Quotes About Mortality

If books could kill, I would have written more of them before I died.

Only the good die dumb.

Sometimes the dying live more fiercely and wisely than the rest of us. (146)

Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

Die knowing something. You're not here long.

I am only afraid of dying; not of being dead.

If you could forget mortality... You could really believe that time is circular, and not linear and progressive as our culture is bent on proving. Seen in geological perspective, we are fossils in the making, to be buried and eventually exposed again for the puzzlement of creatures of later eras.

Leave a mark on the world. Instead, the world has left marks on us. We got older. Life chastened us so that now we lie waiting to die, or walk on canes, or sit on porches where once the young juices flowed strongly, and feel old and inept and confused.

You can't be close to the mortality of friends without being brought to think of your own.

Seen in either geological or biological terms, we don't warrant attention as individuals. One of us doesn't differ that much from another, each generation repeats its parents, the works we build to outlast us are not much more enduring than anthills, and much less so than coral reefs.

I am concerned with gloomier matters: the condition of being flesh, susceptible to pain, infected with consciousness and the consciousness of consciousness, doomed to death and the awareness of death. My life stains the air around me. I am a tea bag left too long in the cup, and my steepings grow darker and bitterer.

I must accept the justice of death and the injustice of more "life"; I had no right to remain a single hour.

Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill;

It is good death That puts an end to evil death and dies.

whatever is impermanent is dukkha' (yad aniccam ta? dukkha ?).

Nor for you, for one alone,Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.

Death is at work in every person. It is the natural progression of life. Paul realized this and elected to participate willingly by purposely putting himself to death by spending his life on others.

Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Let people who do not know what to do with themselves in this life, but fritter away their time reading magazines and watching television, hope for eternal life.....The life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worth while and death welcome. There is no other life I should prefer. Neither should I like not to die.

Robertson called his ship the Titan; the White Star Line called its ship the Titanic. This is the story of her last night.

The dead are alive and the living are buried by them.

Je weniger qualvoll die Todesart, desto weniger attraktiv die Tiere. Wenn du friedlich an Altersschwäche stirbst, siehst du nur ein Huhn. Das letzte Huhn. Es gackert, und du bist hinüber.

Das Leben, mein Junge, ist nicht nur eine wilde, schöne Reise. Leben, das heißt auch: dem Tod bei der Arbeit zuzusehen. Das ist das Härteste überhaupt! Das muss man aushalten können. Bist du bereit, das auszuhalten, mein Junge?