Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. XIV : The Need of an Absolute, p. 198.
“All else is Fortune's in this mortal state;
But Virtue soars beyond her love and hate.”
Che dona e tolle ogn'altro ben Fortuna;
Sol in virtù non ha possanza alcuna.
Canto III, stanza 37 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
“All the Good of mortals is mortal.”
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XCVIII: On the Fickleness of Fortune
“All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.”
Letter X
The Screwtape Letters (1942)
“It's the Mortal Cup, Jace, not the Mortal Toilet Bowl.”
Isabelle to Jace, pg. 349
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)
“While from inward health doth flow,
Beloved of all, true bliss which mortals seek.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Eumenides, lines 535–537 (tr. Anna Swanwick)
“It is a difficult thing for a man to resist the natural necessity of mortal passions.”
Of those whom God is slow to punish
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.”
Love and Death (1975)
Context: If I don't kill him he'll make war all through Europe. But murder... the most foul of all crimes. What would Socrates say? All those Greeks were homosexuals. Boy, they must have had some wild parties. I bet they all took a house together in Crete for the summer. A: Socrates is a man. B: All men are mortal. C: All men are Socrates. That means all men are homosexuals. Heh... I'm not a homosexual. Once, some cossacks whistled at me. I happen to have the kind of body that excites both persuasions. You know, some men are heterosexual and some men are bisexual and some men don't think about sex at all, you know... they become lawyers.
“Sometimes, mortals did indeed forget. Sometimes, mortals needed … reminding.”
Toll the Hounds (2008)
Context: Sometimes, mortals did indeed forget. Sometimes, mortals needed... reminding.
