Pliny the Younger: Quotes about death

Pliny the Younger was Roman writer. Explore interesting quotes on death.

Pliny the Younger: 100 quotes 6 likes

“I contemplate the sort of friend, the sort of man I am now without. He completed his sixty-seventh year, a reasonable age for the sturdiest of us; I acknowledge that. He escaped from an interminable illness; I acknowledge that. He died with his dear ones surviving him, and at a time of prosperity for the state, which was dearer to him than all else; that too I acknowledge. Yet I lament his death as though he were young and in glowing health. I lament it—you can consider me a weakling in this—on my own account, for I have lost the witness, guardian and teacher of my life.”

Pliny the Younger

Letter 12, 11–13; on the death of his friend Cornelius Rufus.
Letters, Book I

Life , Death , Health , Age

“For my part, I regard every death as cruel and premature, that removes one who is preparing some immortal work.”
Mihi autem videtur acerba semper et immatura mors eorum, qui immortale aliquid parant.

Pliny the Younger

Letter 5, 4.
Letters, Book V

Death , Parting

“Let us strive then, while Life is ours, to secure that Death may find we have left little or nothing he can destroy.”
Proinde, dum suppetit vita, enitamur ut mors quam paucissima quae abolere possit inveniat.

Pliny the Younger

Letter 5, 8.
Letters, Book V

Life , Death

“More cruel than death itself, to die at that particular conjuncture!”
O morte ipsa mortis tempus indignius!

Pliny the Younger

Letter 16, 6.
Letters, Book V

Death