Quotes About Mortality

Life has to end. Love doesn't.

When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched, right? Like this? He made a fist. Why? Because a baby not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say the whole world is mine. But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned his lesson. What lesson? I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. We can take nothing with us.

It's not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It's part of the deal we made.

Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else.

Learn how to live and you'll know how to die; learn how to die, and you'll know how to live.

There is a reason God limits man's days.

We all have the same beginning - birth - and we all have the same end - death. So how different can we be?

The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality- and in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.

Now that child reminds me of something our sages taught. When a baby comes into the world, it's hands are clenched, right? Like this? He made a fist. Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say 'The whole world is mine.' But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson. What lesson? I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. We can take nothing with us.

It is no coincidence that the words 'trying' and 'dying' are only a few letters apart.

Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be? Is today the day I die?

Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creatures endures. A fear of time running out.

All who are born are always dying.

Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time.

when your time came, it came, and that was that. You might say something smart on your way out, but you might just as easily say something stupid.

There are many kinds of selfishness in this world, but the most selfish is hoarding time, because none of us know how much we have, and it is an affront to God to assume there will be more.

To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you're living.

Had he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come.

You don't know how to live until you learn how to die.

Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, I wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?

Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.

And I suppose tapes are a desperate attempt to steal something from Death's suitcase.

Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it.... So we kid ourselves about death.... But there's a better approach. To know you're going to dies, and to be prepared for it at any time....Do what the Buddhists do...ask, Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?

How do people choose their final words? Do they realize their gravity? Are they fated to be wise?