Quotes About Mortality

Biography lends to death a new terror.

I have pleasures, and passions, but the joy of life is gone. I am going under: the morgue yawns for me. I go and look at my zinc-bed there. After all, I had a wonderful life, which is, I fear, over.

When he takes the knife to the canvass the servants find him lying dead with a knife through is heart and withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. and the portrait in all the wonders of his exquisite youth and beauty. p 349

Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it.

I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.

People die of common sense

What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas.

Look, look!" cried the Tree, "the rose is finished now;" but the Nightingale made no answer, for she was lying dead in the long grass, with the thorn in her heart.

I am dying beyond my means

Alas, I'm dying beyond my means

Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it. Why? said the younger man wearily. Because, said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box, one can survive everything nowadays except that.

Because now you are young and beautiful and the whole world loves you. But, some day, you will be old and wrinkled and no-one will give you a second glance. It is a sad fact, but when youth goes, beauty goes with it. If you want my advice, go out and live. Live each day to the full and enjoy all of life's pleasures.

And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.

One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be — though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes will remain — because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone.

your fate is mortal: what you ask for isn't.

ego pulveris hausti ostendens cumulum, quot haberet corpora pulvis, tot mihi natales contingere vana rogavi; excidit, ut peterem iuvenes quoque protinus annos.

Wait for the final day. Call no man happy until he is dead and his body is laid to rest in the grave.

He shimmered out, and I sat up in bed with that rather unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that you're going to die in about five minutes.

Ultimately, the body is just a shell; it is the soul which defines the man or woman, god or goddess.

I want you to live as you would be remembered if you would die tomorrow

I want you to live as you would be remembered if you would die tomorrow, because you might. Then if you do die, your spirit can rest peacefully knowing that you leave behind an honourable memory. If you do not die, then you will have set the foundation for a long life rich with integrity.

In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.

Why is it so hard, the sweetness of the heart of the cherry? Is it because it must die or because it must carry on?

for human beings, not to speak is to die -from The Word