Quotes About Mortality

Possibly, some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, whatever our business or amusement--however serious, however trifling--all dance to one identical tune, and, in spite of our ridiculous activity, bring nothing finally to pass.

The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is mossgrown, and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the black veil.

I felt as if it were better, or not worse, to have compressed my enjoyments and sufferings into a few wild years, and then to rest myself in an early grave, than to have chosen the untroubled and ungladdened course of the crowd before me, whose days were all alike, and a long lifetime like each day.

Death was too definite an object to be wished for, or avoided.

Young Goodman Brown came forth, at sunset, into the street of Salem village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grand-children, a goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tomb-stone; for his dying hour was gloom.

Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal. Could the departed, whoever he may be, return in a week after his decease, he would almost invariably find himself at a higher or lower point than he had formerly occupied, on the scale of public appreciation.

And wise Uncle Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon-after witnessing these deeds, this bygone woe and this present happiness, of her kindred mortals-had given one farewell touch of a spirit's joy upon her harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the House of the Seven Gables

With your pardon, sir," replied Dr. Clarke, a physician and a famous champion of the popular party, "whatever the heralds may pretend, a dead beggar must have precedence of a living queen. King Death confers high privileges.

Así, antes que nadie, el huésped que visita todas las moradas humanas, la muerte, franqueó el umbral de La casa de los siete Tejados.

It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance — to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.

During the forty-five months of World War II, the United States lost just under 1 percent of its adult male population; during the Civil War the casualty rate was somewhere between 4 and 5 percent; during the fourteen months of King Philip's War, Plymouth Colony lost close to 8 percent of its men.

To be in the presence of a great leader is to know a blighted soul who has managed to make the darkness work for him. Ishmael says it best: For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but a disease. In chapter 36, The Quarter-Deck, Melville show us how susceptible we ordinary people are to the seductive power of a great and demented man.

All I want is for someone to understand me before I die. With death staring me in the face, I finally understand the reason novelists write books: before they die they want somebody, somewhere, to understand them.

If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die.

Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.

He was going to die, and he was seriously annoyed about that.

Death makes the whole world kin.

Let's all forsake, The Land of Wake, And break for the Land of Nod. Where we can try, To touch the sky, Or dance beneath the sod. A toll for the living, A toll for the lost, A toll for the wise ones, Who tally the cost, So let's escape, Due south of Wake, And make for the Land of Nod.

That's exactly what the scythedom is: high school with murder.

Heaven and hell - nirvana and Valhalla, reincarnation, hauntings, and so many underworlds, one would think the grave was a corridor with a million doors

Death makes the whole world kin. Rowan wondered if a world without death would then make everyone stranger.

think of it this way, he said It took nine months to get you born, so doesn't it figure it would take nine months to get you dead?

It is the nature of life to fear its own end. This is how I know that we are truly alive.

I'm evolving, is the thing; I'm a god becoming a constellation.' 'The constellations are mostly demigods,' I point out. 'And they didn't get to be constellations until after they died.' He laughs at that, and says, 'Death is a small sacrifice to become immortal.