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.
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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.
“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives”
“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”
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”
“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”
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once”
“Death hangs over thee: whilst yet thou livest, whilst thou mayest, be good”
“Do not go gentle into that good night”
“Excuse my dust”
“For whom the bell tolls”
“Grief is the price we pay for love”
“How Could I Feel Like a Hero When Only Five Men in My Platoon of 45 Survived?”
“I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was man”
“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”
“I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space”
“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”
“In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares”
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it”
“Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we have lost becomes a pleasant memory to us”
“Loss is nothing else than change. But the universal nature delights in change”
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”
“One dies twice, I see it plainly; to cease to love and be loved is an unbearable death; to cease to live is nothing”
“Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum”
“So it goes”
“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”
“The man who dies rich dies disgraced”
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for”
“The only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead”
“The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way”
“They that love beyond the World, cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill, what never dies”
“To be, or not to be, that is the question”
“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die”
“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us”
“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us”
“You do not know where death awaits you; so be ready for it everywhere”
“All compounded things are subject to decay. Strive with diligence”
“By the time you know what to do, you're too old to do it”
“Death is nature's way of saying, 'Your table is ready.'”
“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free”
“If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness”
“Life is suffering”
“Live each day as if it were your last”
“Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair”
“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”
“We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed”
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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.
“I Have Never Killed Any One, But I Have Read Some Obituary Notices with Great Satisfaction”
ReallyClarence Darrow · not Mark Twain
“I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there”
ReallyUnknown · not Oscar Wilde
“To me, there are three things everyone should do every day. Number one is laugh. Number two is think. And number three, you should have your emotions moved to tears”
ReallyJim Valvano · but not in these words
“Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”
ReallyMark Twain
“Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well”
ReallyWilliam Shakespeare
“My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions”
ReallyThích Nhất Hạnh · not Gautama Buddha
“Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end”
ReallyWoody Allen · not Stephen Hawking
“The idea is not to live forever, it is to create something that will”
ReallyChuck Palahniuk · not Andy Warhol
“Death begins in the colon”
ReallyUnknown · not Hippocrates
“War does not determine who is right — only who is left”
ReallyUnknown — anonymous in its first printing · not Andrew Carnegie
“I want to live my next life backwards: You start out dead and get that out of the way”
ReallySean Morey · not George Carlin
“The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it”
ReallyJean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) · not Niccolò Machiavelli
“Millions of people who have never died before will be killed”
ReallyErnest Hemingway
“You're dead, Jim”
ReallyRichard Matheson
“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever”
ReallyUnknown · not Napoleon Bonaparte
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”
ReallyOrigin unknown — an anonymous legend · not Ernest Hemingway
“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”
Unknown — falsely credited to 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