Quotes About Mortality

It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the the kind of delibrate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life.

Om rubed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show tortoise how to fly. Then we let go.

It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the kind of deliberate annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life. It was the kind of sound that suggested very pointedly that in some hypothetical hourglass somewhere, another few grains of sand had dropped out form under you.

Sometimes I get nice letters from people who know they're due to meet him (Death) soon, and hope I've got him right. Those are the kind of letters that cause me to stare at the wall for some time.

Mort remembered the woodcut in his grandmother's almanack, between the page on planting times and the phases of the moon section, showing Dethe thee Great Levyller Comes To Alle Menne. He'd stared at it hundreds of times when learning his letters. It wouldn't have been half so impressive if it had been generally known that the flame-breathing horse the specter rode was called Binky.

Human beings, little bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium...

Goodbye," Mort said, and was surprised to find a lump in his throat. "It's such an unpleasant word, isn't it?" QUITE SO. Death grinned because, as has so often been remarked, he didn't have much option. But possibly he meant it, this time. I PREFER AU REVOIR, he said.

Old terror crouched in the shadows. It was one of the most ancient terrors, the one that meant that no sooner had mankind learned to walk on two legs than it dropped to its knees. It was the terror of impermanence, the knowledge that all this would pass away, that a beautiful voice or a wonderful figure was something whose arrival you couldn't control and whose departure you couldn't delay.

Men said things like peace in our time or an empire that will last a thousand years, and less than half a lifetime later no one even remembered who they were, let alone what they had said or where the mob had buried their ashes.

I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED "LIVING." WOULD YOU LIKE A PRAWN?

An' writin' even goes on sayin' a man's wurds after he's deid ! Ye cannae tell me that's right!

Witches know that people die; and if they manages to die after a long time, leavin' the world better than they went an' found it, well then, that's surely a reason to be happy. All the rest of it is just tidyin' up.

I've been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back.

Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.

I have seen galaxies die. I have watched atoms dance. But until I had the dark behind the eyes, I didn't know the death from the dance.

Though here's a tip, though. Just 'ho, ho, ho' will do. Don't say, 'Cower, brief mortals' unless you want them to grow up to be moneylenders or some such.

Granny Weatherwax was stretched rigid on her bed. Her face was gray, her skin was cold. People had discovered her like this before, and it always caused embarrassment. So now she reassured visitors but tempted fate by always holding, in her rigid hands, a small handwritten sign which read: I ATE'NT DEAD.

Men come and go, but dust accumulates.

TAKE THESE THINGS, NOW, said Death, fingering a passing canape. I MEAN, MUSHROOMS YES, CHICKEN YES, CREAM YES, I'VE NOTHING AGAINST ANY OF THEM, BUT WHY IN THE NAME OF SANITY MINCE THEM ALL UP AND PUT THEM IN LITTLE PASTRY CASES? "Pardon?" said Mort. THAT'S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY'VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.

Whether you wanted it or not, you were born, you did the best you could, and then, whether you really wanted to or not, you died.

And he goes around killing people?" said Mort. He shook his head. "There's no justice." Death sighed. No, he said... there's just me.

They said that dying was just like going to sleep, although of course if you weren't careful bits of you could rot and drop off.

The death of the warrior or the old man or the little child, this I understand, and I take away the pain and end the suffering. I do not understand this death-of-the-mind.

After all it was only wood. It'd rot in a few hundred years. By the measure of infinity, it hardly existed at all. On average, considered over the lifetime of the multiverse, most things didn't