Of all the elements in the periodic table, not a single one is indestructible.

Be Mindful of Death” (Memento Mori)

Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even...

It’s the advantage of the virus to spread, and you can only spread when you infect people and they infect other people without necessarily killing them. So if you had 100 percent mortality, the potential...

The Society wants us to be afraid of dying. But I’m not. I’m only afraid of dying wrong.

Me, I’m living under a sword too, as Jack may have told you. An old wino’s disease, which could lay me in the grave most anytime. Not that I mind too much; I’ve done everything...

I know that two and two make four – and should be glad to prove it too if I could – though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2...

✡ Before aligning the body to the future, the mind has to straighten out from the impairment of religion.

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

I sometimes think that never blows so redThe Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;That every Hyacinth the Garden wearsDropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.

Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch...

The most optimistic part of life is its mortality… God is a real genius.

The great art of life is to moderate our passions. Objects of affection are like other belongings. We must love them enough to enrich our lives while we have them, not enough to impoverish our...

Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;And here, ev’n then, shall my cold dust remain

[A] right understanding that death is nothingto us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to itan infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving forimmortality. For there is...

That morning, he was afraid of becoming old, and it was a very specific kind of old age he feared, one which had nothing to do with the number of years since your birth. He...

I don’t see how you mortals do it, these feelings you must endure. they will ruin you in the end.

Can you hear me? Sighing. You were right. My requiem is well prepared. Still to be written is the poem that is never complete, an endless rubbing on the ink block, an endless dipping of...

Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother,...

Let it all go, one foot in the grave and one bag packed. We shall go to our end in the warm glow of the past, burning up the memories, all the clutter given back.

Phoebe asked me, “Tell me, what do you think of the afterlife?”I was a bit nonplussed. I had no idea what she thought, but I knew that the question must be of greater interest to...

The healthy should be reminded that we are all dying because it is through our own reminder of mortality that we accelerate our good intentions, into actions people can see.

What indeed is the half-life of a mortal consciousness? What is the half-life of a memory of that mortal consciousness? Of course, this is purely an academic question and of no immediate concern to those...

Mortality rose.

On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

All motivation derives from the primary fact of mortality. Take mortality away and motivation loses its…motivation.

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

I Don’t Know whether lust is a human coarseness or a human fineness: I don’t know why death holds a so sweet lure since it would take away my Body: I don’t know that I...

I think Dad wanted to feel the pain, to feel his body cry, an urgent reminder that he was still alive. I pretended not to notice.

I don’t take things for granted, because everything feels more fragile. It’s made me wonder about mortality and how long you’ve got somebody in the world. I’m more fearful than I used to be.

They were obviously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves no longer existed as either mounds or depressions; the years had leveled all. Scattered here and there, more massive blocks showed where some pompous or...

I saw to the south a man walking. He was breaking ground in perfect silence. He wore a harness and pulled a plow. His feet trod his figure’s blue shadow, and the plow cut a...

Strangest problems of life seem clearing; but clouds sweep between–Is my journey’s end coming?

This is to be mortal, And seek the things beyond mortality.

We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That’s our privilege. That’s the joy of a mortal body. And that’s why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through...

Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he’s sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there’s the trick!

Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon, Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

It is the way of mortals. They fling themselves at life and emerge broken.

Fear and hopelessness washed over her. She was looking her own mortality in the face, and it was a horrifying thing to do.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me,...

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

Lo! ’tis a gala nightWithin the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedightIn veils, and drowned in tears,Sit in a theatre, to seeA play of hopes and fears […]

Having always observed that most of them who constantly took in the weekly Bills of Mortality made little other use of them than to look at the foot how the burials increased or decreased, and...

he had offered some of his own background. A youth in the South. An education in the North. Bred for life in the East. Trying not to die in the West.

I’d never understood why anyone would want to live forever. It had always seemed to me that death lent life a certain poignancy, a necessary tension.

Creating is the closest thing to being immortal.

Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it...

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more...

No one can say that death found in me a willing comrade, or that I went easily.