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Mortality Quotes
"Death would not surprise us as often as it does, if we let go of the misbelief that newborns are less mortal than the elderly."
12
"He dared to explore her withered neck w/his fingertips, her hips w/their decaying bones, her thighs with their aging veins."
12
"Seventy years of life is nothing in front of a single day of death."
12
"Although we amplify our cognitive degree of awareness and enhance our appreciation for life experiences by maturing, it also brings us death. Facing a certain death forces a person to examine the worthiness of continuing to live."
12
"Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such anguish and glee and throw them over the bridge, watching the smash, orange, as they hit below, We were standing underneath when you told it. People do that with themselves when they are finished, light scooped out. He landed here, you said, marking it with your foot.You wouldn't do it that way, empty, you wouldn't wait, you would jump with the light still in you."
11
"If I could out run the Angel of Death I'd probably die from lack of breath!"
11
"After you die, a rare friend or family member may carry your memory throughout life. Most will forget you. As if you were never here."
11
"One can not come back from life."
11
"When the years are dying in the arms of your life,the earth is in pain moving around the sun."
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"Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand."
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"When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying."
11
"You mortal! You time-poor! Don't waste your scarce time to be patient!"
11
"To hear how much of a great human being you were - even if you really weren't - open your ears at your funeral."
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"Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me."
11
"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."
11
"We can learn so much about the living, according to how they treat their dead. And we can see the true colours of people coming out, when we observe how they act and react, to the circumstances that come about after the death of a loved one. Lastly, we learn about the things most important in our lives, when we experience the loss called death. It is extraordinary how death can give back so much to life and to the living."
11
"Nineteenth-century preacher Henry Ward Beecher's last words were "Now comes the mystery." The poet Dylan Thomas, who liked a good drink at least as much as Alaska, said, "I've had eighteen straight whiskeys. I do believe that's a record," before dying. Alaska's favorite was playwright Eugene O'Neill: "Born in a hotel room, and--God damn it--died in a hotel room." Even car-accident victims sometimes have time for last words. Princess Diana said, "Oh God. What's happened?" Movie star James Dean said, "They've got to see us," just before slamming his Porsche into another car. I know so many last words. But I will never know hers."
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"Death is another inevitable consequence of possessing something without its understanding."
11
"One first celebrates a 'silver jubilee', then a 'golden jubilee', then a 'diamond jubilee', but even then he goes back again into a pile of wood (cremation)."
10
"In the last photograph of her, the bullet wound looked like a cheerful summer rose arranged just above her left ear. A few petals had fallen on her kaffan, the white shroud she was wrapped in before she was laid to rest."
10
"I was struck by an awful thought, the kind that cannot be taken back once it escapes into the open air of consciousness; it seemed to me that this was not a place you go to live. It was a place you go to die."
10
"Time is your acquaintance. Life is your friend. Death is your opponent. Eternity is your companion."
10
"The moment one is born, the 'saw starts cutting'. People consider it as death only when the wood breaks in two pieces [during funeral]. But it was being cut from the very beginning."
10
"The youthful body untouched decays the fastest, for no living hands record its splendor; and here youth and time are wasted."
10
"Your only real problem is mortality! No religion can solve this problem, but science can do!"
10
"You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything"and I advise you to do the same."
10
"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?"
10
"Let your only graduation be in the grave."
10
"The one with karma is known as mortal (jiva) and the one without karma is known as Soul (Self, immortal)."
10
"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."
10
"An expensive coffin does not decrease the deceased's chances of going to hell."
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