#mortality

My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings, all these data, if that helps to clinch the enormity of what I'm talking about, would be gone. And that's what immortality means. It means selfishness. My generations belief that each one of us matters more than you or anyone else would think. ↗

— Gary Shteyngart

#belief #generation #immortality #selfish #selfishness

I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head. ↗

— Omar Khayyám

#caesar #flowers #hyacinth #mortality #rose

A popular Harvard business professor urged his students to read the obituaries in the New York Times before they read anything else, in order to learn from the lives of great men. ↗

— Georges F. Doriot

#mortality #perspective #business

Are your principles not engraved in all hearts, and in order to learn your laws is it not enough to go back into oneself and listen to the voice of one's conscience in the silence of the passions? There you have true philosophy. Let us learn to be satisfied with that, and without envying the glory of those famous men who are immortalized in the republic of letters, let us try to set between them and us that glorious distinction which people made long ago between two great peoples: one knew how to speak well; the other how to act well. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#athens #conscience #ethics #immortality #morality

Let me go: take back thy gift: Why should a man desire in any way To vary from the kindly race of men, Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance Where all should pause, as is most meet for all? ...Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears, And make me tremble lest a saying learnt, In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true? ‘The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’ - Tithonus ↗

— Alfred Tennyson

#destiny #gifts #gods #immortality #death

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#grammar #mortality #nouns #writing #death

Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you. Have you given much thought to our mortal condition? Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen. All mortals owe a debt to death. There's no one alive who can say if he will be tomorrow. Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery. No one can teach it, no one can grasp it. Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink! But don't forget Aphrodite--that's one sweet goddess. You can let the rest go. Am I making sense? I think so. How about a drink. Put on a garland. I'm sure the happy splash of wine will cure your mood. We're all mortal you know. Think mortal. Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life, it's just catastrophe. ↗

— Anne Carson

#cheer #comedy #death #happiness #life

I have never believed that God “makes” bad things happen. Death happens to everyone, not as a punishment, but because we are not meant to stay on this earth forever. As a result we are vulnerable rather than invincible, as is the earth we live on. And if our soul is immortal, we move forward knowing we can all be together again one day. ↗

— John Pete

#god #immortality #john-pete #religion #death

Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud- Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud? ↗

— William Knox

#mortality #philosophy #poem #poetry #poets

Dreams link us to those who have already left this life. ↗

— Doug Dillon

#dreams #dying #immortality #inspiration #metaphysical