100 Quotes About Mortality

Death is inevitable, but it’s a part of life that can cause us both physical and mental stress. There are few things more difficult than facing the reality that we will die. But while death is a fact of life, there are a lot of people who would love to help you find some peace about it. Check out these wise and inspiring death quotes to get started.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to...
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Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. Albert Camus
I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't,...
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I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you. Ayn Rand
Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep...
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Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten. H. Rider Haggard
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The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality- and in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization. Mitch Albom
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the...
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Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it. Marcus Aurelius
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The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care. I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.'I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries-- I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research. Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be. Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit. So, I believed. . Lance Armstrong
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Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time. Neil Gaiman
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Let not the rash marble riskgarrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence, in many words recallingname, renown, events, birthplace. All those glass jewels are best left in the dark. Let not the marble say what men do not. The essentials of the dead man's life--the trembling hope, the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight--will abide forever. Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continuewhen it is the lives of others that will make that happen, as you yourself are the mirror and imageof those who did not live as long as youand others will be (and are) your immortality on earth. Jorge Luis Borges
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Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?'' It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an..imperfect God?''What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals..'' No, ' I interrupted. 'I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a..sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.' Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks:' There was Manicheanism..''Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil, ' I broke in immediately. 'This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot..' Snow pondered for a while:' I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been..necessary. If i understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.' I kept on:' No, it's nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom--apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being--the being I have in mind--cannot exist in the plural, you see? ..Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while..'' We already have, ' Snow said sarcastically. 'Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on his altar.'' If you're going to take what I say literally..'.. Snow asked abruptly:' What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'' I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is. Unknown
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Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud- Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud? William Knox
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Grief, no matter how you try to cater to its wail, has a way of fading away. V.C. Andrews
Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries...
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Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations. Criss Jami
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To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away. Christopher Hitchens
We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis.
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We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis. LeeAnn Taylor
Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest...
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Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made. Alfred Tennyson
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It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life–if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it...
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The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit. Tanith Lee
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Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you. Have you given much thought to our mortal condition? Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen. There's no one alivewho can say if he will be tomorrow. Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery. No one can teach it, no one can grasp it. Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink! You can let the rest go. Am I making sense? I think so. How about a drink. Put on a garland. I'm surethe happy splash of wine will cure your mood. We're all mortal you know. Think mortal. Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life, . Anne Carson
Most sane human beings’ chances of being alive in a...
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Most sane human beings’ chances of being alive in a thousand years’ time are a hundred times higher than their chances of being sincerely happy for at least ten consecutive days. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
No one can say that death found in me a...
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No one can say that death found in me a willing comrade, or that I went easily. Cassandra Clare
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Accepting death doesn't mean you won't be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like, "Why do people die?" and "Why is this happening to me?" Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all. Caitlin Doughty
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Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life–a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple–the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last–it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer–there it is. Donna Tartt
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all...
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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."] Hector Berlioz
A life is not a waste of time
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A life is not a waste of time Nalini Singh
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In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I've thought a great deal about my life and my country. I think there is little that can be truly known. My family has been fortunate. Others were less so. As they are often quick to point out. Cormac McCarthy
There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living...
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There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living time. Frank Herbert
We're all drowning, but don't say it out loud.
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We're all drowning, but don't say it out loud. Marty Rubin
Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If...
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Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose. C.s. Lewis
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We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone–crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions–one has to live with them, and we try. Ekaterina Sedia
The idea that all souls are mortal is the only...
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The idea that all souls are mortal is the only notion surely terminating love and all its forms. Criss Jami
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Now every mortal has painand sweat is constant, but if there is anything dearer than being alive, it's dark to me. We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing(whatever it is) that glitters on the earth--we call it life. We know no other. The underworld's a blankand all the rest just fantasy. Anne Carson
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And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bitter memories of what might have been. H. Rider Haggard
It is when we are faced with death that we...
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It is when we are faced with death that we turn most bookish. Jules Renard
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[A] right understanding that death is nothingto us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to itan infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving forimmortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who hastruly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living. Epicurus
Every soldier in the course of time exists only in...
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Every soldier in the course of time exists only in the breath of written word. Ivan Doig
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He'd learned something. Life was booby-trapped and there was no easy passage through. You had to jump from colour to colour, from happiness to happiness. And all those possible explosions in between. It could be all over any time. Rupert Thomson
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Puis il réfléchit: la réalité ne coïncide habituellement pas avec les prévisions; avec une logique perverse, il en déduisit que prévoir un détail circonstanciel, c'est empêcher que celui-ci se réalise. Fidèle à cette faible magie, il inventait, pour les empêcher de se réaliser, des péripéties atroces; naturellement, il finit par craindre que ces péripéties ne fussent prophétiques. Misérable dans la nuit, il essayait de s'affirmer en quelque sorte dans la substance fugitive du temps. Il savait que celui-ci se précipitait vers l'aube du 29; il raisonnait à haute voix; je suis maintenant dans la nuit du 22; tant que durera cette nuit (et six nuits de plus) je suis invulnérable, immortel. Il pensait que les nuits de sommeil étaient des piscines profondes et sombres dans lesquels il pouvait se plonger. Il souhaitait parfois avec impatience la décharge définitive qui le libérerait tant bien que mal de son vain travail d'imagination. Jorge Luis Borges
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Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries. Christopher Hitchens
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The other day as I was stepping out of Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue with some pork ribs under my arm, the Berkeley sky cloudless, a smell of jasmine in the air, a car driving by with its window rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers' "Melissa, " it struck me that in order to have reached only the midpoint of my life I will need to live to be 92. That's pretty old. If you live to be ninety-two, you've done well for yourself. I'd like to be optimistic, and I try to take care of my health, but none of my grandparents even made it past 76, three killed by cancer, one by Parkinson's disease. If I live no longer than any of them did, I have at most thirty years left, which puts me around sixty percent of the way through my time. I am comfortable with the idea of mortality, or at least I always have been, up until now. I never felt the need to believe in heaven or an afterlife. It has been decades since I stopped believing-a belief that was never more than fitful and self-serving to begin with-in the possibility of reincarnation of the soul. I'm not totally certain where I stand on the whole "soul" question. Though I certainly feel as if I possess one, I'm inclined to disbelieve in its existence. I can live with that contradiction, as with the knowledge that my time is finite, and growing shorter by the day. It's just that lately, for the first time, that shortening has become perceptible. I can feel each tiny skyward lurch of the balloon as another bag of sand goes over the side of my basket. . Michael Chabon
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Phoebe asked me, "Tell me, what do you think of the afterlife?" I was a bit nonplussed. I had no idea what she thought, but I knew that the question must be of greater interest to someone of her age than to me. But our conversation had been completely honest, and before I could speak, honesty and tact had joined hands in my answer. "I have no faith at all, " I said, "but sometimes I have hope." I rather think, " she replied, "that total annihilation is the most comfortable position." I was shaken. The horse clopped on. The children laughed behind us. When I die, " she said, "I don't expect to see any of my loved ones again. I'll just become a part of all this." She waved her hand at the surrounding countryside. "That's all right with me. Sena Jeter Naslund
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I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces. Joseph Conrad
He wasn't supposed to die, ' he cried out, somewhat...
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He wasn't supposed to die, ' he cried out, somewhat desperately, petulantly, like a spoiled child. But I could hear other thoughts racing between us. Neither are you. Neither am I. Patti Smith
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Every subject's duty is the King's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore, should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were no sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive the day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare. William Shakespeare
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That which is alive hath known death, and that which is dead can never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit life is naught and death is naught. Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten. H. Rider Haggard
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Many a survivor of a plane crash who is or was against cannibalism and had never eaten human flesh once found themselves in a situation where they had to either eat human flesh, or go the way of all flesh. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Most sane human beings who have managed to attain and retain fame each uses it to dramatically increase their name’s chances of being remembered until Jesus comes back, since their heart cannot do what they consciously or unconsciously lust for, that is to say, for it to beat until Jesus returns. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Life is a process during which one initially gets less...
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Life is a process during which one initially gets less and less dependent, independent, and then more and more dependent. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A premature death does not only rob one of the...
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A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most of us cling to life as if our existence...
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Most of us cling to life as if our existence were a result of our deed or choice. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most human beings would have never been pained by the...
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Most human beings would have never been pained by the death of a human being if they had never seen a human being or pretending to be pained by that. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
With regard to things such as independence, mental capabilities, and...
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With regard to things such as independence, mental capabilities, and sexuality, a very old man is nothing but a gigantic infant with white hair and wrinkles. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
We envy people who are extremely old because we wish...
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We envy people who are extremely old because we wish to live that long, not because we want to be that old. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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The real reason the number of things that are shared via social media every single minute is so astronomical is because, whenever they each do, most users do not share or say something because they believe they have something worth remembering; they do mainly or only because they fear being forgotten. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
We do not start as dust. We do not end...
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We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. We make more than dust. That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust. David Levithan
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For thousands of years priests, rabbis and muftis explained that humans cannot overcome famine, plague and war by their own efforts. Then along came the bankers, investors and industrialists, and within 200 years managed to do exactly that. Yuval Noah Harari
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Weak and narrow are the powers implanted in the limbs of men; many the woes that fall on them and blunt the edge of thought; short is the measure of the life in death through which they toil; then are they borne away, like smoke they vanish into air, and what they dream they know is but the little each hath stumbled on in wandering about the world; yet boast they all that they have learned the whole–vain fools! for what that is, no eye hath seen, no ear hath heard, nor can it be conceived by mind of man. Thou, then, since thou hast fallen to this place, shalt know no more than human wisdom may attain. Empedocles
Dear Miss Pomeroy, I am saddened by the things I...
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Dear Miss Pomeroy, I am saddened by the things I do not know. There are hundreds--thousands--of books in the world and I will never be able to read all of them. I am old. Walter Barbara Wersba
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Positive energy radiates from every word you share to a magnitude that can not be measured on scale. The vibrations he sends your way are received and absorbed into the very core of your existence. The power within his words quench the areas of your spirit that only God knows. Mortality thrives on the very essence of Godly Love Amaka Imani Nkosazana
You will die, and I, and all we can create–why...
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You will die, and I, and all we can create–why not a city? But if there is one thing that deserves to be immortal, it is knowledge. John Brunner
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It’s quite possible that mortality is simply the result of poor education. Umberto Eco
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all...
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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its stud Hector Berlioz
Perhaps life is like an hour glass, with dear ones...
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Perhaps life is like an hour glass, with dear ones the sand that slips from the upper glass--the earth--into the second--eternity. Margaret George
When men shake hands with time, time crushes Them like...
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When men shake hands with time, time crushes Them like tumblers; little pieces of glass. Abu AlAla AlMaarri
In whatever disease sleep is laborious, it is a deadly...
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In whatever disease sleep is laborious, it is a deadly symptom; but if sleep does good, it is not deadly. Hippocrates
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Humans recognize the duality, autonomy, and latitude range of the mind and the body, and all humans comprehend their impending mortality. Unlike other animals, humankind knows despair brought about by understanding the inevitability of death of all living creatures. The radius of human thought touching upon the longitude of our transient existence causes infinite pain. Seeking to ameliorate existential anguish incites us to ponder spiritual matters, and this sphere of mental activity spurs us to contemplate the perimeter of unknown frontiers. Our ability to understand the compass of life and death allows us to view the circumference of the world as consisting of a past, a present, and a future in relation to our own lives. How a person views the range of their earthly life and how a person rationalizes their march towards a deathly outback creates a system of beliefs that separate people into classes, and the variations amongst class members’ belief systems supplements who we think we are. Kilroy J. Oldster
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All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side. Herman Melville
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All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. Herman Melville
If you can't sublimate your fear of mortality into sex...
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If you can't sublimate your fear of mortality into sex with your best friend, what's it there for? Justin Taylor
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She was someone who heard each grain in the hour-glass, she felt the passing seconds like sandpaper against her softest skin. Time actually seemed to hurt her, and people helped her get through it. [.] Sometimes it seemed to Nathan that her life was just that, a feat of held breath, just another ten seconds, just another five, and then death would flood her lungs like water, a string of glass bubbles to the surface and then nothing. She was scared in a way that he could understand. The kind of fear that sends you running across a six-lane highway or jumping into rapids. She was someone who ran towards her fear, screaming. Who tried to frighten it. Who, in another period of history, would have been worshipped as a saint or burned as a witch. Rupert Thomson
Ashes have no fear to burn in hell In your...
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Ashes have no fear to burn in hell In your heart's paradise angels dwell Rib cage fastens all sins of the wrong Your bones will sing you mortality’s song Munia Khan
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The origin behind myths and religion is human terror of annihilation. Human societies invented mythology and religion in order to militate against people’s fear of living a mortal life. People fear time as a destroyer of human happiness, human beings, and human societies. Kilroy J. Oldster
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I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere between Mrs.Wheeler's class and Mondawmin Mall, somewhere between the schools and the streets. Now I had the privilege of welcoming it back like a long-lost friend, though our reunion was laced with grief; I mourned over all the years that were lost. The mourning continues. Even today, from time to time, I find myself on beaches watching six-year-olds learn to surf, or at colleges listening to sophomores slip from English to Italian, or at cafés seeing young poets flip though 'The Waste Land, ' or listening to the radio where economists explain economic things that I could've explored in my lost years, mourning, hoping that I and all my wonder, my long-lost friend, had not yet run out of time, though I know that we all run out of time, and some of us run out of it faster. TaNehisi Coates
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She now discovered amidst them, the poet's flights of fancy, and the historian's seldom pleasing–ever instructive page. The first may transmit to posterity the records of a sublime genius, which once flashed in strong, but transient rays, through the tenement of clay it was given a moment to inhabit: and though the tenement decayed and the spirit fled, the essence of a mind which darted through the universe to cull each created and creative image to enrich an ever-varying fancy, is thus snatched from oblivion, and retained, spite of nature, amidst the mortality from which it has struggled, and is freed. The page of the historian can monarchs behold, and not offer up the sceptre to be disencumbered of the ponderous load that clogs their elevation! Can they read of armies stretch upon the plain, provinces laid waste, and countries desolated, and wish to be the mortal whose vengeance, or whose less fierce, but fatal decision sent those armies forth! . Mary Charlton
Oh you, my generation! - we were a lovely lot!...
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Oh you, my generation! - we were a lovely lot! Sharp minds- arguing all the time and brittle bodies and even more brittle laughter- and all the time knowing that we were growing up to die. Joan Wehlen Morrison
This last best luck of all: that earth should gape...
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This last best luck of all: that earth should gape for me when my great deeds were ended. E.R. Eddison
May you find what you are looking for and realize...
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May you find what you are looking for and realize it is not the answer. Ahmed Mostafa
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But then why shouldn't he write the dead? He lived with them as much as with the living - perhaps more; and besides, his letters to the living were increasingly mental, and anyway, to the Unconscious, what was death? Dreams did not recognize it. Saul Bellow
I want to feel the rush of death, the high...
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I want to feel the rush of death, the high of utter nothingness, the fragility of my own mortality. Let it slip through my fingers like sand and when it's gone for good, I'll be none the wiser. Kayla Krantz
Death would not surprise us as often as it does,...
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Death would not surprise us as often as it does, if we let go of the misbelief that newborns are less mortal than the elderly. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Attending a funeral would leave the average person insane, if...
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Attending a funeral would leave the average person insane, if they truly believed that sooner or later they are also going to die. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
You need to be greedy or ignorant to truly want...
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You need to be greedy or ignorant to truly want to live forever. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Death is number one on the list of things that...
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Death is number one on the list of things that we wish were possible to leave behind when we escaped barbarism. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most people do not mind dying, as long as that...
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Most people do not mind dying, as long as that does not happen today. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If there were something that Mother Nature or God could...
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If there were something that Mother Nature or God could do with money, She or He would have sold immortality to the rich a long time ago. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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The moment when mortality, ephemerality, uncertainty, suffering, or the possibility of change arrives can split a life in two. Facts and ideas we might have heard a thousand times assume a vivid, urgent, felt reality. We knew them then, but they matter now. They are like guests that suddenly speak up and make demands upon us; sometimes they appear as guides, sometimes they just wreck what came before or shove us out the door. We answer them, when we answer, with how we lead our lives. Sometimes what begins as bad news prompts the true path of a life, a disruptive visitor that might be thanked only later. Most of us don’t change until we have to, and crisis is often what obliges us to do so. Crises are often resolved only through anew identity and new purpose, whether it’s that of a nation or a single human being. Rebecca Solnit
87
It was truer to my father to let the songs he'd sung die with him, little by little, averse at a time. How could these art-mongers constantly ignore the mortality of beauty, a pleonasm if ever I'd heard one? Dimitri Verhulst
88
Past humanity is not only implicit in each new man born but is contained in him. Humanity is an ever-widening spiral and life is the beam that plays briefly on each succeeding ring. All humanity from its beginning to its end is already present but the beam has not yet played beyond you. Flann OBrien
Mist to mist, drops to drops. For water thou art,...
89
Mist to mist, drops to drops. For water thou art, and unto water shalt thou return. Kamand Kojouri
91
My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought. Frank Herbert
92
There is one question George is asked about life and art and which is more important, and George said art is more important because it is immortal. This struck a very deep note inside me. For I am quite aware of the chance that I have or will have AIDS. The odds are very great and, in fact, the symptoms already exist. My friends are dropping like flies and I know in my heart that it is only divine intervention that has kept me alive this long. I don’t know if I have five months or five years, but I know my days are numbered. This is why my activities and projects are so important now. To do as much as possible as quickly as possible. I’m sure that what will live on after I die is important enough to make sacrifices of my personal luxury and leisure time. Work is all I have and art is more important than life. Keith Haring
93
Make your life a work of art and you will never die. Maria Elena
94
Yet human intelligence has another force, too: the sense of urgency that gives human smarts their drive. Perhaps our intelligence is not just ended by our mortality; to a great degree, it is our mortality. Adam Gopnik
95
Resignation is what kills people. Once they've rejected resignation, humans gain the privilege of making humanity their footpath. Kohta Hirano
96
They live forever. But many of them are even more lonely and miserable than we are. Why do you think they bother with us? We teach them life's value. N.K. Jemisin
97
Stories are all we humans have to make us immortal. Salley Vickers
98
Patience was part of his nature, and he accepted his lot as a short-lived mammal, scurrying in and out amid the roots of the giants. Ruth Ozeki
99
It is worse than useless to do things halfway Bee, for then you think the work is done, but someone must come behind you later to do it all over again. Even if you must work much harder and get less done, it is better to do the whole task the first time. Robin Hobb
100
He sank back into his black-and-white world, his immobile world of inanimate drawings that had been granted the secret of motion, his death-world with its hidden gift of life. But that life was a deeply ambiguous life, a conjurer's trick, a crafty illusion based on an accidental property of the retina, which retained an image for a fraction of a second after the image was no longer present. On this frail fact was erected the entire structure of the cinema, that colossal confidence game. The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion than the so-called realistic film, because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible--indeed it claimed the impossible as its own, exalted it as its own highest end, found in impossibility, in the negation of the actual, its profoundest reason for being. The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible--therein lay its exhilaration and its secret melancholy. For this willful violation of the actual, while it was an intoxicating release from the constriction of things, was at the same time nothing but a delusion, an attempt to outwit mortality. As such it was doomed to failure. And yet it was desperately important to smash through the constriction of the actual, to unhinge the universe and let the impossible stream in, because otherwise--well, otherwise the world was nothing but an editorial cartoon. Steven Millhauser