Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.

Young’s line contrasts the ease with which people can drift through life in folly with the inescapable seriousness of death. However long someone may persist in self-deception, vanity, or moral negligence, the approach of death strips away pretenses and forces a reckoning with reality—whether spiritual, ethical, or existential. In keeping with Young’s broader moralizing and religious concerns, the aphorism implies that wisdom is ultimately demanded by mortality: death exposes what life can conceal. The sting of the sentence lies in its finality: folly may be a lifestyle, but it is not a viable way to meet one’s end.