Quotes About Mortality

Sleep is the little brother of death; it means letting go of the world.

Tis time to die, when 'tis a shame to live.

Oh! ever thus, from childhood's hour,I've seen my fondest hope decay;I never loved a tree or flower,But 'twas the first to fade away.I never nurs'd a dear gazelleTo glad me with its soft black eye,But when it came to know me well,And love me, it was sure to die.

Beauty is but a flower,Which wrinkles will devourBrightness falls from the airQueens have died young and fairDust hath closed Helen's eye.I am sick, I must dieLord have mercy on us.

Brightness falls from the air;Queens have died young and fair;Dust hath closed Helen's eye.I am sick, I must die.Lord, have mercy on us!

Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour; Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath closed Helen's eye. I am sick, I must die. Strength stoops unto the grave, Worms feed on Hector brave; Swords may not fight with fate, Earth still holds open her gate. "Come, come!" the bells do cry. I am sick, I must die. 'A Litany in Time of Plague

Destiny never defames herself but when she lets an excellent poet die.

Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying

When you're dead, the way death got you is just one thing that happened among thousands. You don't care more about that day than any of the others, just because it was the last day. You'll see.

You may not have noticed, but men over retirement age seem to have a lot of clothes of an earlier vintage." "Yep," he said. "We're all timing it to wear them out at the moment of death so everything comes out even.

May I share with you a formula that in my judgment will help you and help me to journey well through mortality... First, fill your mind with truth; second, fill your life with service; and third, fill your heart with love.

For the first fourteen years for a rod they do whine, For the next as a pearl in the world they do shine, For the next trim beauty beginneth to swerve, For the next matrons or drudges they serve, For the next doth crave a staff for a stay, For the next a bier to fetch them away.

The race is short between the cradle and the grave!

We should look upon sin in two looking-glasses—the glass of Christ's blood, and the glass of death.

This judgment is on many, the earth swallows up their time, and thoughts, and discourse, they are buried twice; their hearts are buried in the earth before their bodies.

The serious thoughts of our short stay here would be a great means of promoting godliness. What if death should come before we are ready? What if our life should breathe out before God's Spirit has breathed in? Whoever considers how flitting and winged his life is, will hasten his repentance!

"There is nothing here abiding; the creature has a little honey in its mouth, but it has wings, it will soon fly away. But if you love God, He is 'a portion for ever' (Psalm 73:26).

It is this bloody-mindedness - the obsessive quest for wisdom though it brings no peace, the desire to gain knowledge of a future that cannot be circumvented, the relentless preparation for a doom that cannot be avoided - that reminds us of our own self-defeating consciousness, the knowledge of mortality that defines our humanity.

My dear, dear girl [. . .] we can't turn back the days that have gone. We can't turn life back to the hours when our lungs were sound, our blood hot, our bodies young. We are a flash of fire--a brain, a heart, a spirit. And we are three-cents-worth of lime and iron--which we cannot get back.

If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.

They even found themselves able to die if they wanted to.

THE ALL creates in its Infinite Mind countless Universes, which exist for aeons of Time — and yet, to THE ALL, the creation, development, decline and death of a million universes is as the time of the twinkling of an eye.

The clarifying principle made clear the impermanence of things. It was an illusion, all of it—this life that they clung to, this earth that they battled over—a collective exercise in self-deception. The world was perishable.

In the presence of immortality—the endlessly churning sea, the plowed fields of the sky, the loose gypsy wind—the rest of her life feels absurdly, ridiculously mortal and transient. Transient as money, fragile as love. As ethereal and ready to pop as these balloons that are dancing in the wind.