Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XCVIII: On the Fickleness of Fortune
“The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.”
“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.
“Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below.”
Song for St. Cecilia's Day (1692), st. 3.
“All men are mortal, he tells us, but some are more mortal than others.”
Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 32 (p. 153)
“This is to be mortal, And seek the things beyond mortality.”
“The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist.”
Characteristics.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)
“Conscience is a God to all mortals.”
Monosticha.
“It's the Mortal Cup, Jace, not the Mortal Toilet Bowl.”
Isabelle to Jace, pg. 349
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)
“Reason is immortal, all else mortal.”
As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Sect. 30, as translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925); also in The Demon and the Quantum: From the Pythagorean Mystics to Maxwell's Demon (2007) by Robert J. Scully, Marlan O. Scully, p. 11
