As quoted in Alexander the Great (1973) by Robin Lane Fox
Unsourced variant : Only sex and sleep make me conscious that I am mortal.
“When I think about sex it makes me realise how alone I feel.”
Tracey Emin (1963) English artist, one of the group known as Britartists or Young British Artists
"Emin reveals naked self portraits" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4584875.stm BBC, (2005-05-27)
“My spirit is too weak — mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep”
John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet
"On Seeing the Elgin Marbles" (1817)
Context: My spirit is too weak — mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.
“I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Collected Poems
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran
As quoted in Gérard de Villiers (1975), The Imperial Shah: An Informal Biography, page 273
Attributed
Mobutu Sésé Seko (1930–1997) President of Zaïre
Mobutu, asked by a German journalist to justify the expense of his Concorde while the nation's economy was in crisis. Meredith, p. 532
“Please don't wake me, no, don't shake me, leave me where I am, I'm only sleeping…”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
“I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons.”
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
Combining alchemical assertions
Bollingen Tower inscriptions (1950)
Context: I am an orphan, alone; nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons.
