Quotes About Mortality

I find myself agreeing with Goethe, who when told he too worked excessively, replied that he had all eternity to rest. Eternity is unavoidable, but until it embraces me, I shall keep myself fully consumed with living.

To learn that a great book has gone out of print is to be reminded of our mortality, because something we have made an intimate part of our emotional selves has been declared, by the publishing world and the culture at large, to be obsolete.

Besides, it's always other people who die.

D'ailleurs c'est toujours les autres qui meurent.

We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

Not caring for their lives' is it? Why, what in the world is there that we should care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never offers us a second time.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.

Everything that seems imperishable tends to extinguishment.

No doubt my books too, like my mortal being, would eventually die, one day. But one has to resign oneself to dying. One accepts the thought that in ten years oneself, in a hundred years one's books, will not exist. Eternal duration is no more promised to books than it is to men.

Were it not for habit, life would seem delightful to beings constantly under threat of dying, in other words to all humankind.

It was evident to me then that I existed in the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die like them, and that among them I was to be distinguished merely as one of those who have no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I renounced literature for ever,

No doubt, having developed the habit, out of idleness, of each day putting off my work until the day after, I thought that death could be dealt with in the same way.

They say that Death embellishes its victims and exaggerates their virtues, but in general it is actually life that wronged them. Death, that pious and irreproachable witness, teaches us, in both truth and charity, that in each man there is usually more good than evil.

She wept over the vanity of her desires, which had so ardently flown to the blossoming flesh that now had already withered forever.

Life is like that little sweetheart. We dream it and we love it in dreaming it. We should not try to live it: otherwise, like that little boy, we will plunge into stupidity, though not at one swoop, for in life everything degenerates by imperceptible nuances. At the end of ten years we no longer recognize our dreams; we deny them, we live, like a cow, for the grass we are grazing on at the moment. And who knows if our wedding with death might not lead to our conscious immortality?

Comme nous ne sommes tous, nous les vivants, que des morts qui ne sont pas encore entrés en fonctions, toutes ces politesses, toutes ces salutations dans le vestibule que nous appelons déférence, gratitude, dévouement et où nous mêlons tant de mensonges, sont stériles et fatigantes.

Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.

Henceforth I flie not Death, nor would prolong   Life much, bent rather how I may be quit   Fairest and easiest of this combrous charge,   Which I must keep till my appointed day   Of rendring up. MICHAEL to him repli'd.     Nor love thy Life, nor hate; but what thou livst   Live well, how long or short permit to Heav'n:

All of me then shall die: let this appease The doubt, since human reach no further knows.

De la întâia neascultare a omului, È™i fructul Copacului oprit, al c?rui gust mortal A adus moartea în lume È™i toat? durerea noastr?, Pentru pierderea Edenului, pân? când un Om mai m?reÈ› Ne va duce înapoi È™i va recâÈ™tiga acest loc minunat.

till we end In dust, our final rest and native home...

Amid the Garden by the Tree of Life,   Remember what I warne thee, shun to taste,   And shun the bitter consequence: for know,   The day thou eat'st thereof, my sole command   Transgrest, inevitably thou shalt dye;   From that day mortal, and this happie State   Shalt loose, expell'd from hence into a World   Of woe and sorrow. Sternly

But of the tree whose operation brings Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set The pledge of thy obedience and thy faith, Amid the garden by the tree of life, Remember what I warn thee. Shun to taste. And shun the bitter consequence. For know, The day thou eatest thereof, my sole command Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt die, From that day mortal; and this happy state Shalt lose, expelled from hence into a world Of woe and sorrow.