200+ Life and Death Quotes That Will Inspire You Positively
Life and Death Quotes
“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” —Ernest Hemingway
“Dying is like coming to the end of a long novel, you only regret it if the ride was enjoyable and left you wanting more.” —Jerome P. Crabb
“They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” —Banksy
“Life will undertake to separate us, and we must each set off in search of our own path, our own destiny or our own way of facing death.” —Paulo Coelho
“A day grows old as we do. Do not wish death upon it. Let it live, let it love, and only then should you let it rest in peace.” —Michelle C. Ustaszeski
“On the day of your earthly death, take heart in knowing that you will be going to a almost unimaginable place, where you will exist with Christ, for an eternity.” —Richard Kelley MD
“The more you transform your life from the material to the spiritual domain, the less you become afraid of death. A person who lives a truly spiritual life has no fear of death.” —Leo Tolstoy
“Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” —William Saroyan
“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace.” —Oscar Wilde
“People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It’s too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.” —Haruki Murakami
“When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.” —Tecumseh
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet 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. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” —Steve Jobs
Best Life and Death Quotes
“People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn’t. It continues and is ever-changing.” —Jandy Nelson
“You know, what’s so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.” —Vladimir Nabokov
“The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.” —James Patterson
“If you live each day as it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” —Steve Jobs
“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity.” —Edvard Munch
“Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.” —Jean de La Fontaine
“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe
“By becoming deeply aware of our mortality, we intensify our experience of every aspect of life.” —Robert Greene
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” —Marcus Aurelius
“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” —Chuck Palahniuk
“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” —Rabindranath Tagore
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” —Norman Cousins
“Do not seek death. But do not fear it either. There cannot be life without death, it is inescapable.” —Keisei Tagami
“I think of death as some delightful journey that I shall take when all my tasks are done.” —Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“Death is nothing else but going home to God, the bond of love will be unbroken for all eternity.” —Mother Teresa
“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called life.” —Terry Pratchett
Famous Life and Death Quotes
“Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.” —Jo Nesbo
“Everyone dies eventually, whether they have power or not. That’s why you need to think about what you’ll accomplish while you’re alive.” —Mary Macbeth
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” —Mark Twain
“Graves cannot contain my spirit; death is not the end of time, though my body turns to ashes, I will rest in peace sublime.” —Greta Zwaan
“I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.” —Jimi Hendrix
“Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time. It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.” —Leo Buscaglia
“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.” —Rumi
“You needn’t die happy when your time comes, but you must die satisfied, for you have lived your life from the beginning to the end.” —Stephen King
“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.” —Samuel Johnson
“I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.” —Jimi Hendrix
Inspirational Life and Death Quotes
“The trouble is, you think you have time.”
“Farewell, my love, until we meet again someday, somewhere.”
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
“The only people who fear death are those with regrets.”
“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
“When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.”
“Love the people God gave you because one day, He’ll take them back.”
“The most painful goodbyes are the one that are never said and never explained.”
“Sometimes you will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”
“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.”
“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
“You should always leave loved ones with loving words, it may be the last time you see them.”
“Goodbyes are not forever, are not the end; it simply means I’ll miss you until we meet again.”
“The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.”
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
“Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us everyday. Unseen, unheard, but always near, still loved, still missed and very dear.”
“Life asked death, why do people love me, but hate you? Death responded, because you are a beautiful lie and I’m a painful truth.”
“Some people come into our lives and quickly go, some stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.”
“Goodbyes make you think. They make you realise what you’ve had, what you lost and what you took for granted. So appreciate what you have before it becomes, what you had.”
“Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife. The first question was, ‘Did you find joy?’ If yes, the second was, ‘did you bring joy to others?’”
Meaningful Life and Death Quotes
“What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose.” —Henry Ward Beecher
“After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” —J.K. Rowling
“Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.” —Henry Van Dyke
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death.” —Leonardo da Vinci
“I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.” —Thomas Browne
“There are special people in our lives who never leave us …. even after they are gone.” —D. Morgan
“I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.” —Leonardo da Vinci
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” —Norman Cousins
“We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.” —David Sarnoff
“Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.” —Epicurus
“Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident — It is as common as life.” —Henry David Thoreau
“Death a friend that alone can bring the peace his treasures cannot purchase, and remove the pain his physicians cannot cure.” —Mortimer Collins
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” —Mark Twain
“We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies it is the first law of nature.” —Voltaire
“Every word affords me pain. Yet how sweet it would be if I could hear what the flowers have to say about death!” – E.M. Cioran
“I’ll bet in Heaven they have one single word that means ‘back when I was alive’. You know, to save time in meetings and stuff.” —Derek Littlefield
“Men fear Death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.” —Francis Bacon
“A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.” —Stewart Alsop
“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” —Albert Einstein
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” —Charles Burkowski
“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.” —Oscar Wilde
“To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one’s own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
Most Powerful Life and Death Quotes
“Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may swell.” —Henry Ward Beecher
“One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
“I shall not wholly die, and a great part of me will escape the grave.” —Horace
“Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.” —Martin Luther
“After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it.” —1 Timothy 6:7
“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character… Would you slow down? Or speed up?” —Chuck Palahniuk
“Fear of death is ridiculous, because as long as you are not dead you are alive, and when you are dead there is nothing more to worry about!” —Paramahansa Yogananda
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” —Mark Twain
“If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a ‘wandering to find home,’ why should we not look forward to the arrival?” —C. S. Lewis
“Time,” the Captain said, “is not what you think.” He sat down next to Eddie. “Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.” —Mitch Albom
“If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.” —Montaigne
“People fear death even more than pain. It’s strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.” —Jim Morrison
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” —Steve Jobs
Short Life and Death Quotes
“Everybody’s gotta die sometime. That’s life.”
“Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.” —E.E. Cummings
“A life that touches others goes on forever.” —Unknown
“Death ends a life, not a relationship.” —Robert Benchley
“Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.” —Walt Whitman
“The goal of all life is death.” —Sigmund Freud
“He who doesn’t fear death dies only once.” —Giovanni Falcone
“People living deeply have no fear of death.” —Anaïs Nin
“We do not remember days, we remember moments.” —Cesare Pavese
“Life is but a dream for the dead.” —Gerard Way
“If we don’t know life, how can we know death?”
“Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.” —Woody Allen
“God made death so we’d know when to stop.” —Steven Stiles
“Dying is a wild night and a new road.” —Emily Dickinson
“Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion to death.” —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Too weird to live, too rare to die!” —Hunter S. Thompson
“The best way to get praise is to die.” —Italian Proverb
“Life and death are balanced on the edge of a razor.” —Homer
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” —Theodore Geisel (Dr Seuss)
“Life is stressful, dear. That’s why they say “Rest In Peace.” —David Mazzucchelli
“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” —J.K. Rowling
“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.” —Isaac Asimov
“The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.” —Thornton Wilder
“It’s matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.” —Samuel Johnson
“There is no pause in life, the moment we pause, we stop living.”
“Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.” —Edgar Allan Poe
“Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.” —Buddha
“I believe that fear of life brings a greater fear of death.” —David Blaine
“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.” —Haruki Murakami
“To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.” —Thomas Campbell
“Endings are not always bad. Most times they’re just beginnings in disguise.” —Kim Harrison
“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.” —George Eliot
“Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.” —Tecumseh
“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.” —Arthur Schopenhauer
“Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death.” —Angela Carter
“Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.” —Buddha
“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.” —James Dean
“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.” —Lao Tzu
“If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.” —Samuel Butler
“I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.” —Corazon Aquino
“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.” —Lao Tzu
“I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.” —Corazon Aquino
“Who would endure life if it were not for the hope of death?” —L.M. Montgomery
“God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled.” —Unknown
“I regret not death. I am going to meet my friends in another world.” —Ludovico Ariosto
“Death is a word, and it is the word, the image, that creates fear.” —Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.” —Sogyal Rinpoche
“Death anxiety is greater in those who feel they have lived an unfulfilled life.” —Irvin Yalom
“Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.” —Henry Van Dyke
“What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.” —Albert Camus
“When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.” —Henry David Thoreau
Life and Death Quotes and Sayings
“Life and death are illusions. We are in a constant state of transformation.” —Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
“God conceals from men the happiness of death that they may endure life.” —Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
“After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” —J K Rowling
“When confronted with two alternatives, life and death, one is to choose death without hesitation.” —Yamamoto Tsunetomo
“If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still.” —Samuel Johnson
“For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.” —Khalil Gibran
“Life and death. They are somehow sweetly and beautifully mixed, but I don’t know how.” —Gloria Swanson
“In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.” —Frederick Douglass
“We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.” —Michel de Montaigne
“Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” —Mark Twain
“Death is the veil which those who live call life; they sleep, and it is lifted.” —Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Life and death. At some point we’re gonna leave this world. Do I know when absolutely not.” —Terrell Owens
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” —Marcus Aelius Aurelius
“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” —Rabindranath Tagore
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” —Norman Cousins
“The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death.” —Osho Rajneesh
“The certainty of death and the uncertainty of the hour of death is a source of grief throughout our life.” —E. Morin
“The trouble with life in the fast lane is that you get to the other end in an awful hurry.” —John Jensen
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” —Mark Twain
“It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.” —Epicurus
“The anguish of death hangs over and leads the human spirit to wonder about the mysteries of existence, man’s destiny, life, the world.” —E. Morin
“Life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life; a man is not completely born till he has passed through death.” —Benjamin Franklin
“If you make every game a life and death proposition, you’re going to have problems. For one thing, you’ll be dead a lot.” —Dean Smith
“Life asked death; ‘Why do people love me, but hate you’ Death responded, ‘because you are a beautiful lie, and I am the painful truth.” —Unknown
“If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.” —James Dean
“Life was such a fragile thing? As delicate and as beautiful as a butterfly, as ephemeral as a sunset. Death is peaceful. Death is quiet, silent. It is calming.” —Akanksha
“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.”
“Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to die before you die? And find that there is no death.” —Eckhart Tolle
“Life is eternal, and love is immortal, Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.” —Rossiter Worthington Raymond
“Death is not something you get over. It’s the rip that exposes life in a before and after chasm, and all you can do is try to exist as best you can in the after.”
“Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die.” —Samuel Butler
“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.” —Oscar Wilde