Quotes About Mortality

That's what we're all looking for. A certain peace with the idea of dying. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing." Which is? "Make peace with living.

Why is it so hard to think about dying? "Because," Morrie continued, "most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do." And facing death changes all that? "Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.

When you're in bed, you're dead.

Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time—then you might not be as ambitious as you are.

Todo mundo sabe que se va a morir, pero nadie se lo cree.

Cundo aprendes a morir, aprendes a vivir.

Instead, I buried myself in accomplishments, because with accomplishments, I believed I could control things, I could squeeze in every last piece of happiness before I got sick and died...

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.

It's natural to die," he said again. "The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don't see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we're human we're something above nature." He smiled at the plant. "We're not. Everything that gets born, dies.

And I suppose tapes, like photographs and videos, are a desperate attempt to steal something from death's suitcase.

You learn to die, you learn to live.

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

But the human form is not permanent. It was never meant to be. That gift belongs to the soul.

We who are born, are born to die.

Once you learn how to die, you learn how to die

When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched... 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...' 'We can take nothing with us.

time, because none of us know how much we have, and it is an affront to God to assume there will be more.

He looked at his own arms and realized, in his earthly body, he was now older than his father. He had outlived him in every way.

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 the lesson." What lesson? I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. "We can take nothing with us."   For

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 creature endures. A fear of time running out.

Everyone in this parish is going to die!' "The minister looked around. He noticed a man in the front pew, smiling broadly. "'Why are you so amused?' he asked. "I'm not from this parish,' the man said. 'I'm just visiting my sister for the weekend.

Remember this always: There is a reason God limits man's days.

I wondered, now that his days were dwindling, how important ritual still was. "Vital," he said. But why? Deep inside, you know your convictions. "Mitch," he said, "faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.

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 the lesson." What lesson? I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. "We can take nothing with us.