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Quotes about life and death

656 quotes from 337 people

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What a lark! What a plunge!
Virginia Woolf1882–1941Mrs Dalloway (1925), Part 1In context
- Happiness
She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.
Virginia Woolf1882–1941Mrs Dalloway (1925), Part 1In context
In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.
Virginia Woolf1882–1941Mrs Dalloway (1925), Part 1In context
- Love
Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.
Virginia Woolf1882–1941Mrs Dalloway (1925), Part 10In context
She liv’d unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceas’d to be;
But she is in her Grave, and Oh!
The difference to me.
William Wordsworth1770–1850She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways (1800)In context
- Love
A simple child, dear brother Jim,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
William Wordsworth1770–1850We Are Seven (1798)In context
- Children
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love
W. B. Yeats1865–1939An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (1919)In context
- War & Peace
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
W. B. Yeats1865–1939An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (1919)In context
A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.
Boris Yeltsin1931–2007Statement to a Times reporter in 1990, as quoted in “The wit and wisdom of Boris” in Guardian Unlimited (23 April 2007)
As one must die, I would rather die of passion than boredom!
Émile Zola1840–1902Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), Ch. 11 (tr. E. A. Vizetelly, 1895)
It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one’s own existence.
Stefan Zweig1881–1942Beware of Pity (1939)