"Yet each flower, each twig, each pebble, shines as though illuminated from within, as once before, on her first day in the Garden. It's the stress, it's the adrenalin, it's a chemical effect: she knows this well enough. But why is it built in? she thinks. Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?"

Mortality, Beauty, Death, Stress, Design

10

Create Your Own Wallpaper

Standard

Customized

"Yet each flower, each twig, each pebble, shines as though illuminated from within, as once before, on her first day in the Garden. It's the stress, it's the adrenalin, it's a chemical effect: she knows this well enough. But why is it built in? she thinks. Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?"

Exlpore more Mortality quotes

"Many want to live long, and ignore pangs of eternity."

Toba Beta, Indonesian Author

Mortality, Eternity, Truth, Wisdom, Power

"Life is but a breath. The end of life is the last breath of a man."

Lailah Gifty Akita, Ghanaian Author

Mortality, Breath, Life, End, Man

"Never fear Death for you will feel aroused by his sleep. Never cheat death or he will slap you with a sentence of misery for the defeat."

Suzy Kassem, American Writer

Mortality, Death, Fear, Sleep, Misery

"The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone."

Victor Hugo, French Author

Mortality, Death, Darkness, Silence, Emotion

"The fact that you have just buried your parent or parents and/or sibling or siblings does not make you less likely to die today."

Mokokoma Mokhonoana, South African Philosopher

Mortality, Truth, Life, Death

"Let me tell you something about dying: it's not as bad as they says.it's the coming-back-to-life part that hurts."

Lauren Oliver, American Author

Mortality, Death, Life, Experience, Pain

"I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself."

Mark Twain, American Author

Mortality, Death, Authors, Regret, Legacy

"The thin line between life and death is still under construction."

Santosh Kalwar, Nepalese Poet

Mortality, Life, Death, Uncertainty, Existence

"Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."

William Shakespeare, English Dramatist

Mortality, Death, Truth, Wisdom, Power

"One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death, but I think, as I thought then, that it is better to die violently and not too old."

George Orwell, British Author

Mortality, Life, Death, Violence, Fear

Explore more quotes by Margaret Atwood

"All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard."

Humor

"Things that are falling apart encourage me: whatever else, I'm in better shape than they are."

Positivity

"I shouldn't have taken a vow of silence, I told myself. What did I want? Nothing much. Just a memorial. But what is a memorial, when you come right down to it, but a commemoration of wounds endured? Endured, and resented. Without memory, there can be no revenge."

Memory

"War is what happens when language fails."

War

"All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.All of them?Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist."

Storytelling

"The internet is 95 percent porn and spam."

Emotion

"And if I talk to him, I'll say something wrong, give something away. I can feel it coming, a betrayal of myself."

Humor

"In my dreams of this city I am always lost."

Emotion

"After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken."

Mortality

"The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'"

Beginning