Quotes about Mortality

Benjamin Franklin

Polymath, Founding Father of the United States

Take Courage, Mortal; Death can't banish thee out of the Universe.

Mortality

Share as Image

Herman Melville

Novelist, Poet

That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped.

Man - Mortality

Share as Image

Dante Alighieri

Poet

And here Dante describes an evidently spherical world... "The lamp of the world [the sun] rises to mortals through different passages; but through that which joins four circles with three crosses [the position of the rising sun at the vernal equinox] it issues with a better course and conjoined with better stars, and tempers and stamps the wax of the world more after its own fashion. Although such an outlet had made morning there and evening here, and all the hemisphere there was bright, and the other dark..."

Evening - Fashion - Making - Mornings - Mortality - World

Share as Image

Deepak Chopra

Author, Public Speaker, Alternative Medicine Advocate

The secrets of alchemy exist to transform mortals from a state of suffering and ignorance to a state of enlightenment and bliss.

Enlightenment - Ignorance - Mortality - Secrets - Spiritual - State - Suffering

Share as Image

John Milton

Poet, Civil Servant

Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?

Breathing - Earth - Enchantment - Mortality

Share as Image

Andrew Jackson

Soldier, Former President of the United States

I cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid in a repository prepared for an Emperor or a King my republican feelings and principles forbid it the simplicity of our system of government forbids it.

Consent - Empires - Feelings - Forbidden - Government - Mortality - Preparedness - Principle - Simple

Share as Image

Homer

Poet

Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.

Hate - Man - Mortality - Submission

Share as Image

Herman Melville

Novelist, Poet

Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

Mortality

Share as Image

Bodhidharma

Buddhist Monk, 1st Chan Patriarch

Mortals liberate Buddhas and Buddhas liberate mortals.

Mortality

Share as Image

Augustine of Hippo

Theologian, Philosopher

I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.

Conditioning - Loss - Misery - Mortality - Overcome - Soul - State

Share as Image

Emile M. Cioran

Philosopher

I try--without success--to stop finding reasons for vanity in anything. When I happen to manage it nonetheless, I feel that I no longer belong to the mortal gang. I am above everything then, above the gods themselves. Perhaps that is what death is: a sensation of great, of extreme superiority.

Extreme - Feelings - Finding - Gang - Management - Mortality - Reason - Sensuality - Trial - Vanity

Share as Image

Paramahansa Yogananda

Scientist, Leader, Guru

Death is not as terrible as you think. It comes to you as a healer. Sleep is nothing but a counterfeit death. What happens in death we can picture in sleep. All our sufferings vanish in sleep. When death comes, all our mortal tortures cease; they cannot go beyond the portals of death.

Death - Healing - Mortality - Sleeping - Suffering - Terrible - Thinking

Share as Image

Blaise Pascal

Mathematician, Physicist, Inventor, Theologian

It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!

Certainty - Independence - Morals - Mortality - Philosophy - Principle

Share as Image

George Eliot

Critic, Author, Novelist

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people-amongst whom your life is passed-that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire-for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.

Ability - Accept - Admiration - Compassion - Dispose - Good - Mortality - Movement - People - Stupid - Tolerance - Ugly - Wit

Share as Image

William Shakespeare

Poet, Playwright, Actor

I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.

Man - Mortality - State

Share as Image

Herman Melville

Novelist, Poet

Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

Foolishness - Mortality - Sailing

Share as Image

Jane Austen

Writer, Novelist

A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.

Man - Mortality - Wishing

Share as Image

Charles Dickens

Writer, Social Critic

"It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals," said he, "to be looking into a churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here. Nothing uses me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel."

Feelings - Lie - Man - Mortality - Sensuality - Spirits

Share as Image

William James

Philosopher, Psychologist, Educator

I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

Deal - Giving - Loss - Love - Man - Mortality - Pretense - Rational - Reject

Share as Image

Johannes Kepler

Astronomer, Mathematician, Astrologer

...Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind. God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts... and if piety allow us to say so, our understanding is in this respect of the same kind as the divine, at least as far as we are able to grasp something of it in our mortal life.

Ability - Creativity - Human - Kindness - Mindset - Mortality - Sharing - Wants

Share as Image