonais — he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Adonais (1821), St. I
I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living his life, and who had good friends, a fine family. I don’t think I could ask for anything more than that, actually.
Frank Sinatra1915–1998In a 1965 interview with Walter Cronkite, as quoted in “Just A Couple Of Legends” CBS News.com (20 May 1998)
- Family
- Friendship
The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.
Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)
- Morality
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
Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.
Sophocles496–406 BCElectra, Lines 1007–1008 (Bartlett’s, 9th ed., 1892)
Therefore wait to see life’s ending ere thou count one mortal blest;
Wait till free from pain and sorrow he has gained his final rest.
Sophocles496–406 BCOedipus the King (c. 429 BC), spoken by ChorusIn context
- Happiness
Races of mortal man
Whose life is but a span,
I count ye but the shadow of a shade!
Sophocles496–406 BCOedipus the King (c. 429 BC), spoken by ChorusIn context
He hath provision for all: fell plague he hath learnt to endure;
Safe whate’er may befall: yet for death he hath found no cure.
Sophocles496–406 BCAntigone (c. 441 BC), spoken by ChorusIn context
A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.
Baruch Spinoza1632–1677Ethics (1677), Part IV, Prop. LXVII
- Wisdom