mortality quotes

My gold, my money couldn’t stop cancer from appearing on my body. If they can’t save me, then I don’t need them.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later – yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.

The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I’ve – if it did occur – that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

If anyone thinks they’d rather be in a different part of history, they’re probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You’d probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can’t really understand why it doesn’t obsess everyone – I think it does really, I’m just a little more out about it.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime. I’ve came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

We fear that this moment will end, that we won’t get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

Because I believe in God and have faith in God, it doesn’t mean I am immortal. It doesn’t mean I am immune, as has been claimed. I am as scared as anyone of getting hurt, especially driving a Formula One car.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

It is natural to die as to be born.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

There’s something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

Life is wasted on the living.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

I don’t expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.

How young can you die of old age?

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.