"What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these will soon enough be anachronisms, and the machines in which we now take inordinate pride will seem no less bathetic than Yorick's skull."

Mortality, Death, Modernity, Change, Faith

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"What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these will soon enough be anachronisms, and the machines in which we now take inordinate pride will seem no less bathetic than Yorick's skull."

Exlpore more Mortality quotes

"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it?"

Robert A. Heinlein, American Writer

Mortality, Life, Death, Uncertainty, Afterlife

"Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly."

Elbert Hubbard, American Writer

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"We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones."

Richard Dawkins, English Scientist

Mortality, Death, Luck, Life

"Alive ridiculous and dead forgot?"

Alexander Pope, English Poet

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"Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then-our friends are not able to finish their stories."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

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"He was going to die soon, you knew when you saw those eyes. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest traces of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all furniture and fixtures have been removed and which awaited now only its final demolition."

Haruki Murakami, Japanese Writer

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"Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating. Funeral marches to the grave."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American Poet

Mortality, Time, Life, Heart

"Certain aspects of dying are still a mystery to me now, but as I grow and study life more, the end of my life becomes more of a certain truth."

Innocent Mwatsikesimbe, Swedish Businessman

Mortality, Death, Truth, Acceptance

"Are-you dying?" she asked."Just can't breathe. This air.""Poor, poor-good lord. I've forgotten your name.""Hell of a thing.""Barney!"He clutched her."No! Don't stop!" She arched her back. Her teeth chattered."I wasn't going to," he said. "Oooaugh!"He laughed."Don't please laugh at me.""Not meant unkindly."A long silence, then. Then, "Oof."

Philip K. Dick, American Writer

Mortality, Dying, Name, Silence, Passion

"All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral-both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere."

Marcus Aurelius, Roman Soldier

Mortality, Memory, Impermanence, Life

Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton

"Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfAated but life-enhancing thoughts."

Travel

"Curiosity takes ignorance seriously, and is confident enough to admit when it does not know. It is aware of not knowing, and it sets out to do something about it."

Curiosity

"It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships."

Ambition

"Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don't know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate."

Commitment

"Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom."

Life

"Being political doesn't only or principally mean caring what party wins the next election, to be political is to care about the happiness of strangers."

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"The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent."

Politics

"We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves -- that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) -- who want to lead the sort of life which we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us. An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments."

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"The essence of art is that its one case applies to thousands,' knew Schopenhauer."

Art

"I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths."

Religion