IMMORTALITY

Related Subjects: Death, Decay, Eternity, Judgment Day, Life, Salvation, Soul

1. That divinest hope, which none can know of
   Who have not laid their dearest in the grave.—T. L. BEDDOES, Death's Jest Book
   

2. Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.—Bible: Ecclesiastes 12:6
   

3. If a man die, shall he live again?—Bible, Job 14:14
   

4. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.—Bible, Colossians 3:2
   

5. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope
   of the Resurrection unto eternal life.—Book of Common Prayer
   

6. If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn and to make it burst forth from its prison walls, will He leave neglected in the earth the soul of man made in the image of his Creator?—WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, The Prince of Peace
   

7. If matter mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of Nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit, like a royal guest, to this tenement of clay? No. I am assure that there is another life as I am that I live today.—WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, The Prince of Peace
   

8. The voice of Nature loudly cries,
   And many a message from the skies,
   That something in us never dies.—BURNS, New Year's Day
   

9. An immortal like Shakespeare knows nothing of his own immortality about which we are so keenly conscious. As he knows nothing of it when it is in its highest vitality, centuries, it may be, after his apparent death, so it is best and happiest if during his bodily life he should think little or nothing about it and perhaps hardly suspect that he will live after his death at all.—SAMUEL BUTLER, Note-Books
   

10. Every mother who has lost an infant, has gained a child of immortal youth.—G. W. CURTIS, Prue and I
    

11. A voice within us speaks the startling word,
    "Man, thou shalt never die!"—R. H. DANA, Immortality
    

12. Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all
    other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.—DARWIN, Life and Letters
    

13. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.—DARWIN, Life and Letters
    

14. Several incidents in my life have convinced me of spiritual inter­position—of the promptings of some beneficent force outside ourselves, which tries to help us where it can.—CONAN DOYLE, Through the Magic Door
    

15. O may I join the choir invisible
    Of those immortal dead who live again
    In minds made better by their presence.—GEORGE ELIOT, O May I Join the Choir Invisible
    

16. Who knows but life be that which men call death,
    And death what men call life?—EURIPIDES, Phrixus
    

17. Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.—HAWTHORNE, Mosses from an Old Manse
    

18. Not lost, but gone before.—MATTHEW HENRY, Commentaries
    

19. I shall not wholly die.
    What's best of me
    Shall 'scape the tomb.—HORACE, Odes
    

20. Is there beyond the silent night
    An endless day?
    Is death a door that leads to light?
    We cannot say.—ROBERT INGERSOLL, Declaration of the Free
    

21. Every cradle asks us, "Whence?" and every coffin, "Whither?" The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.—ROBERT INGERSOLL
    

22. Oh, write of me, not "Died in bitter pains,"
    But, "Emigrated to another star!"—HELEN HUNT JACKSON, Emigravit
    

23. If survival is a reality, and if, by actual demonstration, the continued existence of higher or mental attributes is proved to be true, then we may expect that life itself even of a low grade, never really goes out of existence—though it need not have an individual or personal existence exccept in its higher grades—and the whole province of biology becomes revolutionized.—SIR OLIVER LODGE, Demonstrated Survival
    

24. Dust thou art to dust returnest,
    Was not spoken of the soul.—LONGFELLOW, The Psalm of Life
    

25. There will come another era when it shall be light and man will awaken from his lofty dreams, and find his dreams all there, and nothing is gone save his sleep.—H. W. MABIE, The Awakening
    

26. There is no such thing as death,
    In Nature nothing dies.
    From each sad remnant of decay
    Some forms of life arise.—CHARLES MACKAY, There Is No Such Thing as Death
    

27. If there be any life beyond the grave,
    It must be near the men and things we love.—JOHN MASEFIELD, August 1914

28. Immortality is not a gift,
    Immortality is an achievement;
    And only those who strive mightily
    Shall possess it.—EDGAR LEE MASTERS, Spoon River Anthology
    

29. 'Tis not the whole of life to live,
    Nor all of death to die.—JAMES MONTGOMERY, The Issues of Life and Death
    

30. My doctrine is: Live that thou mayest desire to live again,—that is thy duty,—for in any case thou wilt live again!—NIETZSCHE, Eternal Recurrence
    

31. All men desire to be immortal.—THEODORE PARKER, A Sermon on the Immortal Life
    

32. Is there no bright reversion in the sky
    For those who greatly think, or bravely die?—POPE, To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
    

33. Our birth made us mortal, our death will make us immortal.—Proverb
    

34. Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.—R. W. RAYMOND, A Commendatory Prayer
    

35. To die,—to sleep,—
    To sleep! perchance to dream! ay, there's the rub;
    For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
    When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
    Must give us pause: there's the respect
    That makes calamity of so long life;
    For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
    The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
    The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
    The insolence of office, and the spurns
    That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
    When he himself might his quietus make
    With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
    To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
    But that the dread of something after death,
    The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
    No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
    And makes us rather bear those ills we have
    Than fly to others that we know not of?—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
    

36. Peace, Peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—
    He hath awakened from the dream of life.—SHELLEY, Adonais
    

37. He seems so near, and yet so far.—TENNYSON, In Memoriam
    

38. How fares it with the happy dead?—TENNYSON, In Memoriam
    

39. Ah Christ, that it were possible
    For one short hour to see
    The souls we loved, that they might tell us
    What and where they be.—TENNYSON, Maud
    

40. I hope to meet my Pilot face to face
    When I have crossed the bar.—TENNYSON, Crossing the Bar
    

41. I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!—WALT WHITMAN, To Think of Time
    

42. The life to be
    Is still the unguessed mystery:
    Unscaled, unpierced the cloudy walls remain,
    We beat, with dream and wish, the soundless doors in vain.—WHITTIER, Interlude after The Grave by the Lake
    

43. And, lucid in that second birth,
    I shall discern
    What all the sages of the earth
    Have died to learn.—WILLIAM WINTER, The Rubicon
    

44. And, when the stream
    Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
    A consciousness remained that it had left,
    Deposited upon the silent shore
    Of memory, images and precious thoughts,
    That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.—WORDSWORTH, The Excursion