Past humanity is not only implicit in each new man born but is contained in him. Humanity is an ever-widening spiral and life is the beam that plays briefly on each succeeding ring. All humanity...

The Earth is an animal that shakes off its fleas when they dig too deep, bite too hard.

This guy has a look on his face like he’s just realized that one day he will most assuredly die. Killing someone has a way of focusing our minds on our own mortality. I mean...

We know from studies that these treatments do reduce mortality considerably, but we were interested in whether they work equally well in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are...

I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet:...

A Cathedral Façade at MidnightAlong the sculptures of the western wallI watched the moonlight creeping:It moved as if it hardly moved at allInch by inch thinly peepingRound on the pious figures of freestone, broughtAnd poised...

Yet human intelligence has another force, too: the sense of urgency that gives human smarts their drive. Perhaps our intelligence is not just ended by our mortality; to a great degree, it is our mortality.

Holly steps back. Being warned about a ghost and seeing him are not the same. ‘What did they do to you?’Some of the Anchorites laugh. Hugo looks back at his long-ago lover. ‘They’-he looks about...

You have to give up! you have to give up!You have to realize that someday you will die,Until you know that, you are useless!

Every soldier in the course of time exists only in the breath of written word.

We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis.

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

Your only real problem is mortality! No religion can solve this problem, but science can do!

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

The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.

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.

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...

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,...

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.

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...

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.

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.