Quotes About Mortality

Elsewhere, Marcus suggests that when we know our death is at hand, we can ease our anguish on leaving this world by taking a moment to reflect on all the annoying people we will no longer have to deal with when we are gone.

there is nothing important, nothing serious, nor wretched either, in the whole outfit of life.

I must die. If forthwith, I die; and if a little later, I will take lunch now,

Like Buddhists, Stoics advise us to contemplate the world's impermanence. "All things human," Seneca reminds us, "are short-lived and perishable."19

everything we value and the people we love will someday be lost to us. If nothing else, our own death will deprive us of them. More generally, we should keep in mind that any human activity that cannot be carried on indefinitely must have a final occurrence.

He who shall teach the child to doubtThe rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

Little Fly, Thy summer's play My thoughtless hand Has brush'd away. Am I not A fly like thee? Or are thou not A man like me?

They, whether steel kings or Bonapartes, cannot, after a certain age, endure solitude. For it is the solitude, even though strictly relative in the majority of cases, that kills them, or sends them on the road to Waterloo.

I stood there in the kitchen, watching her staring across the meadow still searching for her nemesis and I thought, suddenly, that this is all our lives - this is the one fact that applies to us all, that makes us what we are, our common mortality, our common humanity. One day someone is going to come and take us away: you don't need to have been a spy, I thought, to feel like this.

We're not ready for it - for people our age to die. We think we're safe for a while, but it's a dream. No one's safe.

Well, that's the point, isn't it? We are all sorry for what is inevitable. Piece by piece it is taken away from us. We appear to bargain, but it all comes to the same thing in the end. Death and condolences.

From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.

What shall I do for pretty girlsNow my old bawd is dead?

On limestone quarried near the spotBy his command these words are cut:Cast a cold eyeOn life, on death.Horseman, pass by!

Wine comes in at the mouthAnd love comes in at the eye;That's all we shall know for truthBefore we grow old and die.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clasp its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress.

That is no country for old men. The youngIn one another's arms, birds in the trees—Those dying generations—at their song,The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer longWhatever is begotten, born, and dies.Caught in that sensual music all neglectMonuments of unaging intellect.

The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.

THOUGH you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time's bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes.

I am still of [the] opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood--sex and the dead.

My fugitive years are all hasting away, And I must ere long lie as lowly as they, With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head, Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead. 'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can, To muse on the perishing pleasures of man; Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments I see, Have a being less durable even than he.

Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man.

So live, that when thy summons comes to joinThe innumerable caravan which movesTo that mysterious realm, where each shall takeHis chamber in the silent halls of death,Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothedBy an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,Like one that wraps the drapery of his couchAbout him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;