Samuel Johnson Quotes

Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.

The trouble is that you think you have time.

My dear fellow,' Burlingame said, 'we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careening into time forever. Not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. We are dying men, Ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!

Do not act as if you had a thousand years to live.

Time goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences too early--almost before you're half-acquainted with life--you meet the other.

Life's too short. I'm not!

This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.

Life is incredibly short, yet we're always told that change takes time. For a race of mortals, dicking around just isn't acceptable.

Life is short for those who are truly able to understand that one day the entire world will come to a complete end. Not everyone is capable of that. Not everyone has the ability to comprehend what going away for all eternity really implies. There are too many distractions, hour by hour, minute by minute, to hinder such an understanding.

As we grow old, we become aware that death is drawing near; his shadow falls across our path; the realities of life seem less crude than of yore, they touch our senses less intimately, and they lose much of their poignancy.

Time is limited. Time is not forever. How many more moons and sunrises will you see in your life rise and fall? There's not that many! It's a small amount! So, for people to be saying with this attitude "ohh, I'll get on with my life, and my greatness, sometime." No, you can't!

We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it?

No time like the present

Anybody can die, everything is fleeting, and you've just got to make sure that you catch up on what you can catch up on.

I work more now perhaps because I know that there is so little time left.

Man may live and man may die searching for the question why. But if he tries to rule the sky, he must fall.

Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble What would have sunk to dust!

If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive? My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable. Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.

To think that so much comes to so little, to think that life is really short.

You only die once, but you will be dead for a very long time.

I fall into all kinds of inauthenticity when I conspire to forget my mortality.

You're pretending this isn't your life. You think it's going to happen some other time. When you're dead you'll realise you were alive now.

Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.

You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time You turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze In this goddam phenomenal world.