Quotes About Mortality

The room was cold as the grave.

Walters looked quizzically at Morse, who sat reading one of the glossy 'porno' magazines he had brought from upstairs. "You still sex-mad, I see, Morse," said the surgeon. "I don't seem to be able to shake it off, Max." Morse turned over a page. "And you don't improve much either, do you? You've been examining all our bloody corpses for donkey's years, and you still refuse to tell us when they died.

As a boy, he had been moved by those words of the dying Socrates, suggesting that if death were just one long, unbroken, dreamless sleep, then a greater boon could hardly be bestowed upon mankind.

Primejdie! Ne b?l?cim cu toÈ›ii în bezna morÈ›ii, în ea dispare mereu câte un cap...

He who knew how to live should know how to die.

What are men? Mortal gods. What are gods? Immortal men.

For the best men choose one thing above all—immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.

Gods live past our meager death. We die past their ceaseless living.

Immortals are mortal, mortals are immortal, living the others' death, being dead in the others' life.

The luckiest men die worthwhile deaths

When they are born, they wish to live and to meet with their dooms - or rather to rest - and they leave children behind them to meet with their dooms in turn.

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.

Time is that which a man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

Zo,' zeg ik, 'hier zitten we dan. We mogen niet ontevreden zijn. Vele mensen zitten hier niet. Ze sterven in oorlogen, verhongeren in martelkampen, creperen als vliegen, je weet wel. Nee, we moeten ons lot niet meteen vervloeken, wij.' 'Wat? Waarom zeg je dat?' 'Omdat het waar is. De waarheid heeft haar rechten, Inge.' 'Ik heb niet graag dat je zulke dingen zegt.' 'Toch zeg ik ze.

Ik heb het tijdelijke met het eeuwige vaak genoeg verwisseld in mijn poëzie om te weten dat ik het tijdelijke wil.

72. Things upon Earth, do not advantage those in Heaven; but all things in Heaven do profit and advantage all things upon Earth.

know my days are numbered, but not every day is a real number.

AM I know my days are numbered, but not every day is a real number.

I used to fully commit to finishing a book, even if I disliked it. But since realizing that I am, in a general way, dying, I've decided there isn't enough time to finish books that weren't meant for me. Who thought finitude could be so liberating?

The saddest aspect of life is that there is no one on earth whose happiness is such that he won't sometimes wish he were dead rather than alive.

When the rich give a party and the meal is finished, a man carries round amongst the guests a wooden image of a corpse in a coffin, carved and painted to look as much like the real thing as possible, and anything from 18 inches to 3 foot long; he shows it to each guest in turn, and says: "Look upon this body as you drink and enjoy yourself; for you will be just like it when you are dead." [Herodotus 'Histories', II 82]

To combat death you don't need much of a life, just one that isn't yet finished.

My flesh was burning where the skin was scraped off my knees, and I was afraid that I couldn't be alive anymore with so much pain, and at the same time I knew I was alive because it hurt. I was afraid that death would find its way into me through this open knee and I quickly covered my knee with my hands.

Yo miro a la abuela, no su cara, sino sus manos. Todos los tendones están tensos, ya no hay carne en esas manos, tan sólo huesos y piel reseca. La muerte podría inmovilizarlas en cualquier momento, pero aún se mueven cuando reza, y el rosario susurra entre ellas.