“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

— Mark Twain

Not by Twain, but from Edward Abbey's A Voice Crying In The Wilderness (1989).
Misattributed

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American author and humorist 1835–1910

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“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Misattributed

“Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.”

Frances Moore Lappé (1944) activist against world hunger

O Magazine, May 2004

“Any person who pursues human rights in Iran must live with fear from birth to death, but I have learned to overcome my fear.”

Shirin Ebadi (1947) Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

From 1999 interview.
Noted in the October 2003 BBC News profile of Ebadi. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3181992.stm (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

“Don't fear death, fear the un-lived life”

Natalie Babbitt book Tuck Everlasting

Variant: dont be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life.
Source: Tuck Everlasting

“The fear of death is born with man, though this is the only thing that he knows is certain to happen to him. Attachment to material things makes man cling to life. When you chant the Name of the Divine, when you are one with the divine, you accept death. While you are attached to life and afraid of death, you die with that fear and that weight clinging to you. If you have attained liberation you are free from death (you accept the inevitable). You die without fear and by remembering the Name of God, your soul leaves the body free of that fear and attachment. If you are reborn, your soul is still free from that fear. If you die in "unity", you are free from rebirth, unless you will it.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

1 December 1982
The Teachings of Babaji. (1983, 1984, 1988). Haidakhan, U.P.: Haidakhandi Samaj.
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 1 December 1982.

“Do not believe that others will die, not you…. I have wrestled with Thanatos knee to knee and I know how death is vanquished. Man's immortality is not to live forever; for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear makes a man immortal.”

Mary Renault book Fire from Heaven

Fire from Heaven (1969)

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

Adam Silvera book They Both Die at the End

Marcus Aurelius, p. 225
They Both Die at the End (2017)

“Death makes no sense except to people who have passionately loved life. How can one die without having something to part from? Detachment is a negation of both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over life. For life is nothing but another word for this fear.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

“Only those few who are able to surpass their fear of death completely can fully experience the highest forms of life; not the mundane life of the mortal, but the godly life of the resurrected.”

Zeena Schreck (1963) Tantric Buddhist/Sethian

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