evidence: "And in the end it's not the years in your life that count; it's the life in your years." [...] It's practically impossible to confirm who actually said the words first, because the finer details have been lost over time. While the most common version of the saying is direct, some versions of the quote replace "the years in your life" with "how many years in your life" and "the life in your years" with "how much life in your years." [...] The Quote Investigator article found various different phrasings of the idea dating back as early as 1889, but settled on the Steiglitz version as the first "true" version because it was the earliest to contrast "years in your life" and "life in your years," using the word "but" instead of the word "and." Later versions of the quote dropped both.