105 Life And Death Quotes

Life and death are two sides of the same coin, profound and inevitable in their existence. Throughout history, thinkers, poets, philosophers, and authors have pondered these ultimate mysteries, offering insight into the transient beauty of life and the inevitable journey into death. This curated collection of 105 quotes delves into the delicate interplay between life and death, providing wisdom, comfort, and reflection. Whether you're seeking solace, understanding, or a deeper connection to the endless cycle of existence, these quotes offer poignant perspectives that resonate with the very essence of what it means to be human. Join us as we explore these timeless expressions that illuminate the profound truths about our existence.

1. “I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.” - Gore Vidal

2. “The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.” - Joan Baez

3. “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.” - C.S. Lewis

4. “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.” - Socrates

5. “The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.” - Blaise Pascal

6. “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” - Walt Whitman

7. “If you make every game a life-and-death thing, you’re going to have problems. You’ll be dead a lot.” - Dean Smith

8. “My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.” - Alice Sebold

9. “I assure you; while I look like a ghost, I'm no spirit or demon. I'm nothing but a girl struggling to make her way in an intolerant world. I bleed, I love, and someday, I'll die.” - Leanna Renee Hieber

10. “You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.” - Aberjhani

11. “Student: I don't feel like living anymore. Teacher: If you don't feel like doing something then don't do. This means that in finding many ways how not to live your life, you have the possibility to discover how to live your life.” - Santosh Kalwar

12. “Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?” - Kobo Abe

13. “It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life.” - Virginia Woolf

14. “Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

15. “I don't think you should die until you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can.” - Libba Bray

16. “You're still alive. That means you're winning.” - Rachel Cotterill

17. “When clouds will become heavier than the land in us led our entire life by the steps of our Destiny, we will understand that not their moments’ rain has darkened the sun of our life, but the failure to be ourselves.” - Sorin Cerin

18. “Krishna was once asked what was the most miraculous thing in all creation, and he replied, "That a man should wake each morning and believe deep in his heart that he will live forever, even though he knows that he is doomed.” - Christopher Pike

19. “We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.” - Michel de Montaigne

20. “The battle over flesh and blood cannot compare to the battle for the heart.” - Ted Dekker

21. “And the worst part is before it gets any better we're heading for a cliff. And in the free fall I will realize I'm better off when I hit the bottom” - Hayley Williams

22. “One life, One love, One breath, One people, One chance to make a difference. If we are not one in LIFE we surely will be one on DEATH.” - Tonny K. Brown

23. “Ali sada shvaćam da je umrijeti lako. Teško je živjeti.” - Gayle Forman

24. “Kaže da se svijet dijeli na ljude koji zamišljaju svoj sprovod i one koji ga ne zamišljaju, te da pametni i umjetnički nastrojeni ljudi spadaju u prvu kategoriju.” - Gayle Forman

25. “All things that have form eventually decay." -Orochimaru” - Masashi Kishimoto

26. “Two Songs For The World's End I Bombs ripen on the leafless tree under which the children play. And there my darling all alone dances in the spying day. I gave her nerves to feel her pain, I put her mortal beauty on. I taught her love that hate might find, its black work the easier done. I sent her out alone to play; and I must watch, and I must hear, how underneath the leafless tree, the children dance and sing with Fear. II Lighted by the rage of time where the blind and dying weep, in my shadow take your sleep, though wakeful I. Sleep unhearing while I pray - Should the red tent of the sky fall to fold your time away, wake to weep before you die. Die believing all is true that love your maker said to you Still believe that had you lived you would have found love, world, sight, sound, sorrow, beauty - all true. Grieve for death your moment - grieve. The world, the lover you must take, is the murderer you will meet. But if you die before you wake never think death sweet.” - Judith Wright

27. “If there is an afterlife, I want my soul intact. And then maybe I'll see you there."I smiled, somehow calm now that I was facing something inevitable. I was getting the good-bye I'd always wanted. - Nikki” - Brodi Ashton

28. “Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.” - Oscar Wilde

29. “Why do we always begin to think about people when they die? I think we should think about people while they're still alive! That way, they can know that we're thinking about them! I always tell people when I'm thinking about them, or that I thought about them, or that I have been thinking about them and it almost always scares them away, but so what, I am practicing the art of life and if that is frightening to them then maybe they need to start living while they're still alive!” - C. JoyBell C.

30. “No matter how many plans you make or how much in control you are, life is always winging it.” - Carroll Bryant

31. “When you're dead, everything in the world is like a song that makes you cry.” - Adam Selzer

32. “You think that it’s not magic that keeps you alive? Just ‘cause you understand the mechanics of how something works, doesn’t make it any less of a miracle. Which is just another word for magic. We’re all kept alive by magic, Sookie. My magic’s just a little different from yours, that’s all.” - Charlaine Harris

33. “If there is one thing I have learned, from loving Jessamine and even from the evil tasks you have made me do, it is that all forms of life are worthy of compassion.” - Maryrose Wood

34. “Life moved, as inconstant and fickle as Wind Baby, frolicking, sleeping, weeping, but never truly still. Never solid or finished. Always like water flowing from one place to the next. Seed and fruit. Rain and drought, everything traveled in a gigantic circle, an eternal process of becoming something new. But we rarely saw it. Humans tended to see only frozen moments, not the flow of things.” - Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear

35. “Why can’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. You’ll find what you’re trying to say in him- as you’ll find everything else worth saying. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.''- 'Fine! That’s beautiful. But I wasn’t trying to say that. We are such stuff as manure is made on, so let’s drink up and forget it. That’s more my idea.” - Eugene O'Neill

36. “On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.” - Henry David Thoreau

37. “Personally I don’t endorse the notion of mortality. It’s fine for other folk, but I disapprove of the concept for me and my loved ones. Seems unfair that we’re not allowed to vote on the matter and not one of us is excused. Who made up that rule?" - Kinsey Millhone” - Sue Grafton

38. “Why was I standing on the street when the window feel out of the building? Why did the bus run over me? Because it was my turn in the barrel, that's why.” - Ellyn Bache

39. “The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop.” - Saul Bellow

40. “Who would endure life if it were not for the hope of death?” - L.M. Montgomery

41. “Life may suck but death is worse.” - Alane Wilson

42. “Life is but a dream for the dead.” - Gerard Way

43. “If i were to lose a friend...then i couldn't die in peace!” - Sawada Tsunayoshi

44. “The true terror Jonah thought the true mystery of life was not that we are all going to die but that we were all born that we were all once little babies like this unknowing and slowly reeling in the world gathering it loop by loop like a ball of string. The true terror was that we once didn't exist and then through no fault of our own we had to.” - Dan Chaon

45. “I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.” - Haruki Murakami

46. “Between the dark, heavily laden treetops of the spreading chestnut trees could be seen the dark blue of the sky, full of stars, all solemn and golden, which extended their radiance unconcernedly into the distance. That was the nature of the stars. and the trees bore their buds and blossoms and scars for everyone to see, and whether it signified pleasure or pain, they accepted the strong will to live. flies that lived only for a day swarmed toward their death. every life had its radiance and beauty. i had insight into it all for a moment, understood it and found it good, and also found my life and sorrows good.” - Hermann Hesse

47. “If your life was complete, you'd be dead.” - Joshua Wisenbaker

48. “I've been to weddings and I've been to wakes in either setting Love takes no breaks.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

49. “If you have a warm and caring heart, you're loved ones will ensure you never depart. For long after you've turned that final page you'll still be right there on center stage.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

50. “I'm sucking on a cancer stick trying to think of something inspiring to say to help someone have a better life. That's "Irony".” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

51. “We are bound to expireEven metal which is sturdiest,Rusts.Even oxygen, the breath of life,Soon transpires. 8/6/11 -Luis Medina” - luigi komrad

52. “They say the brain never ages it’s a shame it can't teach the body that trick.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

53. “As yet we know nothing of what goes to create or evoke the active spark of life.” - Bram Stoker

54. “The earth will always be the same - only cities and history will change, even nations will change, governments and governors will go, the things made by men's hands will go, buildings will always crumble - only the earth will remain the same, there will always be men on the earth in the morning, there will always be the things made by God's hands - and all this history of cities and congress now will go, all modern history is only a littering Babylon smoking under the sun, delaying the day when men again will have to return to earth, to the earth of life and God -” - Jack Kerouac

55. “It's like that, I guess, when the past come to collect what you owe.” - Esi Edugyan

56. “If I had a choice, I wouldn’t be here… I wouldn’t be anywhere.” - Faraaz Kazi

57. “Yet, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important. If i can believe in myself that much, nothing else matters.” - Mario Puzo

58. “She promised him she would love him until she was physically unable to anymore and then after when all she could do was hold his photograph.” - Holly Hood

59. “I am Josephine Darly, and I intend to live forever.” - Tessa Gratton

60. “Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse.” - James Dean

61. “In The Land of Poetry and Fighting, Efficiency rules the throne. I try to live here, so I shave my head because hair is dead and dead is inefficient.” - Cameron Conaway

62. “Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.” - Steve Jobs

63. “Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death. . .. . . (quoting an obituary) 'There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that ever happens to man is natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it he would sense to it an unjustifiable violation.' Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord Of The Rings” - J.R.R. Tolkien

64. “in that cold autistic dark.” - Cormac McCarthy

65. “In the grueling light that passed for day...” - Cormac McCarthy

66. “There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.” - Cormac McCarthy

67. “Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.” - Horace

68. “Losing never come easy. First off, preserved the memories.” - Hlovate

69. “Life is beautifully tragic. Giving it up isn't the hard part; it's the living part that everyone struggles with.” - Allison Blanchard

70. “What is this?! I couldn't die back when I would've been glad to die anywhere, anytime, but now that dying would take hardly any effort, suddenly I can't afford to yet? What the hell am I supposed to do?” - Yukako Kabei

71. “No one lives here for ever ! This Land belongs to the Lord ! So make most of the time u spend here ! You have no liability, but just responsibility , for those who are and will follow their journey on this planet .” - sushil kumar

72. “Swiftly the remembrance of all things is buried in the gulf of eternity.” - Marcus Aurelius

73. “Fretting over how life ends, or anything else for that matter, is a complete waste of time.” - Samantha Sotto

74. “I closed my eyes. I used to think I was protecting the world, too. But it wasn't that simple. Nothing was. Who were we to decide that anyone or anything didn't deserve the spark of life they had been given?” - Kiersten White

75. “Sometimes evil wins, nah, child. But it’s always fleeting. Just a temporary ripple in a sea of goodness, brought on by the carnal nature of greed ’n corruption. Sacrifice washes that ripple out in waves of love ’n light, and peace is found when justice is served, even for those who lose, ya hear?” - Rachael Wade

76. “i am n0t aFraiD oV deaTh , I juX dun waNna Be thEre weN iT haPpeNZ !” - Babri Memon

77. “A little while and I will be gone from among you, whither I cannot tell. From nowhere we come, into nowhere we go. What is life? It is a flash of firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” - Chief Crowfoot

78. “This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.” - T.S. Eliot

79. “I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness...I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still that think that, sometimes, maybe "the afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter...I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take her genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else there entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed...energy is never created and never destroyed. We cannot be born and cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations... Thomas Edison's last words were: It's very beautiful over there." I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.” - John Green

80. “You walk around feeling like a teenager and immortal your whole life, and suddenly there isn't much time left.” - Stieg Larsson

81. “The only really frightening thing about Cinnamon Hill belongs in the realm of the living and serves to remind me that some of them-just a few of them, a tiny minority-are much more dangerous than all the dead put together.” - Johnny Cash

82. “In my worst moments, all I had to do was recall the love that I felt emanating from those heavenly lights and I could press on.” - Dannion Brinkley

83. “He wore the memory of her embrace like armor, and though he knew it would not save his life, it would be all that was left to him to ease his passage into whatever lay beyond.” - Andrew Levkoff

84. “Odd: I wish I could believe in reincarnation.Chief Porter: Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don't make me go through high school again.Odd: If there's something we want so bad in this life but we can't have it, maybe we could get it the next time around.Chief Porter: Or maybe not getting it, accepting less without bitterness and being grateful for what we have is a part of what we're here to learn.” - Dean Koontz

85. “If only certain things had been preventable, his life would have unfurled in front of him as intended, like a lush Oriental carpet. No surprises, no detours. Just a thick tapestry of days and nights that at the end of his time on earth, he could roll up and proudly claim as his own.” - Shilpa Agarwal

86. “If the inevitably of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does.” - John Green

87. “There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity.Yet many others search their entire lives for something—or someone—worth dying for and this is very different. These are the lonely and the desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. They yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger.” - Ilsa J. Bick

88. “All have a shadow over the earth but no shadow under earth or in grave.” - Abidul Huda Chowdhury Suzon

89. “This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.” - Justin Cronin

90. “I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, agreement or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no 'should” - Terry Pratchett

91. “Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most people? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar deterioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they'd improbably call it dying.you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough.” - E. E. Cummings

92. “We're always on breath away from something--living or dying--, sometimes it just can't be helped.” - Heather Gudenkauf

93. “We're always one breath away from something, living or dying, sometimes it just can't be helped.” - Heather Gudenkauf

94. “People don’t always value life, even their own, as much as they should.” - Alex Potvin

95. “The bell tolling not for us, it’s time for bluebells.” - Lara Biyuts

96. “I just want to be enough for you, but I never can be. This can never be enough for you. But this is all you get. You get me, and your family, and this world. This is your life. I'm sorry if it sucks. But you're not going to be the first man on Mars and you're not going to be an NBA star, and you're not going to hunt Nazis.” - John Green

97. “Careful with your life.” - satree

98. “Would words shatter the immensity of life and death so close to one another?” - Susan Abulhawa

99. “Death is only as strong as you believe it to be.” - Amy Neftzger

100. “To them he’s the slightly less frightening alternative to the grim reaper.” - Kat Kruger

101. “ A day without family is like a year without rain ” - Susan

102. “The place of horror turns out to be no more than a green scoop, sometimes shadowed, sometimes shining with the bilberries and grass within it, as if a mouth had opened from which streamed a beam of light. So my uncle Robert's death, which had looked from a distance to be an all-consuming tragedy was, close-up, the story of a man finding release from his pain and how his brother had showed such defiant love. The past was a grave, a trap - and yet, also neither of these. Just light, coming and going.At the wolf pit you imagine you will stare into a hole littered with bones, but what draws you to that place is not what you take from it. The wolf pit seems a delicate illusion. You walk towards it; there is nothing, just a curve of the moor; then it is a soft green light, and then it is nothing again.” - Will Cohu

103. “Our life is a series of moments. Let them all go. Moments. All gathering towards this one.” - Now Is Good

104. “Te leven betekent strikt genomen niets anders dan dag voor dag zelfmoord op te schuiven.” - Stig Dagerman

105. “Ali život se nikome, razumete li me, nikome na ovom svetu ne duguje. Ni majci, ni deci, ni prijateljima, ni jedom idealu! Život je moje neprikosnoveno pravo! U šta i kako ću ga satreti, moja je lična stvar.” - Dobrica Ćosić