Quotes about Mortality

Study as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were to die tomorrow.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birth-day of our eternity; and it is the only way to it.

I don't think we are ready to die, any of us, not without being escorted.

Prose, in his experience, calls for many more words than poetry. There is no point in embarking on prose if one lacks confidence that one will be alive the next day to carry on with the task.

When did a sheep last die of old age? Sheep do not own themselves, do not own their lives. They exist to be used, every last ounce of them, their flesh to be eaten, their bones to be crushed and fed to poultry. Nothing escapes, except perhaps the gall bladder, which no one will eat. Descartes should have thought of that. The soul, suspended in the dark, bitter gall, hiding.

So what is it, he thought, that binds me to this spot of earth as if to a home I cannot leave? We must all leave home, after all, we must all leave our mothers. Or am I such a child, such a child from such a line of children, that none of us can leave, but have to come back to die here with our heads upon our mothers' laps, I upon hers, she upon her mother's, and so back and back, generation upon generation?

The truth of the matter is, you die, all you do is die, and yet you live, yes you live, and that's no Harvard lie.

You dont have to know a soul to know what I know --- to expect what I'm expecting --- to feel yourself alive and dying in your chest every minute of the livelong day --- When you're young you wanta cry, when you're old you wanta die. But that's too deep for you now, Ti mon Pousse

grasping after life as much as you can because of its sweet sadness and because you would be dead some day.

Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.

On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.

When the lungs finally empty of air and begin to fill with the sweetness of heaven's breath, one will realize in that instant that thought they have existed before, only in that moment will they truly have begun to live.