Quotes About Mortality

People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it.

This vast life - the real, interior one in which we remain linked to the dead (because the dream inside us ignores trivialities like breath, or absence) - this vast life is not under our control. Everything we have seen and everyone we have known goes into us and constitutes us, whether we like it or not. We are linked together in a pattern we cannot see and whose effects we cannot know.

Et puis nos certitudes ne tiennent jamais debout. Un jour on voudrait mourir et le lendemain on réalise qu'il suffisait de descendre quelques marches pour trouver le commutateur et y voir un peu plus clair...

Can you think yourself to death?

At this still hour the self-collected soul Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there Of high descent, and more than mortal rank; An embryo God; a spark of fire divine, Which must burn on for ages, when the sun (Fair transitory creature of a day!) Has clos'd his golden eye, and wrapt in shades Forgets his wonted journey thro' the east.

Death was just as close, but not behind him; it was everywhere. It was inescapable; he felt death's physical presence—as if death itself were something alive. Like in the old pictures, a creature that can hide behind a bed of asters or behind a baby carriage and can come out and touch you.

What consequences can there be for a dead man they throw from one grave into another? Not even a tombstone as tall as a house on his final resting place would be of any consequence to the dead man.

With any luck, I'd go instantly—with my new health insurance, I couldn't afford a slow decline.

It's terrifying to realize that most of humanity lives in places that are destined to die.

Life is here only to be lived so that we can, through life, earn the right to death, which to me is paradise. Whatever it is that will bring me the reward of paradise, I'll do the best I can.

O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things, That draws oblivion's curtains over kings; Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not, Their names without a record are forgot, Their parts, their ports, their pomps all laid in th' dust Nor wit nor gold, nor buildings scape time's rust; But he whose name is graved in the white stone Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.

And although thus short, we shorten many ways, Living so little while we are alive; In eating, drinking, sleeping, vain delight So unawares comes on perpetual night, And puts all pleasures vain unto eternal flight.

And time brings down what is both strong and tall.

Now every mortal has pain and 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 blank and all the rest just fantasy.

You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.

The man has a theory. The woman has hipbones. Here comes Death.

We are only midway through the central verse of our youth when we see ourselves begin to blacken. ... We had been seduced into thinking that we were immortal and suddenly the affair is over.

what song of death, what dance of Hades shall I do?

And the reason he cannot bear her dying is not the loss of her (which is the future) but that dying puts the two of them (now) into this nakedness together that is unforgivable.

Why not keep moving it's true every epitaph calls out to the passerby but the marks are a trap the mourning is irrelevant I knew a man who dreamed his backside was made of glass and dared not sit down for 7 months

All our paths lead to death.

many, despite the boom in oil and raw material prices, are finally dying.

That if he were killed in the next few weeks, it would assuredly be near her. At her feet, in her bed. Inside of her. Unfortunately, that last thought just made him think that if he had to choose his final moments, being inside Charlotte would really be the way to go.

Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms.