Quotes about mortal (829 quotes, page 2)

“For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all – immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

G.T.W. Patrick, 1889 http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/heraclitus/herpatu.htm
Variant: For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all – immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.

Men , Understanding , Sense , Teachers

“I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)
Jane Eyre (1847)
Context: Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!

God

“Zeus, who guided mortals to be wise,
has established his fixed law—
wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
so men against their will
learn to practice moderation.
Favours come to us from gods
seated on their solemn thrones—
such grace is harsh and violent.”

Aeschylus Agamemnon

Variant translations:
Zeus has led us on to know,
the Helmsman lays it down as law
that we must suffer, suffer into truth.
We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart
the pain of pain remembered comes again,
and we resist, but ripeness comes as well.
From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench
there comes a violent love.
Robert Fagles, The Oresteia (1975)
God, whose law it is
that he who learns must suffer.
And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
and in our own despite, against our will,
comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way (1930), pp. 61 and 194 ( Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=D3QwvF3GWOkC&lpg=PA61&ots=BacvHvGm6e&dq=%22And%20in%20our%20own%20despite%2C%20against%20our%20will%2C%20Comes%20wisdom%22%20-kennedy&pg=PA194#v=onepage&q=%22our%20own%20despite%22&f=false)
Robert F. Kennedy quoted these lines in his speech announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on 4 April 1968. His version http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkonmlkdeath.html:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
Variant translations of πάθει μάθος:
By suffering comes wisdom.
The reward of suffering is experience.
Wisdom comes alone through suffering.
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 176–183, as translated by Ian Johnston ( Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=qz1HpBZ1fTwC&lpg=PA13&ots=C7aohrZRF1&dq=Drips%20in%20our%20hearts%20as%20we%20try%20to%20sleep%2C&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q=Drips%20in%20our%20hearts%20as%20we%20try%20to%20sleep,&f=false)

Wisdom , Men , God , Pain

“The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

People

“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.

“The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance.”

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

Letter to Eliza Gurney http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln7/1:1171?rgn=div1;view=fulltext (4 September 1864); quoted in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 535
1860s
Context: I am much indebted to the good christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations; and to no one of them, more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.

Perfection

“Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

“This is a painful bit of truth: Fascism, in the form of irresponsibility, is present in the masses of all countries, nations and races. Fascism is the result of thousands of years of warping of the human structure. It could have developed in any nation. It is not a specific German or Italian character trait. It works in every mortal.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Section 2 : The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy

Truth , Pain , Country

“Be praised, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Happy those she finds doing your most holy will. The second death can do no harm to them.”

Francis of Assisi Canticle of the Sun

Canticle of the Sun

Personality , Sister , Death , Happiness

“Most high, all powerful, all good Lord! All praise is yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing. To you, alone, Most High, do they belong. No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce your name. Praise be to God.”

Francis of Assisi Canticle of the Sun

Canticle of the Sun

God

“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.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

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

Light , Joy

“Our home, pale blue dot in the vastness of universe's untouched beauty, a tiny spherical world, afloat in a immensity of space and time. Here for a moment, and then we're leaving for the eternity. In the school of mortality we learn to acrobat over the abyss.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

From the book "Universal consciousness"

School , Home , Time , Beauty

“As the owners of heaven forbade chocolate to mortals, so the owners of earth forbade it to commoners.”

Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015) Uruguayan writer

As quoted in Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (2009), p. 7

“It is time to leave behind childish attitudes and begin to pay a little more attention to what is really here. This is a time-body, a mortal body, but an immortal presence is moving in it. While the body is still warm, use this bodily life to rediscover your timeless Being.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Introduction

Time , Life

“The singular intent of America in all its facets is to mix, overrun and exterminate the White race... If you support the aims or the continued existence of the entity known as America, then your treason cannot be calculated in the words of mortals.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Revolution by Number

Support

“The taipan is the one to watch out for. It is the most poisonous snake on Earth, with a lunge so swift and a venom so potent that your last mortal utterance is likely to be: "I say, is that a sn--”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

“What could a mortal say to the merciless Fate?
I forced myself to my feet. was the traditional end to a prayer. By the will of Fate.
"" I whispered defiantly.
Bywill.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Wyvernhail

Source: Wyvernhail

Fate

“For, in the final analysis, our most common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”

John F. Kennedy book Profiles in Courage

1963, American University speech
Variant: For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal.
Source: Profiles in Courage
Context: In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours — and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest. So, let us not be blind to our differences — but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Children , Future

“Death never comes at thetime, despite what mortals believe. Death always comes like a thief.”

Christopher Pike book The Last Vampire

Source: The Last Vampire

Death

“Never, dear gods. Never mess with mortals.”

Steven Erikson book The Bonehunters

Source: The Bonehunters

God

“Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering.
Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers, and is not threatened by them.
Show me a god that understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.”

Steven Erikson book The Bonehunters

Source: The Bonehunters

Life , Death , God , Peace

“We think of mortality so little these days…
I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones.
Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I:
As I am so will you be…”

Tana French In the Woods

Source: In the Woods

Death , Thinking

“I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman or child.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

People , Feeling

“The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Suffering , Evil

“… nothing could eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

“Love is the most powerful motivator in the world. It spurs mortals to greatness. Their noblest and bravest acts are done for love.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Variant: My point is that love is the most powerful motivator in the world. It spurs mortals to greatness. Their noblest, bravest acts are done for love.
Source: The Lost Hero

Love , World , Motivation

“The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Lie , World , Error , Suffering

“I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.”

Euripidés Medea

Source: Medea

Evil

“We, more than others, should carry jumper and tow cables not only in our cars, but also in our hearts, by which means we can send the needed boost or charge of encouragement or the added momentum to mortal neighbors.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

Source: All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience

Cars , Heart

“Mortals did not need gods to order them to kill eachother. They were quite capable of finding reasons to do so themselves.”

Trudi Canavan (1969) Australian writer

Source: Voice of the Gods

God

“To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Change

“A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Life , Youth , Beauty , Angels

“No one awakens in the morning thinking they will die that day. Not a saint or a sinner. Not even a condemned killer. We all know were mortal, and yet we all believe we'll live forever.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Thirst No. 3: The Eternal Dawn

Thinking

“so mortals tend to see only what they can understand.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Understanding

“To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Dead

“Reason is immortal, all else mortal.”

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

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

“We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: Still Another Day

Love

“The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

Life , Men , Study

“I can only assume," said Jace, "that mortal emotions amuse you because you have none of your own.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“Mortality, behold, and fear,
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Fear , Thinking , Sleep , Change

“For though Duncan was a mere mortal, flawed as well, he'd accomplished a daring feat. Aye, he'd captured an angel. And she belonged to him.”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Source: Honor's Splendour

Angels

“A timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

“Every meeting led to a parting, and so it would, as long as life was mortal. In every meeting there was some of the sorrow of parting, but in everything parting there was some of the joy of meeting as well.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Goodbye , Life , Joy , Parting

“What a strange world it is, where prisoners are left their weapons and the written word is a mortal danger.”

Megan Whalen Turner book A Conspiracy of Kings

Source: A Conspiracy of Kings

World

“Perhaps a hero is someone who doesn’t register his own vulnerability. Is it courage, then, if you’re too daft to know you’re mortal?”

David Benioff book City of Thieves

Source: City of Thieves

Courage

“Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Love , Fear

“I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear for the most part to dislike me.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Stories

Justice , Appearance , Parting

“I knew a girl, once, immortal like me-"

"And she was with someone mortal?" said Alec. "What happened?"

"He died," Magnus said. There was a finality to the way he said it that spoke of a deeper grief than words could paint.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Way , Girl , Painting

“As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift-or curse, perhaps-of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Thinking

“Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.”

Anne Tyler book The Tin Can Tree

Source: The Tin Can Tree

Love , People

“He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905) Ch. 2 : The First Dream
1900s
Source: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Context: He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

Secret

“Don't screech like that. You'll wake the dead." - Jace - The Mortal Instruments - City Of Bones”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Variant: Don't screech like that. You'll wake the dead.
Source: City of Bones

Dead

“Oh, we are but soft and squishy bags of mortality rolling in a bin of sharp circumstance, leaking life until we collapse, flaccid, into our own despair..”

Christopher Moore book Fool

Source: Fool

Life , Despair

“For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Law , Confidence , Nature

“The Death Mist is not for helping!" Akhlys shrieked. "It shrouds mortals in misery as their souls pass into the Underworld. It is the very breath of Tartarus, of death, of despair!"
"Awesome," Percy said. "Could we get two orders of that to go?”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Death , Soul , Help , Despair

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

Variant: to take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.
Source: On Photography

Time , Personality

“I don't suppose it would help if I told you that is the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Variant: Pointless, needless suffering and pain? I don’t suppose it would help if I told you that was the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.
Source: Clockwork Princess

Life , Way , Suffering , Evil