#mortality

If you wish your children, and your wife, and your friends to live for ever, you are stupid; for you wish to be in control of things which you cannot.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Death gives life its true seriousness and urgency. If we were immortal, we could postpone every decision forever.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.

The duration of our passions depends no more upon ourselves than does the duration of our lives.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Living is in the present; dying is in the future. Live with death as your constant companion, and you will live intensely.

The clay says to the potter: You trample me today; but a day will come when I shall trample you under the earth.

Do not collect stones and build a fortress of pride; the moment the breath departs, you depart alone and empty-handed.

An inch of time is an inch of gold, but ten thousand ounces of gold cannot buy back an inch of time.

Time does not pass away; it is we who are passing away.

Death smiles upon every mortal; all that a noble human can do is smile back with dignity.

Cattle die, kinsmen die, and you yourself must die; but the fair fame of an honorable life never dies.

Time and the ocean tide wait for no mortal king.

There is no death, only a change of sacred worlds.

A person doesn't die when he should, but when he can.

Whenever you are afraid, try to explore, and you will find death hiding somewhere behind. All fear is of death.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.

He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if you have no sensation, neither will you have any harm.

Do not despise death, but be well pleased with it, since it is one of the things which nature wills.

Remember how brief is the span of a mortal life, and how great the abyss of the infinite past and future.

Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will set, and you with it.

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

All things are changing; you yourself are in continuous mutation and in a manner dying every day.

Death is the release from all pain and the boundary beyond which our troubles cannot pass.