Pyrrho, 8. 
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 9: Uncategorized philosophers and Skeptics
                                    
        “Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?”
    
    
    
    
        
        
        
            
            
        
        
        
        
        
        Phrixus, Frag. 830
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Euripidés 116
ancient Athenian playwright -480–-406 BCRelated quotes
“Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.”
                                
                                    “Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.”
                                
                                
                                
                                
                            
                                        
                                        Earth, Act III, sc. iii, l. 113 
Variant: Lift not the painted veil which those who live 
 Call Life. 
Source: Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)
                                    
“Men dislike being awakened from their death in life.”
                                
                                    “Is life a boon?
If so it must befall
That death when e're he call
Must call too soon.”
                                
                                
                                
                                
                            
The Yeomen of the Guard (1888)
                                        
                                        The Search For Common Ground : An Inquiry Into The Basis Of Man's Experience Of Community (1971), p. 6 
Context: In the conflicts between man and man, between group and group, between nation and nation, the loneliness of the seeker for community is sometimes unendurable. The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. Always he must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He will know that for all men to be alike is the death of life in man, and yet perceive harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance.
                                    
                                
                                    “Censors are dead men
set up to judge between life and death.”
                                
                                
                                
                                
                            
                                        
                                        Censors (1929) 
Context: Censors are dead men
set up to judge between life and death.
For no live, sunny man would be a censor,
he'd just laugh.