This is to be found in _Lavengro_ by George Borrow:

> ‘Life is sweet, brother.’

> ‘Do you think so?’

> ‘Think so! – There’s night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon,
and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s likewise a wind on the heath.
Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?’

It is not, of course, the origin of the proverb, which dates right back to the
fourteenth century.