Life and death are two of the most profound and inevitable experiences we all face. Throughout history, countless thinkers, writers, and leaders have reflected on the meaning, challenges, and beauty found within these moments. In this collection, we've gathered 71 powerful quotes that capture the essence of life and death, offering wisdom, inspiration, and perspective to help you appreciate every moment and confront the unknown with courage. Whether you seek comfort, motivation, or deeper understanding, these words resonate across time and culture, reminding us of the fragile yet extraordinary journey we all share.
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. “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
3. “The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.” - Blaise Pascal
4. “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” - Walt Whitman
5. “If you make every game a life-and-death thing, you’re going to have problems. You’ll be dead a lot.” - Dean Smith
6. “The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered...We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.” - Elizabeth Edwards
7. “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
8. “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
9. “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
10. “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
11. “You're still alive. That means you're winning.” - Rachel Cotterill
12. “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
13. “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” - George Santayana
14. “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
15. “Ali sada shvaćam da je umrijeti lako. Teško je živjeti.” - Gayle Forman
16. “All things that have form eventually decay." -Orochimaru” - Masashi Kishimoto
17. “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
18. “After all, how often do we get a second chance?” - Jay Asher
19. “When you're dead, everything in the world is like a song that makes you cry.” - Adam Selzer
20. “Follow your heart, Ithilnin," Albirich repeated. "Time is precious. Don't waste it living someone else's life.” - Jess C. Scott
21. “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
22. “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
23. “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
24. “You just want to give up, he said when he was able to speak. Only you keep going. You still have to get up in the morning and pour the cereal in the bowls. You keep on breathing, whether you want to or not. Nobody's around to tell you how it's supposed to work. The usual rules just don't apply anymore. He was still talking, but she wasn't even sure if it was to her. When it started, he said, I thought nothing could be worse than those first days. And it wasn't only us, but everyone else you'd see, wandering around like they'd landed on a whole different planet. Instead of just dealing with your own heart getting ripped into pieces, wherever you looked you knew there were other people dealing with the same thing. You couldn't even be alone with it. Like you're out in the ocean and the undertow catches you and you start yelling for help, but then you look around, and all around you in the water for as far as you can see, there's all these other people flailing too. He sat there for a moment, shaking his head. You keep getting up in the morning and knowing this will continue maybe ten thousand more mornings. You wish you were the one who died. How much better would that be?” - Joyce Maynard
25. “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
26. “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
27. “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
28. “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
29. “I'll never leave this Earth without a fight or at least pretend to for all of those in sight.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich
30. “When you depart I'll blow you a Kiss take it to the Loved ones I already Miss.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich
31. “I've been to weddings and I've been to wakes in either setting Love takes no breaks.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich
32. “I hope to die with dignity and not be on my death bed pondering the afterlife wearing a diaper named Depends.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich
33. “They say the brain never ages it’s a shame it can't teach the body that trick.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich
34. “As yet we know nothing of what goes to create or evoke the active spark of life.” - Bram Stoker
35. “It's like that, I guess, when the past come to collect what you owe.” - Esi Edugyan
36. “The path i walk lights up in flames” - R. Karim
37. “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
38. “I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, I can't do anything to change events anyway.” - Anne Frank
39. “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
40. “I am Josephine Darly, and I intend to live forever.” - Tessa Gratton
41. “To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.” - Teju Cole
42. “Everywhere we shine death and life burn into something new…” - Aberjhani
43. “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
44. “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
45. “in that cold autistic dark.” - Cormac McCarthy
46. “Death truly does have life, and walks with and lives through us everyday.” - Nicholas A. McGirr
47. “Life is beautifully tragic. Giving it up isn't the hard part; it's the living part that everyone struggles with.” - Allison Blanchard
48. “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
49. “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
50. “Death is the privilege of human natureAnd life without it were not worth our takingThither the poor, the unfortunate, and MournerFly for relief & lay their burdens down.” - Elizabeth Fama
51. “Swiftly the remembrance of all things is buried in the gulf of eternity.” - Marcus Aurelius
52. “It was then that I realized I wasn't afraid to lose my life; I was afraid to lose the life I could've lived.” - Amanda Nuri
53. “This was the first time I thought of S— that day. Her music was beautiful, her voice was beautiful, her body was beautiful. Even the dirty little pads of her feet were beautiful. I cursed myself then. For once, heaven had sent me Beauty in its most perfected form and I abandoned it. She might not have been a girl after all but an angel: a force to guide me on this hazardous path of life I hurry down. How can life be hazardous if it can only end in death?” - Roman Payne
54. “We definitely don't exist just for the sake of welcoming death someday; I believe we live for the sake of living on." —Kazuto Kirigaya "Kirito" (Sword Art Online)” - Reki Kawahara
55. “You are a speck. This whole life that seems so huge to us? asall of human enterprise even? Fuck us. We are so tiny," as he said "so tiny" he bent over until his forehead was nearly touching the tabletop, as if he was homing in on the speck that was them. "I can't stand to think we only add up to a blip. I need to think we're more than that." "Deal with it." he looked around as if someone had called his name.” - Carol Anshaw
56. “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
57. “Prisoner of Her Own Captivity” - Brandalynn Davis
58. “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
59. “Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death.” - Leo Tolstoy
60. “What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?” - Jonathan Safran Foer
61. “We're always one breath away from something, living or dying, sometimes it just can't be helped.” - Heather Gudenkauf
62. “There's nothing like love or incumbent death to make you realize how many things you still want to do.” - Monica La Porta
63. “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
64. “Careful with your life.” - satree
65. “Erlendur didn’t believe in premonitions, visions or dreams, nor reincarnation or karma, he didn’t believe in God although he’d often read the Bible, nor in eternal life or that his conduct in this world would affect whether he went to heaven or hell. He felt that life itself offered a mixture of the two.Then sometimes he experienced this incomprehensible and supernatural de´ja` -vu, experienced time and place as if he’d seen it all before, as if he stepped outside himself, became an onlooker to his own life. There was no way he could explain what it was thathappened or why his mind played tricks on him like this.” - Arnaldur Indriðason
66. “Death is only as strong as you believe it to be.” - Amy Neftzger
67. “In the end, age in numbers is no more than an empty bag. The only way to truly tell a person's years is by examing the contents they have filled it with.” - Thurman P. Banks Jr.
68. “I needed, I decided, to really know her, because I needed more to remember. Before I could begin the shameful process of forgetting the how and the why of her living and dying, I needed to learn it: How. Why. When. Where. What.” - John Green
69. “Te leven betekent strikt genomen niets anders dan dag voor dag zelfmoord op te schuiven.” - Stig Dagerman
70. “I'll be around my whole life. That's a long time to me.” - Jodi Meadows
71. “So many people die with their dreams in their hands.” - Alex Rogers
