This page lists my all-time favorite death quotes to live a meaningful life.
You can find links to more intentional living quotes at the bottom of this page.
When you’re ready to dive deeper, here’s some recommended reading on death:
35+ Death Quotes to Live a Meaningful Life Now
#1 Regret of the Dying: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” — Bronnie Ware
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” — Richard Bach
“Any day is a good day for a midlife crisis. After all, you never know when it will be the middle of your life.” — Anonymous
“If you want to be reborn, let yourself die. If you want to be given everything, give everything up.” — Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell Version)
“The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work.” — Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell Version)
“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
“Many people don’t realize until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away that no thing ever had anything to do with who they are. In the proximity of death, the whole concept of ownership stands revealed as ultimately meaningless. In the last moments of their life, they then also realize that while they were looking throughout their lives for a more complete sense of self, what they were really looking for, their Being, had actually always already been there, but had been largely obscured by their identification with things, which ultimately means identification with their mind.” — Eckhart Tolle
“People living deeply have no fear of death.” — AnaĂŻs Nin
“How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!” — Seneca
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” — Steve Jobs
“Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.” — Steve Jobs
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” — Marcus Aurelius
“The longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose.” — Marcus Aurelius
“There is a certain limit to the appropriate length of any time in this world. Just as the fruits and vegetables are limited by the seasons of the year, everything should have its beginning, its life, and its ending, after which it should pass away. Wise people willingly submit to this order.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero
“What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is most important is not to make life longer, but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does. Only then does your life become fulfilled.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life is long if you know how to use it.” — Seneca
“He who hurries has one foot in the grave.” — Moroccan saying
“Just as when ample and princely wealth falls to a bad owner it is squandered in a moment, but wealth however modest, if entrusted to a good custodian, increases with use, so our lifetime extends amply if you manage it properly.” — Seneca
“This is our big mistake: to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.” — Seneca
“If you are living every experience fully, then death doesn’t take anything from you. There’s nothing to take because you’re already fulfilled. That’s why the wise being is always ready to die.” — Seneca
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life.” — Attributed to Mark Twain
“One learns the art of dying by learning the art of living: how to become master of the present moment.” — S. N. Goenka
“Death is nature’s way of telling you to slow down.” — Anonymous
“If I die in two seconds, I’m still alive in this one.” — Ryan Holiday
“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” — J.K. Rowling
“Keep the really grim things not far from the top of consciousness pretty much every day.” — Alain de Botton
“All of our grandest plans can be undone by a blood clot in under a minute.” — Alain de Botton
“All of us are going to go to our deathbeds with some very important parts of us still unexplored.” — Alain de Botton
“Live and die well.” — Alain de Botton
“When it comes to living, there’s no getting out alive. But books can help us survive … by passing on what is most important about being human before we perish.” — The Wall Street Journal
“When will we find time to do what we love? When things calm down, when the visitors leave and the trips we have planned are finished … and this busy project is wrapped up and the kids are grown up and we’re retired? Maybe when we’re dead there will be more time.” — Leo Babauta
“No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to yourself. Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king’s command or a people’s favor. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that.” — Seneca
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…” — Henry David Thoreau
“In the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight: diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites. They are held together in the paradox of ‘hidden wholeness.'” — Parker Palmer
“Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.” — Eckhart Tolle
“It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death.” — Michael Singer
“Regardless of your philosophical beliefs, the fact remains that you were born and you are going to die. During the time in between, you get to choose whether or not you want to enjoy the experience.” — Michael Singer
“Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.” — Attributed to Benjamin Franklin
“You should live your life so that you are not afraid of death, and at the same time do not wish to die.” — Leo Tolstoy
“If life is good, then death which is the necessary part of life, is good as well.” — Leo Tolstoy
“Your life may be cut short at any time; therefore, your life should have a deep purpose, a significance that will not depend on whether it is short or long.” — Leo Tolstoy
“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
“Never postpone a good deed which you can do now, because death does not choose whether you have or haven’t done the things you should have done. Death waits for nobody and nothing. It has neither enemies, nor friends.” — Indian Wisdom
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.” — Seneca
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