#mortal

The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality. ↗

— George Santayana

#death #immortality #death

Tombstones covered the dale, the smooth marble surfaces bright. She had spent days here as a teenager, though not out of any awareness of mortality. Like every adolescent, she intended to live forever. ↗

— Thomm Quackenbush

#cemetery #death #immortality #teenager #death

If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution of happiness, strength, and understanding to my being remains to sustain me in an altered world. ↗

— Helen Keller

#grief #hope #immortality #loss #death

We do our job and go. See? That is what Death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple. What's the trouble? ↗

— H.G. Wells

#life #mortality #death

Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death and old age and change. ↗

— Connie Willis

#death

The vampire Dimitri calmly looked up at Reese and smiled. “Commander, everything gets easier over time,” he answered. “Especially if you have all the time that there is. And I do. As a human, you live such a short span of time that you do not learn that life is a continuous battle with one enemy—and that compromise is the only way to ultimately win. Those that do not understand this and think they can control everything; fall to the death of illusion. ↗

— Tony Ruggiero

#death

I could not do this, I realized, if I were immortal. This degree of love of life and of one another is granted, I saw for once and for ever, not to immortals, but to those who live briefly and always under the shadow of death and loss. ↗

— Dan Simmons

#death

The smoke detectors began to ring; for they were battery-powered and thus still functioned, just as a record can still be played after the death of every member of the orchestra. ↗

— William T. Vollmann

#music #time #death

Mortals. I envy you. You think you can change things. Stop the universe. Undo what was done long before you came along. You are such beautiful creatures. ↗

— Kami Garcia

#mortals #beauty

By that I mean, I think that it is true that politics and political heroes have to satisfy our need to be greater than mortal in some way, and that's led them into creating illusions, sound bites, focus groups that tell you what to do. ↗

— Sydney Pollack

#creating #focus #focus groups #greater #groups