Jean de la Bruyere Quotes

There are three great events in our lives: birth, life and death. Of birth we have no conscience; with death, we suffer; and, concerning life, we forget to live it.

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.

We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

The drama of life begins with a wail and ends with a sigh.

People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life.

Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.

Life's what's important. Walking, houses, family. Birth and pain and joy - and then death.

Life is short, and therefore, one thing being certain, death, let us take up a great ideal, and give up the whole life to it. For what is the value of life, this vegetating little low life of man? Subordinating it to one high ideal is the only value that life has.

Is death that which gives meaning to life?

I still don't even know if the sheriff will let me see him. And suppose he did; what then? What do I say to him? Do I know what a man is? Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I'm still trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die who has never lived?

You're born, you die. Everything in between is subject to interpretation.

After you're dead [...] it's not gonna matter if you have a few scars. It will matter if you didn't live.

At the door of life by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death.

It is a tragedy that most of us die before we have begun to live.

There are two things that you have to do in life: You have to die, and you have to live until you die. The rest is up to you.

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.

I looked more widely around me, I studied the lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that, not two or three, or ten, but hundreds, thousands, millions, had so understood the meaning of life that they were able both to live and to die. All these people were well acquainted with the meaning of life and death, quietly labored, endured privation and suffering, lived and died, and saw in all this, not a vain, but a good thing.

We can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.

I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.

Certainly people have a lot tougher situations than I've had to deal with. But I will say we are all dying from the moment we are born. This is not just rehearsal.