#mortality

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

Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#fathers #mortality #sons #writers #death

Idag samlar vi skor och bilar, igår flintyxor. Utan tvivel har arkeologer funnit betydligt fler flintyxor än vad människan rimligtvis behövde. Jag tror att flintyxorna handlar om en längtan, kanske en rädsla. Om jag bara har tillräckligt många flintyxor, eller skor, eller ett nyrenoverat kök så kan inget ont hända. Det är den där dödsångesten igen. Den otäcka insikten att allt, allt, allt är förgängligt. Jag kommer att dö, men mina flintyxor kommer att finnas kvar. (Och de fanns ju kvar, eller hur? Men vad hjälper det?) ↗

— Ann Heberlein

#death #mortality #death

Often, on the brink of finding the recipe for immortality, I get distracted by the frightful presence of death. ↗

— Héctor Abad Faciolince

#fear #immortality #recipes #death

Forgiveness is healing—everything is energy—thoughts create—we are all connected—what you resist persists—true love never dies—the soul’s immortality is the only true immortality— ↗

— Alyson Noel

#immortality #soul #thoughts #forgiveness

Someday I want to speckle myself into the sky, to stamp heaven with brand-name originality. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #immortality #stars #funny