MORTALITY

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

1. Mortality, behold and fear!
   What a change of flesh is here!—FRANCIS BEAUMONT, On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey
   

2. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.—Bible, Genesis 3:19
   

3. Man being in honour abideth not; he is like the beasts that perish.—Bible, Psalms 49:12, 20
   

4. In the midst of life we are in death.—Book of Common Prayer
   

5. If there's another world, he lives in bliss;
   If there is none, he made the best of this.—BURNS, Epitaph on William Muir
   

6. I . . . feel death is the finis to mortal life but that mortal men may, while briefly living, experience immortal things.—IRWIN EDMAN, I Believe
   

7. I shall pass through this world but once; any good things therefore that I can do, or any kind­ness that I can show to any human being or dumb animal, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.—GALSWORTHY
   

8. Can storied urn, or animated bust
   Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
   Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
   Or flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?—THOMAS GRAY, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
   

9. Though now she be pleasant and sweet to the sense,
   Will be damnably mouldy a hundred years hence.—THOMAS JORDAN
   

10. Mortality
    Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.—KEATS, On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
    

11. Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
    Before us pass'd the door of Dark­ness through,
    Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
    Which to discover we must travel too.—OMAR KHAYYAM, Rubaiyat
    

12. Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
    And our hearts, though stout and brave,
    Still, like muffled drums, are beating
    Funeral marches to the grave.—LONGFELLOW, The Psalm of Life

13. Practically all the progress that man has made is due to the fact that he is mortal. If man knew that his days on earth were to be endless, all incentive to bestir himself—except to seek food and clothing—could be lost. There would be no desire to make his mark in the world; no stimulating ambition to leave the world a little better than he found it; no hungry aspiration to be remembered after he is dead. If there were no death, life would become a thing stagnant, monotonous and unspeakably burdensome.—W. MACKENNA, The Adventure

     

14. How gladly would I meet
    Mortality, my sentence, and be earth
    Insensible! how glad would lay me down
    As in my mother's lap!—MILTON, Paradise Lost

15. Dust thou art, and shalt to dust return.—MILTON, Paradise Lost

16. Golden lads and girls all must,
    As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.—SHAKESPEARE, Cymbeline

17. Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
    Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

18. To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bunghole?—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

     

19. What is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
    And, live we how we can, yet die we must.—SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI

20. We cannot hold mortality's strong hand.—SHAKESPEARE, King John