Quotes About Mortality

The biggest fear of my life is living. My second biggest fear is dying.

Bedenkt: Den eignen Tod, den stirbt man nur; doch mit dem Tod der andern muss man leben.

While there's life, there's fear.

Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.

Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.

The time I kill is killing me.

The same goes even for death itself: it cannot be a bad thing, because you will not be there when it arrives.

Epictetus. The words in questions were, I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived—and dying I will tend to later.

We are born only once and cannot be born twice, and must forever live no more. You don't control tomorrow, yet you postpone joy. Life is ruined by putting things off, and each of us dies without truly living. —Epicurus, Principal Doctrines

La vida se desperdicia con los vivos

Luchar contra la muerte no significa ir a verla de cerca. El único modo de matar a la muerte es seguir vivo.(...) La sombra funciona como una especie de vacuna, contiene la muerte, pero tú no debes tocarla

Quién conoce, cuando se despierta, que aquél va a ser el día de su muerte?

La muerte, que a todos nos pone cerco desde el nacimiento, sólo es un trance, un suceso que puede propiciarse sin remilgos

Qué tienen los restos humanos que provocan un terror tan básico e irracional? Sólo eran huesos, los mismos huesos que llevamos dentro de nuestros cuerpos durante toda la vida formando nuestro esqueleto. ¿Por qué daban tanto miedo cuando no tenían carne encima? Quizá porque nos recordaban que no íbamos a vivir para siempre.

Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind - filled with a strong desire to wander.

In this world of ours, We eat only to cast out, Sleep only to wake, And what comes after all that Is simply to die at last.

Everyone in this house has gray hair, walks with a cane, visits the graveyard

In the cicada's cry There's no sign that can foretell How soon it must die.

??? ???? ??? The summer grasses— For many brave warriors The aftermath of dreams. - Donald Keene, Travelers of a Hundred Ages, New York, 1999, p. 316 (Translation: Donald Keene)

Every exhalation is an expulsion of some part of our finite store of life, and also a sigh of relief that the grave is closer by one tedious, depressing pulse...Each time we breathe, we fear that it's our last breath and it will chill us all the way to the void.

The fact that everyone's days were numbered, and it didn't matter if you were in premier class or worked in housekeeping. Those were only costumes people wore. And once you stripped them away you saw the truth. This giant ocean and this dark pressing sky. We only have a few minutes, but the unexplainable world is constant and forever marching forward.

If getting drunk was how people forgot they were mortal, then hangovers were how they remembered.

To experience beauty on Earth, you needed to experience pain and to know mortality. That is why so much that is beautiful on this planet has to do with time passing and the Earth turning. Which might also explain why to look at such natural beauty was to also feel sadness and a craving for a life unlived.

It seems impossible to live without hurting people.' 'That's because it is.' 'So why live at all?' 'Well, in fairness, dying hurts people too.