Quotes About Mortality

Then suddenly you're left all alone with your body that can't love you and your will that can't save you.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all. Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.

It wasn't his, it wasn't my fault, we both had nothing except patience, but Death has none. I saw him come (how meanly!) and I watched him as he took and took: none of it I could claim as mine.

It is nothing but a breath, the void.

So this is where people come to live; I would have thought it is a city to die in.

Früher wusste man (oder vielleicht ahnte man es), dass man den Tod in sich hatte wir die Frucht den Kern. Die Kinder hatten einen kleinen und die Erwachsenen einen großen. Die Frauen hatten ihn im Schoß und die Männer in der Brust. Den hatte man, und das gab einem eine eigentümliche Würde und einen stillen Stolz.

What would you do, God, if I died?

The leaves fall, fall as from far, Like distant gardens withered in the heavens; They fall with slow and lingering descent. And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls From out the stars into the Solitude. Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine must fall And lo! the other one:—it is the law. But there is One who holds this falling Infinitely softly in His hands. - Autumn

What poet's persuasion can reconcile the length of those days with the brevity of life?

I'm still alive, I have time to build My blood will outlast the rose.

Death is great. We are his completely with laughing eyes. When we feel ourselves immersed in life, he dares to weep immersed in us. (Der Tod ist groß. Wir sind die Seinen lachenden Munds. Wenn wir uns mitten im Leben meinen, wagt er zu weinen mitten in uns.)

Der Tod ist groß. Wir sind die Seinen lachenden Munds. Wenn wir uns mitten im Leben meinen, wagt er zu weinen mitten in uns.

Pues cerca de la muerte uno ya no ve la muerte y mira fijamente hacia afuera, quizás con una gran mirada de animal.

You said live out loud, and die you said lightly, and over and over again you said be.

Und wir: Zuschauer, immer, überall, dem allen zugewandt und nie hinaus! Uns überfüllts. Wir ordnens. Es zerfällt. Wir ordnens wieder und zerfallen selbst.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Look, the trees are; the houses we live in still stand. We alone go past them like an exchange of vapors. And things conspire to tell us nothing, half in shame, perhaps, half in unspoken hope.

Ein Mal jedes, nur ein Mal. Ein Mal und nicht mehr. Und wir auch ein Mal. Nie wieder. Aber dieses ein Mal gewesen zu sein, wenn auch nur ein Mal: irdisch gewesen zu sein, scheint nicht widerrufbar.

What is wrong with this gentleman, Sylvester?' the tall one said. 'A man's dying outside!' I said. 'Someone is always dying,' the other one said. 'Yes, and it's good to die beneath God's great tent of sky.

people face Death and even go a piece with him and then wrestle with him and get away, thank the Lord, and return. Yes, but how many have I seen pass on and

Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die Live. House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, old man and young maid, Day's toil and it's guerdon, They are all vanishing, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored

Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well half an hour?