Theme
Mortality
Death, legacy, and living in its light.
Every quote here is provenance-checked. AI will happily put a fake quote on a beautiful slide — these are the ones you can actually use, with the right name on them.
Ready for your slide
Verified quotes about mortality
Each is traced to a real source and correctly credited. ✓ Free to use = public domain, cleared for commercial reuse. Open one for a paste-ready credit line and its reuse status.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”
“All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike”
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream”
“any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death”
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life”
“Death hangs over thee: whilst yet thou livest, whilst thou mayest, be good”
“Do not go gentle into that good night”
“For whom the bell tolls”
“I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing”
“If we don't end war, war will end us”
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it”
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living”
“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die”
“You do not know where death awaits you; so be ready for it everywhere”
“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free”
“We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed”
No public-domain quotes on this theme yet — try another, or use an in-copyright one with attribution.
Don’t get caught out
Commonly shared about mortality — but misattributed
Popular mortality lines that get pinned on the wrong name. If you use one, credit it correctly.
“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened”
ReallyLudwig Jacobowski · not Dr. Seuss
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”
ReallyOrigin unknown — an anonymous legend · not Ernest Hemingway
“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever”
ReallyNapoleon Bonaparte
“I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery”
ReallyEd Wynn · not Steve Jobs
“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years left to live”
ReallyNo documented author (Einstein wrongly credited) · not Albert Einstein
“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you”
ReallyA. A. Milne (falsely credited) · not A. A. Milne
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones”
ReallyUnknown (a modern internet-era author) · not Marcus Aurelius
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever”
ReallySt Edmund of Abingdon (traditionally) · not Mahatma Gandhi
“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived”
ReallyJames J. Lachard (pen name of Jim Brown) · not Dalai Lama
“Millions of people who have never died before will be killed”
ReallyErnest Hemingway
“Only the dead have seen the end of war”
ReallyGeorge Santayana · not Plato
“There is plenty of time to sleep in the grave”
ReallyBenjamin Franklin · not William Shakespeare
“You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension”
ReallyNikola Tesla · not Nikola Tesla
“You're dead, Jim”
ReallyRichard Matheson