Spoken on his deathbed to his sister-in-law, Sophie Weber (5 December 1791), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)
Variant: The taste of death is on my tongue, I feel something that is not from this world (Der Geschmack des Todes ist auf meiner Zunge, ich fühle etwas, das nicht von dieser Welt ist).
“If you will do some deed before you die,
Remember not this caravan of death,
But have belief that every little breath
Will stay with you for an eternity.”
As quoted in The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala (1909) by Henry Baerlein, XLVII
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Al-Maʿarri 5
Medieval Arab philosopher 973–1057Related quotes
“Time, you old gipsy man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?”
"Time, You Old Gipsy Man", p. 4.
Poems (1917)
Variant: Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.
Source: Survivor
Vol. XI, p. 242
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: When death comes, it does not ask your permission; it comes and takes you; it destroys you on the spot. In the same way, can you totally drop hate, envy, pride of possession, attachment to beliefs, to opinions, to ideas, to a particular way of thinking? Can you drop all that in an instant? There is no “how to drop it”, because that is only another form of continuity. To drop opinion, belief, attachment, greed, or envy is to die — to die every day, every moment. If there is the coming to an end of all ambition from moment to moment, then you will know the extraordinary state of being nothing, of coming to the abyss of an eternal movement, as it were, and dropping over the edge — which is death. I want to know all about death, because death may be reality; it may be what we call God — that most extraordinary something that lives and moves and yet has no beginning and no end.
“What to do now? How to detach yourself?
With every work that’s born you die a little.”
"The Work" (1983)
Collected Poems (1984)