#mortal

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #mortal




Been thinking of my grandfather, whose wayward brilliance skipped my father’s generation. Once, he showed me an aquatint of a certain Siamese temple. Don’t recall its name, but ever since a disciple of the Buddha preached on the spot centuries ago, every bandit king, tyrant, and monarch of that kingdom has enhanced it with marble towers, scented arboretums, gold-leafed domes, lavished murals on its vaulted ceilings, set emeralds into the eyes of its statuettes. When the temple finally equals its counterpart in the Pure Land, so the story goes, that day humanity shall have fulfilled its purpose, and Time itself shall come to an end. To men like Ayrs, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayrs sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayrs!” How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.


David Mitchell


#composer #immortality #music #age

So it's true what they say about warlocks, then?" Alec gave him a very unpleasant look. "What's true?" "Alexander," said Magnus coldly, and Clary met Simon's eyes across the table. Hers were wide, green, and full of an expression that said Uh-oh. "You can't be rude to everyone who talks to me." Alec made a wide, sweeping gesture. "And why not? Cramping your style, am I? I mean, maybe you were hoping to flirt with werewolf boy here. He's pretty attractive, if you like the messy-haired, broad-shouldered, chiseled-good-looks type." "Hey, now," said Jordan mildly. Magnus put his head in his hands. "Or there are plenty of pretty girls here, since apparently your taste goes both ways, Is there anything you aren't into?" "Mermaids," said Magnus into his fingers. "They always smell like seaweed." "It's not funny," Alec said savagely, and kicking back his chair, he got up from the table and stalked off into the crowd.


Cassandra Clare


#cassandra-clare #city-of-fallen-angels #clary-fray #funny #humor

To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings.


Bodhidharma


#awareness #brings #buddha #end #go

Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another s.


Desiderius Erasmus


#dissatisfied #envious #especially #evil #hearts

My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.


Jorge Luis Borges


#difficult #essentially #i #immortal #only

The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.


Jorge Luis Borges


#deep #deep down #down #immortal #know

The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.


Paul Farmer


#biggest problem #challenge #cholera #haiti #health

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.


Edmund Burke


#beer #brandy #called #cares #condition

Studies have indicated there is a strong correlation between the shortages of nurses and morbidity and mortality rates in our hospitals.


Lois Capps


#correlation #hospitals #indicated #morbidity #mortality

All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.


Samuel Taylor Coleridge


#feed #flame #frame #his #love