Quotes About Mortality

Tenderly, be not impatient, (Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, Strong is your hold O love.)

No es la vida el desperdicio de muertes infinitas?

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most         spiritual poems; And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality, For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul, and of         immortality.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die

whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud

And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death

O LIVING always, always dying! O the burials of me past and present, O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever; O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;) O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at where I cast them, To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.

And as to you corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweetscented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips . . . . I reach to the polished breasts of melons.

Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?

Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death I should die now

seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy; Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

L'expérience de notre génération: le capitalisme ne mourra pas de mort naturelle

They say death's a going to bed; I doubt it; but anyhow life's a long undressing. We came in puling and naked, and every stitch must come off before we get out again. We must stand on our feet in all our Rabelaisian nakedness, and watch the world fade.

But in the end, we learn we can forgive most people. The cushion of mortality makes their wrongdoing seem less dark, and whatever roads they traveled seem less foolhardy.

It is tasteless to prolong life artificially," he told Dukas. "I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.

He fell silent for a very long time. "But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch," he said. "Click! And you're gone." Then he paused again and smiled slightly. "Maybe that's why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.

We all—in the end—die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want toe die to get there. And Yet death is the destination we all share.

Throughout human history, we have been subjected to wave after wave of viral and bacterial plagues. The first known one was the Babylon flu epidemic around 1200 BC. The plague of Athens in 429 BC killed close to 100,000 people, the Antonine plague in the second century killed ten million, the plague of Justinian in the sixth century killed fifty million, and the Black Death of the fourteenth century took almost 200 million lives, close to half of Europe's population.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, "Memento mori": Remember you will die. A reminder of mortality would help the hero keep things in perspective, instill some humility.

But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch," he said. "Click! And you're gone." Then he paused again and smiled slightly. "Maybe that's why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.

Raskin died of pancreatic cancer in 2005, not long after Jobs was diagnosed with the disease.

That Tuesday afternoon, he kept staring into his children's eyes. At one point he looked at Patty and his children for a long time, then at Laurene, and finally gazed past them into the distance. "Oh wow," he said. "Oh wow. Oh wow." Those were his final words before he drifted into unconsciousness sometime around two that afternoon.