Benjamin FranklinSourced
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Source: Letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (13 November 1789)
Checked quotes about death
10 quotes with a known source.
William ShakespeareSourced
To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Source: Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1
Michel de MontaigneSourced
To philosophize is to learn to die.
Source: Essays, Book I, ch. 20 (1580)
EpicurusSourced
Death is nothing to us.
Source: Principal Doctrines 2
HoraceSourced
Pale Death knocks with impartial foot at the hovels of the poor and the towers of kings.
Source: Odes I.4.13
Samuel JohnsonSourced
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Source: Boswell, Life of Johnson, 19 September 1777
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheAttributed
More light!
Source: Reported last words (1832)
Edgar Allan PoeSourced
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Source: "The Raven" (1845)
Emily DickinsonSourced
Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me.
Source: Poem 712 (published 1890)
Rabindranath TagoreSourced
Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.
Source: Stray Birds, 82 (1916)
Famous, but not theirs
Quotes about death that are usually credited to the wrong person.
Mark TwainMisquoted
The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
The real words: What he actually wrote (New York Journal, 2 June 1897): "The report of my death was an exaggeration." The punchier version is a later polish.