Quotes About Mortality

Think of the universal substance, of which thou has a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art

Be your own master, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature.

life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.

Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

Yes, keep on degrading yourself, soul. But soon your chance at dignity will be gone. Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up, and instead of treating yourself with respect, you have entrusted your own happiness to the souls of others.

Meditate upon what you ought to be in body and soul when death overtakes you; meditate on the brevity of life, and the measureless gulf of eternity behind it and before, and upon the frailty of everything material.

Swiftly the remembrance of all things is buried in the gulf of eternity.

All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike.

Its a dream, a fearful dream, life is

In everything that you do, pause and ask yourself if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives you of this.

How many together with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it.

10. Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.

There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly.

Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment.

What am I but a little flesh, a little breath, and the thinking part that rules the whole?

Since it is possible that you might depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.

In a little while you will have forgotten everything; in a little while everything will have forgotten you.

Soon you'll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most - and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, trivial.

a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt go, and it will never return.

Remember how long you've been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn't use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able—be good. 18.

In no great while you will be no one and nowhere, and nothing that you now behold will be in existence, nor will anyone now alive. For it is in the nature of all things to change and alter and perish, so that others may arise in their turn.

Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow "or the day after." Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn't kick up a fuss about which day it was—what difference could it make? Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small.