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Quotes About Mortality

Terrifying encounters with the end? I'm thirty-four! Worry about oblivion, he told himself, when you're seventy-five! The remote future will be time enough to anguish over the ultimate catastrophe!
~ Philip Roth
The profusion of the stars told him unambiguously that he was doomed to die
~ Philip Roth
Life is just a short period of time in which we are alive.
~ Philip Roth
La vejez no es una batalla; la vejez es una masacre.
~ Philip Roth
Perchè solo quando scopi riesci a vendicarti, anche se solo per un momento, di tutto ciò che non ami nella vita e di tutte le cose che nella vita ti hanno sconfitto. Solo allora sei più nettamente vivo e più nettamente te stesso. [...] Il sesso non è semplice frizione e divertimento superficiale. Il sesso è anche la vendetta sulla morte.
~ Philip Roth
And he couldn't do it. He could not fucking die. How could he leave? How could he go? Everything he hated was here.
~ Philip Roth
Çünkü herkes gibi onun da ba??na gelecek. Çünkü hayat?n en rahats?z edici gücü, ölümdür. Çünkü ölüm çok adaletsizdir. Çünkü insan bir defa yaÅŸam?n tad?na var?nca ölüm dahi gözükmez ona...
~ Philip Roth
L'incanto irresistibile che continuiamo a esercitare, fino alla fine, con la superficie del nostro corpo […] si dimostra la cosa più seria che c'è nella vita. Il corpo, del quale uno non si può spogliare per quanti sforzi faccia, del quale è impossibile liberarsi fino alla morte.
~ Philip Roth
You can store us like shoes or ship us like lettuce. The simpleton who invented the coffin was a poetic genius and a great wit.
~ Philip Roth
TE OCCIDERE POSSUNT SED TE EDERE NON POSSUNT NEFAS EST
~ David Foster Wallace
If we're the only animals who know in advance we're going to die, we're also probably the only animals who would submit so cheerfully to the sustained denial of this undeniable and very important truth.
~ David Foster Wallace
They dont understand what real treasure is. They see it in gold and copper, and tin. They see in herds of horses or cattle. They gather treasures to themselves, building great storehouses, which they guard ferociously. Then they die. What good is it then?
~ David Gemmell
We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die.
~ David Gemmell
Not one of the creatures of blood can escape death. We all face it, and succumb to it. It follows us like a dark shadow. Yet if we live in terror of it, then we do not live at all. Yes we are born alone, and yes we will die alone. But in between, Tae, we live. We know joy.
~ David Gemmell
True. The one certainty about riding, Braygan, is that - at some time - you will fall off. It is a fact. Another fact you might like to consider, in your life of perpetual terror, is that you will die. We are all going to die, some of us young, some of us old, some of us in our sleep, some of us screaming in agony. We cannot stop it, we can only delay it.
~ David Gemmell
If we are still discussing its merits tomorrow, I will agree with you, said Diagoras. Cheer up, laddie. Nobody lives forever. Oh I expect you will, Druss, Old Horse. It's the mortals around you who always seem to kiss the granite.
~ David Gemmell
Yes, it would have been good, he thought, to spend quiet years with his family, waiting for his diseased heart to fail as he sat in his chair staring at the mountains. But this was better. This was life! Not the killing and the terrified screams of dying men suddenly facing the awesome spectre of their own mortality. No, but to face his fears as a man, to stand at the brink of the abyss and refuse to be cowed or beaten down.
~ David Gemmell
Death haunts everyone and never fails
~ David Gemmell
The truth? What the Hell is the truth? We're born, we live and we die. Everything else is just shades of opinion.
~ David Gemmell
Risks? I have lived with the prospect of assassination for years. What risks? All men die, rich and poor alike. But if I am to die, then let it be while I fight, not like some bullock in a pen waiting for the ax to fall.
~ David Gemmell
We are not made for life at all, old horse. It is made for us. We live it. We leave it.
~ David Gemmell
No one ever gets out of this life alive.
~ David Gemmell
Is it not obvious? What is life but a betrayal? We start out young, full of hope. The sun is good, the world awaits us. But every passing year shows how small you are, how insignificant against the power of the seasons. Then you age. Your strength fails and the world laughs at you through the jeers of younger men. And you die. Alone. Unfulfilled. But sometimes . . . sometimes there will come a man who is not insignificant. He can change the world, rob the seasons of their power. He is the sun.
~ David Gemmell
Man alone, it seems, lives all his life in the knowledge of death. And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death. For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose. A man must pass something on—otherwise he is useless. "For most men that purpose revolves around marriage and children
~ David Gemmell