Quotes About Mortality

Dead is dead, we know where to file another person's extinction, but the artist purposely zoomed in on the living, or, to be more accurate, the forced-to-be-living and the soon-to-be-dead. Grainy

any life ending in death is essentially pointless.

The phrase "I live for my kids," for example, is tantamount to admitting that one will be dead shortly and that one's life, for all practical purposes, is already over. "I'm gradually dying for my kids" would be more accurate.

I have lived at Cold Mountain These thirty long years. Yesterday I called on friends and family: More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs. Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle; Forever flowing, like a passing river. Now, morning, I face my lone shadow: Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears.

We are all serving time on death row; only the length of our stay is indeterminate. Dead people, walking. If our lives are to be fulfilling, we must be grateful for the experience alone.

Life is essentially a fatal disease of indeterminate duration.

And it came to me that these trees had been hardly smaller when I was yet unborn, and had stood as they stood now when I was a child playing among the cypresses and peaceful tombs of our necropolis, and that they would stand yet, drinking in the last light of the dying sun, even as now, when I had been dead as long as those who rested there.

All beds became deathbeds at last.

There is something in all of us that has always been dead," I said. "If only because we know that eventually we will die. All of us except the smallest children.

There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men—all are dead.

But I was awake, sitting by the window looking down at the trailer and Mr. Zoltan's truck. I could not sleep. That is how it is with folks my age. We take naps during the day, and then we cannot sleep at night. I think that it is because God is getting us ready for the grave. Is that right? Did He ever tell you? (The Little Stranger)

How big is a man's life? asked Ultan. I have no way of knowing, but isn't it larger than that? You see it from the beginning, and anticipate much. I, recollecting it from its termination, know how little there has been. I suppose that is why the depraved creatures who devour the bodies of the dead seek more.

if a pauper were to leap from the parapet of this bridge each time we draw breath, we should live forever, because the city breeds and breaks men faster than we respire.

Nothing moved except the white bird, which flew back and forth with a slow, sad motion that seemed so weary that every time two wings rose I felt that it was about to fall into the sea, and the Short Sun, which crept down to the empty horizon as remorselessly as every man creeps toward his grave.

I had survived, and I should be dead. I was haunted by my own life.

We meet and love, someone builds a tomb for us, perhaps. It does not matter—someone else will rob it, and the winds puff away our dust; then we shall be forgotten.

By the same argument, the life must reside in each joint of every finger, and surely that is impossible. How big is a man's life? asked Ultan. I have no way of knowing, but isn't it larger than that? You see it from the beginning, and anticipate much. I, recollecting it from its termination, know how little there has been.

But there is no such reason to mourn the destruction of a colony of cells: such a colony dies each time a loaf of bread goes into the oven. If a man is no more than such a colony, a man is nothing; but we instinctively know that man is more. What happens then to the part that is more?

Death is nothing, and for that reason you must fear it.

The game is nearly over,' she whispered. 'That is what I came to tell you. Did you think it would go on forever?

No doubt many a man who walks about and does his work is dying and ignorant of it, and many who lie abed all day are healthier than those who bring their food and wash them.

I have traveled far, and I have observed that poor people usually have more wit and more virtue than rich ones. He smiled at that. You are kind. But our people have so much wit and virtue now that they may die.

Death is nothing, and that's why you should fear it.

A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone; Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun.