Quotes About Mortality

Miserable mortals who, like leaves, at one moment flame with life, eating the produce of the land, and at another moment weakly perish

Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame on us gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given...

That is the god's work, spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, and all to make a song for those to come...

But death is a thing that comes to all alike. Not even the gods can fend it away from a man they love, when once the destructive doom of leveling death has fastened upon him.

The gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

There is no thought of death in your mind now, and yet death stands close beside you as you put on the immortal armor of a surpassing man.

Ay, ay, cómo culpan los mortales a los dioses!, pues de nosotros, dicen, proceden los males. Pero también ellos por su estupidez soportan dolores más allá de lo que les corresponde.

Mirst?giem ?aud?m virs zemes maz dienu ir dz?v?bai lemtu. Ja k?dam ir cietsird?gs raksturs un cietsird?gs ir bijis pret citiem, Visi tam nov?l tik ?aunu, kam?r tas dz?vo virs zemes, Bet, ja kam krietna ir sirds, ja ar? t? domas ir krietnas, Teicamo slavu pa pasauli plašo starp mirst?giem ?aud?m Svešinieki aiznes un visi to d?v? par cildenu v?ru.

The race of men is like the race of leaves. As one generation flourishes, another decays.

Of all the creatures that breathe and creep about on Mother Earth there is none so helpless as man. As long as the gods grant him prosperity and health he imagines he will never suffer misfortune in the future. Yet when the blessed gods bring him troubles he has no choice but to endure them with a patient heart. The reason is that the view we mortals take of this earthly life depends on what Zeus, the Father of gods and men, sends us day by day.

Not at all similar are the race of the immortal gods and the race of men who walk upon the earth

Human beings live for only a short time, and when a man is harsh himself, and his mind knows harsh thoughts, all men pray that sufferings will befall him hereafter while he lives; and when he is dead all men make fun of him. But when a man is blameless himself, and his thoughts are blameless, the friends he has entertained carry his fame widely to all mankind, and many are they who call him excellent.

He was the loveliest born of the race of mortals, and therefore the gods caught him away to themselves, to be Zeus' wine-pourer, for the sake of his beauty, so he might be among the immortals.

As inhuman fire sweeps on in fury through the deep angles of a drywood mountain and sets ablaze the depth of the timber and the blustering wind lashes the flame along, so Achilleus swept everywhere with his spear like something more than a mortal harrying them as they died, and the black earth ran blood.

We are all held in a single honor, the brave with the weaklings. 320  A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.

Human beings live for only a short time, and when a man is harsh himself, and his mind knows harsh thoughts, 330 all men pray that sufferings will befall him hereafter while he lives; and when he is dead all men make fun of him. But when a man is blameless himself, and his thoughts are blameless, the friends he has entertained carry his fame widely to all mankind, and many are they who call him excellent.

But humans cannot stay awake forever; immortal gods have set a proper time for everything that mortals do on earth.

The choice of Odysseus is parallel to the choice of Achilles, in that it is a decision to be mortal in order to gain a particular kind of masculine honor. If Odysseus had stayed with Calypso, he would have been alive forever, and never grown old; but he would have been forever subservient to a being more powerful than himself.

But a man's life breath cannot come back again— no raiders in force, no trading brings it back, once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.

As the wind scatters leaves upon the earth, such is the race of men

So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men live on to bear such torments - the gods live free of sorrows. -Achilles to Priam

scattering medicines that still pain, healed him, since he was not made to be one of the mortals.

Patroclus equal of Ares came out; and that was the beginning of his end.

O old friend, if we two escaping this war were destined to be ageless and deathless always, I myself would not fight in the frontlines, nor would I send you into battle where men win glory; but now, since the fates of death stand by us in their thousands, which a mortal man cannot escape nor flee, let us go—either we will give the right to vaunt to someone else or he to us.