584 Quotes About Mortality

For nothing is evil in the beginning.

Real dishes break. That's how you know they're real.

The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality- and in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.

What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide but existential authenticity each person must find on her own. Getting too deeply into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water. The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.

They really knew how to work this edge, the Dutch painters―ripeness sliding into rot. The fruit’s perfect but it won’t last, it’s about to go. And see here especially,” she said, reaching over my shoulder to trace the air with her finger, “this passage―the butterfly.” The underwing was so powdery an delicate it looked as if the color would smear if she touched it. “How beautiful he plays it. Stillness with a tremble of movement.

Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life―a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple―the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last―it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer―there it is.

Circe, he says, it will be all right.It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. ... He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what is means to be alive.

My son must live. There is no must to the lift of a mortal, except death.

My son must live. There is no must to the life of a mortal, except death.