Quotes About Mortality

And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?

You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease asking.

Cor, what a godawful stink!" That was all that remained of this man in the land of the living.

Now they are playing." (He heard through the door the distant sound of a song and its accompaniment.) "It's all the same to them, but they will die too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them. And now they are merry... the beasts!

In the depths of his heart he knew that he was dying but, so far from growing used to the idea, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort? How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud!

The answer was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease asking.

When you've grasped the fact that today or tomorrow you will die and nothing will be left of you, everything becomes so insignificant.

Three days and nights of awful suffering and death. Why, that may at once, any minute, come upon me too.

At the bottom of his heart Ivan Ilych knew that he was dying; but so far from growing used to this idea, he simply did not grasp it - he was utterly unable to grasp it.

I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten-death.

But the more he strained to think, the clearer it became to him that it was undoubtedly so, that he had actually forgotten, overlooked in his life one small circumstance - that death would come and everything would end, that it was not worth starting anything and that nothing could possibly be done about it. Yes, it was terrible, but it was so.

How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am near sixty, dear friend . . . I too . . . All will end in death, all! Death is awful . .

and new conditions of existence will spring up, to which other men will grow just as accustomed, and I shall not know about them, for I shall be no more!

I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten—death." He

Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.

He began to pray, and was obsessed by the fear lest he should die without having done any good in the world; he longed to live, and to live so as to achieve the renunciation of self.

The time for fooling himself was over: something new and dreadful was going on inside Ivan Ilyich, something significant, more significant than anything in his whole life. And he was the only one who knew it; the people around him didn't know, or didn't want to know-they thought that everything in the world was going on as before. This was what tormented Ivan Ilyich more than anything.

What will come from what I do and from what I will do tomorrow—what will come from my whole life? Expressed differently, the question would be this: Why should I live, why should I wish for anything, why should I do anything? One can put the question differently again: Is there any meaning in my life that wouldn't be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?

the mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent feeling that, "it is he who is dead and not I.

It is no good deceiving oneself. It is all -- vanity! Happy is he who has not been born: death is better than life, and one must free oneself from life.

long. I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false.

And should there be nothing left but to die?" he thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it no worse than others.

maggot gnaws the cabbage, but it dies before it's done; so the old folks used to say," he added