Don’t smoke too much, drink too much, eat too much or work too much. We’re all on the road to the grave–but there’s no need to be in the passing lane.

Robert Orben (1927–2023) was an American comedy writer and aphorist known for one-liners and wry, cautionary humor about modern life. This quip fits his recurring style: taking a familiar moral admonition (moderation in habits) and flipping it with a contemporary metaphor drawn from everyday American experience—highway driving. Rather than a solemn health warning, the line reads like a stand-up or speechwriter’s punchline, the kind Orben supplied for entertainers and public figures. While the saying is widely circulated under his name, I cannot confidently place it in a specific dated performance, book, or column without a verifiable citation.

The quote argues for moderation by reframing mortality as a shared destination: everyone is “on the road to the grave.” The humor comes from the traffic metaphor—there is no need to speed toward that endpoint by overindulging or overworking. By listing not only vices (smoking, drinking, overeating) but also “work too much,” Orben broadens the warning to socially praised excess as well. The “passing lane” image suggests that self-destructive intensity is a kind of needless acceleration, and that a saner life is not about denying pleasure or effort but about refusing compulsive extremes that shorten life or diminish its quality.