#mortality

I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses,but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief. "And you so intelligent!" "Excuse me?" said tom "Knowing those things are going to kill you" she said "and still you do it." "How differently I might behave" Tom said, "if immortality were an option ↗

— Stephen Fry

#smoking #witty #intelligence

(there is) no other means of escaping from one's consciousness than to deny it, to look upon it as an organic disease of the terrestrial intelligence - a disease which we must endeavor to cure by an action which must appear to us an action of violent and willful madness, but which, on the other side of our appearances, is probably an action of health. ("Of Immortality") ↗

— Maurice Maeterlinck

#immortality #madness #intelligence

As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragitlity. ↗

— Iris Murdoch

#mortality #life

Perhaps life is like an hour glass, with dear ones the sand that slips from the upper glass--the earth--into the second--eternity. ↗

— Margaret George

#mortality #time #life

Que la vida es inmortal mientras se vive, mientras se está con vida. Que la inmortalidad no es una cuestión de más o menos tiempo, que no es una cuestión de inmortalidad, que es una cuestión de otra cosa que permanece ignorada. Que es tan falso decir que carece de principio y de fin como decir que empieza y termina en la vida del alma desde el momento en que participa del alma y de la prosecución del viento. Mirad las arenas muertas del desierto, el cuerpo muerto de los niños: la inmortalidad no pasa por ahí, se detiene y los esquiva. ↗

— Marguerite Duras

#life-lessons #life

The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#hospital #mortality #sickness #souls #relationship

I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality. ↗

— H.P. Lovecraft

#immortality #materialism #naturalism #religion #supernatural

My father had the spirit and integrity of a scientist, but he was a salesman. I remember asking him the question "How can a man of integrity be a salesman?" He said to me, "Frankly, many salesmen in the business are not straightforward--they think it's a better way to sell. But I've tried being straightforward, and I find it has its advantages. In fact, I wouldn't do it any other way. If the customer thinks at all, he'll realize he has had some bad experience with another salesman, but hasn't had that kind of experience with you. So in the end, several customers will stay with you for a long time and appreciate it. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#humor-inspirational #integrity-in-science #integrity-of-a-salesman #integrity-of-a-scientist #life-inspirational

You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev. Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied. 'Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently. 'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal! ↗

— Mikhail Bulgakov

#fame #immortality #reputation #confidence

[A] finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#fame #immortality #unfinished-works #writing #literary-criticism