Quotes about mortal

A collection of quotes on the topic of mortal, mortality, life, god.

Quotes about mortal

“He cannot stop imagining his bloody hands or himself lying mortally at the bottom of that bathtub, which, for now, serves as his refuge, as his escape from the World, from that which is outside, but which, Any day now, I could decide to go in.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

Imagination, Lying, World

“She raised an eyebrow. "You got something to say to me, Seaweed Brain?"

You'd probably kick my butt."

YouI'd kick your butt."

I brushed the cake off my hands. "When I was at the River Styx, turning invulnerable… Nico said I had to concentrate on one thing that kept me anchored to the world, that made me want to stay mortal."

Annabeth kept her eyes on the horizon. "Yeah?"

Then up on Olympus," I said, "when they wanted to make me a god and stuff, I kept thinking-"

Oh, you so wanted to."

Well, maybe a little. But I didn't, because I thought-I didn't want things to stay the same for eternity, because things could always get better. And I was thinking…" My throat felt really dry.

Anyone in particular?" Annabeth asked, her voice soft.

I looked over and saw that she was trying not to smile.

You're laughing at me," I complained.

I am not!"

You arenot making this easy."

Then she laughed for real, and she put her hands
around my neck. "I am never, going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

God, World, Smile, Thinking

“Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

Variant: Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.
Source: The Rommel Papers (1953), Ch. XI : The Initiative Passes, p. 244.

Idea

“When a liberal is abused, he says, ‘Thank God they didn’t beat me.’ When he is beaten, he thanks God they didn’t kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

God, Soul

“I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.”

Ptolemy book Almagest

In some of the manuscripts, the books begins with this epigram (Owen Gingerich, The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, American Institute of Physics, 1993, p. 55).
Almagest

Pleasure, Nature

“Few mortals know that the kingdom of God includes the kingdom of mundane fulfillments. … The divine realm extends to the earthly; but the later, illusory in nature, does not contain the essence of Reality.”

Mahavatar Babaji Hindu Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), Ch. 34 : Materializing a Palace in the Himalayas

God, Nature, Reality

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"In Blackwater Woods"
American Primitive (1983)
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Sad, Heartbreaking, Relationship, Love

“There are two Mustafa Kemals: One is me, the flesh-and-blood, mortal Mustafa Kemal … The second Mustafa Kemal,… I can not express it with the word “me”, it is not “me”, it is “we”. That is an intellectual and challenging society, struggling in every corner of the homeland for new ideas, new life and the great ideal. I represent their dream. My attempts are to satisfy the things they long. That Mustafa Kemal is you, all of you. That is the non provisional Mustafa Kemal that must live and succeed.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

İki Mustafa Kemal vardır: Biri ben, et ve kemik, geçici Mustafa Kemal... İkinci Mustafa Kemal, onu "ben" kelimesiyle ifade edemem; o, ben değil, bizdir! O, memleketin her köşesinde yeni fikir, yeni hayat ve büyük ülkü için uğraşan aydın ve savaşçı bir topluluktur. Ben, onların rüyasını temsil ediyorum. Benim teşebbüslerim, onların özlemini çektikleri şeyleri tatmin içindir. O Mustafa Kemal sizsiniz, hepinizsiniz. Geçici olmayan, yaşaması ve başarılı olması gereken Mustafa Kemal odur.
As quoted in Ataturk: First President and Founder of the Turkish Republic (2002) by Yüksel Atillasoy, p. 19

Life, Dreams, Idea

“We have Divine Wisdom in the mortal body. Whatever does harm to the body, ruins the House of the Eternal.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)

Wisdom, Housing

“To Love is to reach God.
Never will a Lover's chest
feel any sorrow.
Never will a Lover's robe
be touched by mortals.
Never will a Lover's body
be found buried in the earth.
To Love is to reach God.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)

Love, God, Feeling, Lovers

“I am not what I ought to be — ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be — I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be — soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, "By the grace of God I am what I am."”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

As quoted in The Christian Pioneer (1856) edited by Joseph Foulkes Winks, p. 84. Also in The Christian Spectator, vol. 3 (1821), p. 186 http://books.google.com/books?id=mv4oAAAAYAAJ&dq=ah%2C%20how%20imperfect%20and%20deficient!%20I%20am%20not%20what%20I%20wish%20to%20be&pg=PA186#v=onepage&q=ah,%20how%20imperfect%20and%20deficient!%20I%20am%20not%20what%20I%20wish%20to%20be&f=false Often paraphrased as I am not the man I ought to be, I am not the man I wish to be, and I am not the man I hope to be, but by the grace of God, I am not the man I used to be."'

God, Hope, Evil

“First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 109.

Men, God, Age, Time

“Hear first the four roots of all things: shining Zeus, life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus, and Nestis, who wets with tears the mortal wellspring.”

Empedocles book On Nature

fr. 6
On Nature
Source: Aidoneus corresponds to Hades.
Source: Nestis corresponds to Persephone.

Life, Tear

“Conscience is a God to all mortals.”

Menander (-342–-291 BC) Athenian playwright of New Comedy

Monosticha.

God

“The more you think about death and mortality, the more you enjoy life. Because then you do not waste time. You just focus. ”

Marina Abramović (1946) Yugoslav-American artist

Life, Death, Thinking, Time

“I used to think the only way to be truly alive is to confront your mortality.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

Way, Thinking

“You mortals are like fish
swimming in a globe of glass.
That globe is your world.
You do not see beyond it.”

Tamora Pierce book Lady Knight

Source: Lady Knight

World, Fish

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance… logic can be happily tossed out the window.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

God, World, Beauty, Chance

“Is war perhaps nothing else but a need to face death, to conquer and master it, to come out of it alive -- a peculiar form of denial of our mortality?”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Death, War

“Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 39
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

Love

“I cannot waste time in these classes and these books, memorizing the weak assumptions of lesser mortals.”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

Books, Time

“Once in one's life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived”

Sylvester Stallone (1946) American actor, screenwriter, and film director

Sylvester Stallone, interviewed by Rob Carnevale in " Sylvester Stallone: Rocky Balboa http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2007/01/15/sylvester_stallone_rocky_balboa_2007_interview.shtml", BBC (28 October 2014).

Life

“I always wanted to do music that influences and inspires each generation. Lets face it, who wants mortality?”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

On how he creates memorable music
Ebony interview (2007)

Music

“We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.”

Eduardo Galeano book The Book of Embraces

somos todos mortales hasta el primer beso y el segundo vaso
The Book of Embraces (1991)

Kiss, Wine

“A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing.
Our helper He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.”

Martin Luther Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott

Ein' feste burg is unser Gott,
ein gute wehr und waffen.
Er hilft uns frei aus aller not,
die uns itzt hat betroffen.
Psalm. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (1529), translated by Frederic H. Hedge, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Literal Translation: A firm fortress is our God,
a good defense and weapon.
He frees us from all need,
that has struck us.
Complete hymn, Pennsylvania Lutheran Church Book translation, at Wikisource

God

“The works of the righteous would be mortal sins if they would not be feared as mortal sins by the righteous themselves out of pious fear of God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

"Heidelberg Disputation: Thesis 7" (1518), http://bookofconcord.org/heidelberg.php#7

God, Fear

“Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal.”

Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon

As quoted in Alexander the Great (1973) by Robin Lane Fox
Unsourced variant : Only sex and sleep make me conscious that I am mortal.

Sex, Sleep

“One artist sees himself as the creator of an independent spiritual world; he hoists onto his shoulders the task of creating this world, of peopling it and of bearing the all-embracing responsibility for it; but he crumples beneath it, for a mortal genius is not capable of bearing such a burden. Just as man in general, having declared himself the centre of existence, has not succeeded in creating a balanced spiritual system. And if misfortune overtakes him, he casts the blame upon the age-long disharmony of the world, upon the complexity of today's ruptured soul, or upon the stupidity of the public.
Another artist, recognizing a higher power above, gladly works as a humble apprentice beneath God's heaven; then, however, his responsbility for everything that is written or drawn, for the souls which perceive his work, is more exacting than ever. But, in return, it is not he who has created this world, not he who directs it, there is no doubt as to its foundations; the artist has merely to be more keenly aware than others of the harmony of the world, of the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it, and to communicate this acutely to his fellow-men. And in misfortune, and even at the depths of existence — in destitution, in prison, in sickness — his sense of stable harmony never deserts him.
But all the irrationality of art, its dazzling turns, its unpredictable discoveries, its shattering influence on human beings — they are too full of magic to be exhausted by this artist's vision of the world, by his artistic conception or by the work of his unworthy fingers.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)

Men, God, People, Age

“Creatures of a day! What is a man?
What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being.”

Pindar (-517–-437 BC) Ancient Greek poet

Pythian 8, line 95-8; pages 162-3. (446 BC)
Context: Creatures of a day! What is a man?
What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of Heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blesséd are their days.

Dreams

“Joy! Joy! I triumph! Now no more I know
Myself as simply me. I burn with love
Unto myself, and bury me in love.
The centre is within me and its wonder
Lies as a circle everywhere about me.
Joy! Joy! No mortal thought can fathom me.”

Attar of Nishapur (1145–1230) Persian Sufi poet

"The Triumph of the Soul" as translated by Margaret Smith in The Persian Mystics

Joy

“Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth.
I say it is

the one you love. And easily proved.
Didn't Helen, who far surpassed all
mortals in beauty, desert the best
of men, her king,

and sail off to Troy and forget
her daughter and her dear parents? Merely
Aphrodite's gaze made her readily bend
and led her far

from her path. These tales remind me now
of Anaktoria who isn't here,
yet I
for one

would rather see her warm supple step
and the sparkle in her face than watch all
the chariots in Lydia and foot soldiers armored
in glittering bronze.”

Sappho (-630–-570 BC) ancient Greek lyric poet

Fragment 16 Voigt
The Willis Barnstone translations, Supreme Sight on the Black Earth

Love, Men, Beauty, Parent

“There is nothing serious in Mortality”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

“O, let me kiss that hand!

KING LEAR: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.”

William Shakespeare King Lear

Source: King Lear

Kiss

“Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal - there's the trick!”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Да, человек смертен, но это было бы ещё полбеды. Плохо то, что он иногда внезапно смертен, вот в чём фокус!
Book One in 'Never Talk with Strangers', P/V
Source: The Master and Margarita (1967)

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Puck, Act III, scene ii.
Variant: Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

Fools

“Death is part of who we are. It guides
us. It shapes us. It drives us to madness. Can you still be human if you have no mortal end”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Death, Parting, Madness

“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Love, World, Beauty, Courage

“THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

Death, World

“It's the Mortal Cup, Jace, not the Mortal Toilet Bowl.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Isabelle to Jace, pg. 349
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

“I'd love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera.

The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Love, Death, Truth, Way

“He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace and fear:
And you all know, security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

Death, Wisdom, Fate, Fear

“the only mortal sin is giving up.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover's fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Youth, Fools, Lovers

“Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Context: Blind ignorance misleads us thus and delights with the results of lascivious joys. Because it does not know the true light. Because it does not know what is the true light. Vain splendour takes from us the power of being.... behold! for its vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does mislead us. That is, blind ignorance so misleads us that... O! wretched mortals, open your eyes.

“Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream—For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause, there's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Life, Death, Dreams, Sleep

“But, Madam, let your grief be laid aside,
And let the fountain of your tears be dry'd,
In vain they flow to wet the dusty plain,
Your sighs are wafted to the skies in vain,
Your pains they witness, but they can no more,
While Death reigns tyrant o'er this mortal shore.”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

"To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Lady's Brother and Sister, and a Child of the Name of Avis, aged one Year." st. 2, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)

Death, Pain, Tear

“Law, the king of all mortals and immortals.”

Pindar (-517–-437 BC) Ancient Greek poet

As quoted in Plato's Gorgias, 484b.

Law

“Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5

Time

“The mortal sin of the Second International was not that it pursued at that time the tactics of utilising parliamentary forms of struggle, but that it overestimated the importance of these forms, that it considered them virtually the only forms; and that when the period of open revolutionary battles set in and the question of extra-parliamentary forms of struggle came to the fore, the parties of the Second International turned their backs on these new tasks, refused to shoulder them.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Source: The Foundations of Leninism, Ch.7

Question, Time

“Bow before him, all creation!
Mortals, own the God of love!
Seek him high the stars above,—
Yonder is his habitation!”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Chorus 3
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

Love, God, Star

“Immortality alone could teach this mortal how to die.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

"Looking Death in the Face", Miss Mulock's Poems (1866)

“All that we can remember is almost nothing. Memory is greater than we are, but memory is living and mortal as well.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

Memory

“I am like a poet on the threshold of a work, an accursed, sterile poet who will leave no glory behind, to whom chance lent the truth that genius would have given him, a frail work which will pass away with me, mortal and sealed to others like myself, but a sublime work nevertheless, which will show the essential outlines of life and relate the drama of dramas.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV

Life, Truth, Chance

“Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“Happy the man, of mortals happiest he,
Whose quiet mind from vain desires is free;
Whom neither hopes deceive, nor fears torment,
But lives at peace, within himself content;
In thought, or act, accountable to none
But to himself, and to the gods alone.”

George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne (1666–1735) 1st Baron Lansdowne

Epistle to Mrs. Higgons (1690), line 79; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), "Contentment", p. 133-36.

God, Fear, Peace, Hope

“O God! methinks, it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run:
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.”

William Shakespeare Henry VI (play) Part 1-3

King Henry, Act II, scene v.
Henry VI, Part 3 (1592)

Life, God, Home, Happiness

“Nay, who knows, Phaedrus, if the efforts of humans in their search for God, the observances, the prayers they essay, their obstinate will to discover the most efficacious… who knows if mortals will not finally discover a certitude—or an incertitude—stable and in exact conformity with their nature, if not with the very nature of God?”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 130. Ellipsis in original.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

God, Search, Nature, Effort

“We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

La Crise de l'Esprit (1919)

“What are mortals for?—Their business is to know. Know? And what is to know?—It is assuredly: not to be what one is.—And so here are humans raving and thinking, introducing into nature the principle of unlimited error, and myriads of marvels!”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Eryximachus, p. 52
L'Âme et la danse (1921)

Error, Business, Nature, Thinking

“What is the course of the life
Of mortal men on the earth?—
Most men eddy about
Here and there—eat and drink,
Chatter and love and hate,
Gather and squander, are raised
Aloft, are hurl’d in the dust,
Striving blindly, achieving
Nothing; and, then they die—
Perish; and no one asks
Who or what they have been,
More than he asks what waves
In the moonlit solitudes mild
Of the midmost Ocean, have swell’d,
Foam’d for a moment, and gone.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

St. 6
Rugby Chapel (1867)

Love, Life, Men, Hate

“The soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intelligible, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and the body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintelligible, and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Soul, Intelligence

“All mortals are equal; it is not their birth,
But virtue itself that makes the difference.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Les mortels sont égaux; ce n'est pas la naissance, C'est la seule vertu qui fait la différence. Ériphyle Act II, scene I (1732); these lines were also later used in Voltaire's Mahomet, Act I, scene IV (1741) Variant translations: Men are equal; it is not birth, it is virtue alone that makes them differ. As quoted in Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian Authors (1866) edited by Craufurd Tait Ramage, p. 363 https://books.google.com/books?id=nDErAAAAYAAJ Men are equal; it is not birth But virtue that makes the difference Citas

Birth

“O happy race of mortals,
if your hearts are ruled
as is the universe, by Love!”
O felix hominum genus, si uestros animos amor quo caelum regitur regat!

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Poem VIII, lines 28-30; translation by W. V. Cooper
Alternate translation:
: How happy is mankind
if the love that orders the stars above
rules, too, in your hearts.
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book II

Love, Universe, Heart, Happiness

“Woman, compared to other creatures, is the image of God, for she bears dominion over them. But compared unto man, she may not be called the image of God, for she bears not rule and lordship over man, but ought to obey him. The woman shall be subject to man as unto Christ. For woman, has not her example from the body and from the flesh, that so she shall be subject to man, as the flesh is unto the Spirit, because that the flesh in the weakness and mortality of this life lusts and strives against the Spirit, and therefore would not the Holy Ghost give example of subjection to the woman of any such thing.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

As quoted by John Knox The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/firblast.htm (1558) Disputed

Life, God, Christ

“Unless they are universal, the reforms to be carried out are utopian and mortal. National reforms are only fragments of reforms. There must be no half measures. Half measures are laughter-provoking in their unbounded littleness when it is a question for the last time of arresting the world's roll down the hill of horror. There must be no half measures because there are no half truths. Do all, or you will do nothing.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light

Truth, World, Question, Laughter

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Stanza 5.
The Raven (1844)

Fear, Dreams

“To the Gods we ne'er can render
Praise for every good they grant;
Let us, with devotion tender,
Minister to grief and want.
Quenched be hate and wrath forever,
Pardoned be our mortal foe—
May our tears upbraid him never,
No repentance bring him low!”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 6
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

God, Hate, Tear

“Some sixty years ago, Pope Pius XII, in a memorable address to anaesthesiologists and intensive care specialists, stated that there is no obligation to have recourse in all circumstances to every possible remedy and that, in some specific cases, it is permissible to refrain from their use… The specific element of this criterion is that it considers “the result that can be expected, taking into account the state of the sick person and his or her physical and moral resources”. It thus makes possible a decision that is morally qualified as withdrawal of “overzealous treatment”.
Such a decision responsibly acknowledges the limitations of our mortality, once it becomes clear that opposition to it is futile. “Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2278). This difference of perspective restores humanity to the accompaniment of the dying, while not attempting to justify the suppression of the living. It is clear that not adopting, or else suspending, disproportionate measures, means avoiding overzealous treatment; from an ethical standpoint, it is completely different from euthanasia, which is always wrong, in that the intent of euthanasia is to end life and cause death.
The anguish associated with conditions that bring us to the threshold of human mortality, and the difficulty of the decision we have to make, may tempt us to step back from the patient. Yet this is where, more than anything else, we are called to show love and closeness, recognizing the limit that we all share and showing our solidarity.
Let each of us give love in his or her own way—as a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a brother or sister, a doctor or a nurse. But give it!”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Message of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Participants in the European Regional Meeting of the World Medical Association, From the Vatican, 7 November 2017 https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20171107_messaggio-monspaglia.html 2010s, 2017

Love, Life, Death, Way

“O Brother! Not every sea hath pearls; not every branch will flower, nor will the nightingale sing thereon. Then, ere the nightingale of the mystic paradise repair to the garden of God, and the rays of the heavenly morning return to the Sun of Truth—make thou an effort, that haply in this dustheap of the mortal world thou mayest catch a fragrance from the everlasting garden, and live forever in the shadow of the peoples of this city. And when thou hast attained this highest station and come to this mightiest plane, then shalt thou gaze on the Beloved, and forget all else.”

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

The Seven Valleys Of Bahá’u’lláh

God, People, Truth, World

“Since this art surpasses all human subtelty and the perspecuity of mortal talent and is truly a celestial gift and a very clear test of the capacity of man's minds, whoever applies himself to it will believe that there is nothing that he cannot understand.”

Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer

Source: The Great Rules of Algebra (1968), Ch.1 On Double Solutions in Certain Types of Cases

Art, Understanding

“If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

"Israfel", st. 8 (1831).

Singing

“Holding fast to these things, you will know the worlds of gods and mortals which permeates and governs everything. And you will know, as is right, nature similar in all respects, so that you will neither entertain unreasonable hopes nor be neglectful of anything.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook. (1999)
The Golden Verses

God, World, Hope, Nature

“Speaking as a devout atheist, thank God in his Almighty wisdom that he made us mortal.”

Norman G. Finkelstein (1953) American political scientist and author

http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/movies/11radical.html
Other sourced statements

Wisdom, God

“My mortal remains would speak from the tomb.”

Sai Baba of Shirdi (1836–1918) Hindu and muslim saint

Eleven important sayings

“O mortals, from your fellows' blood abstain,
Nor taint your bodies with a food profane:
While corn, and pulse by Nature are bestow'd,
And planted orchards bend their willing load;
While labour'd gardens wholesom herbs produce,
And teeming vines afford their gen'rous juice;
Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost,
But tam'd with fire, or mellow'd by the frost;
While kine to pails distended udders bring,
And bees their hony redolent of Spring;
While Earth not only can your needs supply,
But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury;
A guiltless feast administers with ease,
And without blood is prodigal to please.”
Parcite, mortales, dapibus temerare nefandis corpora! sunt fruges, sunt deducentia ramos pondere poma suo tumidaeque in vitibus uvae, sunt herbae dulces, sunt quae mitescere flamma mollirique queant; nec vobis lacteus umor eripitur, nec mella thymi redolentia florem: prodiga divitias alimentaque mitia tellus suggerit atque epulas sine caede et sanguine praebet.

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book XV, 75–82 (from Wikisource); on vegetarianism, as the following quote
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Food, Spring, Nature, Bee

“While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Source: (1932), p.3

Intelligence

“You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty.”

Parmenides (-501–-470 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Frag B 1.28-30, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3; Simplicius, Commentary on the Heavens, 557-8; Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345

Truth, Learning, Heart

“I will be in this mortal body form for 59 years more and I shall certainly achieve the purpose of this Avatar, do not doubt it.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

29 September 1960 Sathya Sai Speaks v.1 Sathya Sai Geetha (Volume 1), Page 4/4 http://www.sathyasai.org/discour/sathyasaispeaks/volume01/sss01-31.pdf

“Be guided by feeling alone. We are only simple mortals, subject to error; so listen to the advice of others, but follow only what you understand and can unite in your own feeling.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Quote from Corot's 'Notebooks', ca. 1856, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 241
1850s

Error, Feeling, Understanding

“Yet tears to human suffering are due;
And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown
Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.”

William Wordsworth Laodamia

Stanza 28.
Laodamia (1814)

Hope, Tear, Suffering

“This world was created from God's fear of solitude. In other words, us, the creatures, have no other meaning but to distract the Creator. Poor clowns of the absolute, we forget that we live dramas for the boredom of a spectator, whose claps have never reached the ears of a mortal.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

God, World, Fear, Solitude

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

Alexander Hamilton book The Farmer Refuted

The Farmer Refuted (1775)

Nature

“But if you think that life can be prolonged by the breath of mortal fame, yet when the slow time robs you of this too, then there awaits you but a second death.”
Quodsi putatis longius vitam trahi mortalis aura nominis, cum sera vobis rapiet hoc etiam dies iam vos secunda mors manet.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Poem VII, lines 23-26; translation by W. V. Cooper
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book II

Life, Death, Thinking, Time

“Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?”

Anna Laetitia Barbauld book Hymns in Prose for Children

Hymns in Prose for Children, Hymn 10 (1781).

Sadness

“Experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human race, teaches how that nature acts among mortals; and being constrained by necessity cannot act otherwise than as reason, which is its helm, requires her to act.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Nature

“Just as seeing Heaven's light gave him an awareness of God's presence in all things in the mortal plane, so it has made him aware of God's absence in all things in Hell.”

Ted Chiang book Stories of Your Life and Others

Hell Is the Absence of God; first appeared in Starlight 3, 2001.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

God, Hell, Light

“Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

212
The Symposium

God, Beauty, Reality

“All mortals desire themselves to be praised.”
Omnes mortales sese laudarier optant.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Augustine of Hippo in De Trinitate, Book XIII, Chapter III

“Achilles was the son of a goddess and of a mortal; in that, he is the image of the genius of war. The divine part is all that that is derived from moral considerations of character, talent, the interest of your adversary, of opinion, of the temper of the soldier, which is strong and victorious, or feeble and beaten, according as he believes this divine part to be. The mortal part is the arms, the fortifications, the order of battle — everything which arises out of material things.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

War, Strong, Victory, Parting

“There is an old saying which, from its truth, has become proverbial, that friendships should be immortal, enmities mortal.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book XL, sec. 46
History of Rome

Friendship, Truth

“My tribulations are so great, my life so disturbed by the plans daily invented to further the King's wicked intention, the surprises which the King gives me, with certain persons of his council, are so mortal, and my treatment is what God knows, that it is enough to shorten ten lives, much more mine.”

Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536) first wife of Henry VIII of England (1485–1536)

Joanna Denny (2006) Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen, Da Capo Press, ISBN 0306814749, p. 175.

Life, God, Personality

“Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species — if separate species we be — for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.”

H.P. Lovecraft book Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family

"Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" - written 1920; first published in The Wolverine, No. 9 (March 1921)
Fiction

Life, Truth, World, Science

“The tables of criminality for different ages, given in my published treatise, merit at least as much faith as the tables of mortality, and verify themselves within perhaps even narrower limits; so that crime pursues its path with even more constancy than death.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: The tables of criminality for different ages, given in my published treatise, merit at least as much faith as the tables of mortality, and verify themselves within perhaps even narrower limits; so that crime pursues its path with even more constancy than death.... it is still betwixt the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five, that, all things being equal, the greatest number of persons are to be found in that position [of a criminal].

Death, Age, Faith

“No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Thanksgiving Proclamation (1863)
Context: In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

God, People, Heart, Anger

“Even here, merit will have its true reward…
even here, the world is a world of tears
and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.”
Sunt hic etiam sua praemia laudi, Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.

Virgil book Aeneid

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book I, Lines 461–462 (tr. Robert Fagles)

World, Tear, Heart

“Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Song for St. Cecilia's Day (1692), st. 3.

Music

“It is certainly not then — not in dreams — but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle-tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Speak, Memory: A Memoir (1951)
Context: Whenever in my dreams, I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death were a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then — not in dreams — but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle-tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.

Dreams, Feeling, Chance, Past

“And the rhythm of the fight is the supreme harmony. Such harmony is not for thy mortal ears. It is enough for thee to know that it exists. Do thy duty in peace and leave the rest to the Gods.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Journey's End: The Burning Bush (1911)
Context: "Thou art not alone, and thou dost not belong to thyself. Thou art one of My voices, thou art one of My arms. Speak and strike for Me. But if the arm be broken, or the voice be weary, then still I hold My ground: I fight with other voices, other arms than thine. Though thou art conquered, yet art thou of the army which is never vanquished. Remember that and thou wilt fight even unto death."
"Lord, I have suffered much!"
"Thinkest thou that I do not suffer also? For ages death has hunted Me and nothingness has lain in wait for Me. It is only by victory in the fight that I can make My way. The river of life is red with My blood."
"Fighting, always fighting?"
"We must always fight. God is a fighter, even He Himself. God is a conqueror. He is a devouring lion. Nothingness hems Him in and He hurls it down. And the rhythm of the fight is the supreme harmony. Such harmony is not for thy mortal ears. It is enough for thee to know that it exists. Do thy duty in peace and leave the rest to the Gods."

God, Peace, Fight

“The truth is that the love of mankind is a single season among so many others. The truth is that we have within us something much more mortal than we are, and that it is this, all the same, which is all-important.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts
Context: The truth is that the love of mankind is a single season among so many others. The truth is that we have within us something much more mortal than we are, and that it is this, all the same, which is all-important. Therefore we survive very much longer than we live. There are things we think we know and which yet are secrets. Do we really know what we believe? We believe in miracles. We make great efforts to struggle, to go mad. We should like to let all our good deserts be seen. We fancy that we are exceptions and that something supernatural is going to come along. But the quiet peace of the truth fixes us. The impossible becomes again the impossible. We are as silent as silence itself.

Love, Truth, Season

“Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him?
Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my arguments.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
Context: Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is truth-seeker. My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him?
Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my arguments.