Quotes About Mortality

Realborn go for years without the slightest clue what they're going to do with themselves. From what I understand, some of them never actually figure it out. They just walk through life in a daze and then fall into their graves at the end of it.

She dropped dead mid-sentence, still pissy. On one hand, she really didn't feel it, which I suppose isn't a bad thing. On the other hand, well. I think it came as a surprise to her that she could die.

Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.

Trouble with mice is you always kill 'em.

I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir--but I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver.

We do know that we are cheated from birth to the overcharge on our coffins.

It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better. But it is true that we have exchanged corpulence for starvation, and either one will kill us.

I have seen too many men go down, and I never permit myself to forget that one day, through accident or under the charge of a younger, stronger knight, I too will go down.

Some men ease themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.

Casy said solemnly, This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now his dead, an' that don't matter...

Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice.

so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

Thou wilt die soon and thou are not yet simple nor free from perturbations, nor without suspicion of being hurt by external things, nor kindly disposed towards all; nor dost thou yet place wisdom only in acting justly.

They was havin' the time a their life, an' same time you wouldn' give a gopher for their chance.'' Casy said, "Seems like that's the way. Fella havin' fun, he don't give a damn; but a fella mean an' lonely an' old an' disappointed—he's scared of dyin'!

It's a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man's life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death

Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead.

I wondered why it is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others.

She bought all new underwear. She had a horror of being found dead with mended or, worse, unmended underclothes.

One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter: 'Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.

This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don' know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters.

I can tell all I want about them now because they are all dead and they won't resent the truth about themselves.

Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time.

When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he died unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.