I cannot forgive my friends for dying; I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) American-English essayist, editor, anthologist
Afterthoughts, ch. 2 “Age and Death” (1931)
(Source)
Quotations about:
mortality
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
CATO: The soul, secur’d in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 5, sc. 1, l. 124ff (1713)
(Source)
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.
And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal but themselves.Edward Young (1683-1765) English poet
The Complaint: Or, Night Thoughts, Vol. 1, No. 1 “Night the First: On Death, Life, and Immortality,” l. 418ff (1742-05) (1744)
(Source)
Death be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.John Donne (1572-1631) English poet
Holy Sonnets, No. 10, “Death Be Not Proud,” ll. 1-4 (1609)
(Source)
Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says; “I am coming.”
[Pereat qui crastina curat.
Mors aurem vellens Vivite, ait, venio.]Virgil (70-19 BC) Roman poet [b. Publius Vergilius Maro; also Vergil]
“Copa [The Dancing Girl / The Barmaid / The Female Tavern Keeper],” ll. 37-38, Appendix Vergiliana [Minor Poems]
(Source)
The Appendix Vergiliana were long considered authentic, if younger, poems by Virgil, but scholars today consider them to be by other, unknown authors from around the 1st Century AD, collected in Late Antiquity.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., quoted the line in a radio address on his ninetieth birthday (1931-03-08), as noted below.
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:
Away with him who heeds the morrow! Death, plucking the ear, cries: "Live; I come!"
[tr. Fairclough (1908)]
Let him perish who
Doth care about to-morrow. Death your ear
Demands and says, "I come, so live to-day."
[tr. Mooney (1916)]
Death plucks my ear and says, Live -- I am coming.
[tr. Holmes (1931)]
Never mind tomorrow. In my ear
Death whispers: "Live! I'm coming. I am here!"
[tr. Slavitt (2011)]
Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
William Saroyan (1908-1981) American writer
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories, Preface (1934)
(Source)
Advice to writers.
This life we have is short, so let us leave a mark for people to remember.
Kip Keino (b. 1940) Kenyan athlete [Kipchoge Keino]
(Attributed)
On why he adopted and educated 69 orphan children.
Think not thy time short in this World since the World itself is not long. The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity, and a short interposition for a time between such a state of duration, as was before it and may be after it.
Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Christian Morals, Part 3, sec. 24 (1716)
(Source)
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-American poet and philosopher [Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruíz de Santayana y Borrás]
Soliloquies in England, “War Shrines” (1922)
People living deeply have no fear of death.
And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
‘Tis that I may not weep.
