“Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?”

—  Euripidés

Phrixus, Frag. 830

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 9, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Who knows but life be that which men call death, And death what men call life?" by Euripidés?
Euripidés photo
Euripidés 116
ancient Athenian playwright -480–-406 BC

Related quotes

Diogenes Laërtius photo

“Euripides says,—
Who knows but that this life is really death,
And whether death is not what men call life?”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Pyrrho, 8.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 9: Uncategorized philosophers and Skeptics

George Gordon Byron photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“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)

James Shirley photo

“Death calls ye to the crowd of common men.”

Cupid and Death.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Socrates photo
W. S. Gilbert photo

“Is life a boon?
If so it must befall
That death when e're he call
Must call too soon.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Yeomen of the Guard (1888)

Howard Thurman photo

“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.”

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) American writer

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.

D.H. Lawrence photo

“Censors are dead men
set up to judge between life and death.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

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.

Related topics