“The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.”

— Italo Calvino

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death." by Italo Calvino?

Italo Calvino photo

Italo Calvino 44

Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels 1923–1985

Related quotes

“Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destory?”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“In the face of warfare and inevitable death, there is no wisdom but in ataraxia, “to look on all things with a mind at peace"."”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

Here, clearly, the old pagan joy of life is gone, and an almost exotic spirit touches a broken lyre. History, which is nothing if not humorous, was never to facetious as when she gave to this abstemious and epic pessimist the name of Epicurean.
The Story of Philosophy (1926)

“That is the ultimate power, to stare death in the face and be unafraid.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 11 “Flood” (p. 214).

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11

“Ultimate explanation no longer means only a story that encompasses everything.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

New Theories of Everything (2007), Ch. 1, p. 6

“Life is nothing unless death has been faced down.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 18

“Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Letter to Cecil Spring-Rice (12 March 1900)
1900s

“The anxiety about death is met in two ways. The reality of death is excluded from daily life to the highest possible degree. The dead are not allowed to show that they are dead; they are transformed into a mask of the living. The other and more important way of dealing with death is the belief in a continuation of life after death, called the immortality of the soul. This is not a Christian and hardly a Platonic doctrine. Christianity speaks of resurrection and eternal life, Platonism of a participation of the soul in the transtemporal sphere of essences. But the modern idea of immortality means a continuous participation in the productive process.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 110

“Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.”

Atul Gawande book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Source: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“If you really come down to any large story that interests people – holds the attention for a considerable time … human stories are practically always about one thing, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Tolkien in Oxford (1968) http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12237.shtml, a BBC 2 television documentary (at 21:49)

Related topics