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Mortality Quotes

Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.

That which is alive hath known death, and that which is dead can never die, for in the Circle of the...

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And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love...

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Shall a mangrave his sorrows upon a stone when he hath but need to write them onthe water? Nay, oh /...

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The democratic age mourns the value of human beings.

Picture of Harold Bloom
Harold BloomThe Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

And then it struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so firmly pla...

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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its stud

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."]

O, never from the memory of my heartYour dear, paternal image shall depart,Who while on earth, ere y...

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Picture of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowThe Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only w...

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All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of...

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All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only w...

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In whatever disease sleep is laborious, it is a deadly symptom; but if sleep does good, it is not de...

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Pale death kicks with impartial foot at the hovels of the poor and the towers of kings.

Picture of Horace
HoraceThe Odes of Horace

It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative len...

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As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of non...

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Picture of Iris Murdoch
Iris MurdochNuns and Soldiers

I must indeed abide the Doom of Men whether I will or nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to y...

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Though mortal Men have little life beside the span of the Elves, they would rather spend it in battl...

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For nothing is evil in the beginning.

Picture of J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. TolkienThe Fellowship of the Ring

Yet at the last Beren was slain by the Wolf that came from the gates of Angband, and he died in the ...

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It isn't about being fair and equal. It's about the difference between right and wrong." He stared o...

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When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children.

I know what the fear is.The fear is not for what is lost.What is lost is already in the wall.What is...

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If you want to live forever you are dreadfully dangerous because you're not living now.

J
Joanna RussWe Who Are About To...

You will die, and I, and all we can create—why not a city? But if there is one thing that deserves t...

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If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, i...

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In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all b...

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Nothing can last forever. There isn't any memory, no matter how intense, that doesn't fade out at la...

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The fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This ...

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Puis il réfléchit: la réalité ne coïncide habituellement pas avec les prévisions; avec une logique p...

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Let not the rash marble riskgarrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,in many words recallingname...

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Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.

I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling wh...

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There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there ...

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Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But i...

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There is one question George is asked about life and art and which is more important, and George sai...

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The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked ...

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Picture of Lance Armstrong
Lance ArmstrongIt's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

In the depths of his soul Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying... he simply did not, he could not poss...

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Here we are, alone again. It's all so slow, so heavy, so sad. . . I'll be old soon. Then at last it ...

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If we all knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we's t...

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How is it possible to write one's autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this?

All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral—both mem...

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Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, t...

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I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate...

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he had offered some of his own background. A youth in the South. An education in the North. Bred for...

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The other day as I was stepping out of Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue with some pork ribs under my...

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Man is mortal, and as the professor so rightly said mortality can come so suddenly

Picture of Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail BulgakovThe Master and Margarita

Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes ...

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Picture of Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail BulgakovThe Master and Margarita

He looks at houses, chateaus, forests, and thinks about the countless generations who used to see th...

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The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', b...

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Picture of Mitch Albom
Mitch AlbomHave a Little Faith: a True Story

Each of us is merely a small instrument; all of us, after accomplishing our mission, will disappear.

Picture of Mother Teresa
Mother TeresaIn the Heart of the World: Thoughts

Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

They live forever. But many of them are even more lonely and miserable than we are. Why do you think...

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I had to ride my bike to and from their god damn plant way up north in the high-chemical crime distr...

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Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time.

Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face the...

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Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon, Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, The Wine of Life keeps oo...

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The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

Picture of Omar Khayyám
Omar KhayyámRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spinThe Thread of present Life away to win-What? for ourselves, wh...

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Picture of Omar Khayyám
Omar KhayyámRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As lo...

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He wasn't supposed to die,' he cried out, somewhat desperately, petulantly, like a spoiled child. Bu...

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I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and ...

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Love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal.

An Arundel TombSide by side, their faces blurred,The earl and countess lie in stone,Their proper hab...

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Simple was never that simple. Still, the self-questioning did take some time to reach him. And if th...

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A man who's discontents were barely known to himself, awakening in middle age to the horror of self-...

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I sat wondering: Why is there always this deep shade of melancholy over the fields arid river banks,...

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Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,like winter, which even now is passing.For be...

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Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,just once. And never again. But to have beenthis...

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We only pass everything by like a transposition of air.

I think Dad wanted to feel the pain, to feel his body cry, an urgent reminder that he was still aliv...

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R
Raquel CepedaBird of Paradise: How I Became Latina

The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illne...

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To die trying is the proudest humans thing.

The answer is simple: if you cannot find meaning inherent in life right now, as you live it in this ...

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The battle with the gods thus hinges on our own mortality! Creativity is a yearning for immortality.

Patience was part of his nature, and he accepted his lot as a short-lived mammal, scurrying in and o...

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I write this in the moonlight, straining my ears to hear beyond the cold mechanical clock to the war...

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Picture of Ruth Ozeki
Ruth OzekiA Tale for the Time Being

But then why shouldn't he write the dead? He lived with them as much as with the living - perhaps mo...

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[T]he habit of living as if in the shadow of death has remained with me, and I consider that, too, a...

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I could not turn away from anyone Like you, a stranger, or refuse to help him. I know well, being mo...

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Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What?...

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And perhaps the greatest blessing was that we never knew how short the time was.

This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a...

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The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certai...

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Ignorance of mortality is a comfort.

The human animal is a beast that dies and if he's got money he buys and buys and buys and I think th...

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It’s quite possible that mortality is simply the result of poor education.

At the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of Heaven fills those who are quitting the light o...

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The seeds of life - fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they are weighed down by the bodie...

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Picture of Virgil
VirgilThe Aeneid

The moral sense in mortals is the dutyWe have to pay on mortal sense of beauty.

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridicul...

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Weight him, weight, weight him with the sleepiness of themoon.It was only a glass because he looked ...

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I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric productAnd look at quintillions ripened, and loo...

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There is nothing serious in mortality! Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the...

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Picture of Wilkie Collins
Wilkie CollinsThe Woman in White

Darker and darker, he said; farther and farther yet. Death takes the good, the beautiful, and the yo...

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Death like style is the removal of rubbish.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so...

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What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothin...

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Picture of William Wordsworth
William WordsworthOde: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood

Hence, in a season of calm weatherThough inland far we be,Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Picture of William Wordsworth
William WordsworthOde: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood

Do you believe that you will die? Yes man is mortal I am a man ergo... no that isn't what I mean. I ...

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