Quotes About Mortality

He was reaching that age, he was at the edge of it, when the world becomes suddenly more beautiful, when it reveals itself in a special way, in every detail, roof and wall, in the leaves of trees fluttering faintly before the rain. The world was opening itself, as if to allow, now that life was shortening, one long, passionate look, and all that had been withheld would finally be given.

The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four–the years turn dry as leaves.

He lived in it helplessly as we live in our bodies when we are older.

But of course, in one sense, Dean never died - his existence is superior to such accidents. One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. And they become real through our envy, our devotion. It is we who give them their majesty, their power, which ourselves could never possess. And in turn, they give some back. But they are mortal, these heroes, just as we are. They do not last forever. They fade. They vanish. They are surpassed, forgotten - one hears of them no more.

My working definition of a successful novel is this: the emotionally satisfying account of how a character deals with imminent death. Once

And my poor fool is hanged. No, no life. / Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, / And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no more. / Never, never, never. Pray you, undo / This button. Thank you, sir. O, O, O, O!

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods; / They kill us for their sport

It was far too absurd to die of a Tuesday

Bennett was grateful for every day he was given on this earth because he knew how fleeting that time could be.

Forty-five might seem old to you now, but I promise you it isn't. I'm not yet half as old as my grandmother was when she passed away. I hope I still have a lot of living to do.

I am only mortal, desperate, urgent. Spirits have endless ages in which to do nothing, if they so choose, but humans have death to hurry them on. Near or far, the end is always in sight. We have no time to stand and stare. Make your choice, Fernanda.

Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death.

Nadie se muere por un resfriado. Pero puede morir de vergüenza por tener tal madre.

Only think of Mrs. Holder's being dead! Poor woman, she has done the only thing in the world she could possibly do to make one cease to abuse her.

I was stunned. I had only just met Stephen and for all his eccentricity I liked him. We both seemed shy in the presence of others, but were confident within ourselves. It was unthinkable that someone only a couple of years older than me should be facing the prospect of his own death. Mortality was not a concept that played any part in our existence. We were still young enough to be immortal.

And then he saw what he was, an old man, ready to die, pressed against the Greenland earth, as small as an ash berry on the face of a mountain, and he did the only thing that men can do when they know themselves, which was to weep and weep and weep.

It was the exact combination of the ephemeral and the eternal that a dying man needed to know about.

It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.

I don't want a new man. I'll be dead someday, my mother said. And then what? You'll wish you had someone. I have a hamster.

A man who does not know fear cannot die, because death has no place to enter." Vernon

Women grow up wary, and men grow up thinking they're immortal.

Death isn't such a big deal when it's happening to someone else.

Maybe that's why God gave us death. So, we remember to love what's alive.

It wasn't awful to be dead. The stillness would almost be a relief. She wouldn't want pain, she wouldn't want to be wounded or mutilated. She could never shoot herself or jump off a building. But being dead wasn't unthinkable.