#mortal

The temptation to second-guess is strong. But I must remember one thing. Life is simple. You are healthy or you are sick. You are faithful to your wife or you aren't. You are alive or you are dead. I am alive. ↗

— Greg Iles

#faith

Sometimes we intentionally blind ourselves. We find poor substitutes for the things we lack: friends, family, love. And that substitute becomes almost addictive, to the point where we continue to try to turn it into the real thing, or convince ourselves it’s better than having nothing in its stead. But, Kitty, when you do find the real thing, you’ll wonder why you ever settled for anything less. ↗

— Caitlin Elyse

#heaven-prays-hell-preys #immortal-wars #family

Tombstones covered the dale, the smooth marble surfaces bright. She had spent days here as a teenager, though not out of any awareness of mortality. Like every adolescent, she intended to live forever. ↗

— Thomm Quackenbush

#cemetery #death #immortality #teenager #death

If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution of happiness, strength, and understanding to my being remains to sustain me in an altered world. ↗

— Helen Keller

#grief #hope #immortality #loss #death

We do our job and go. See? That is what Death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple. What's the trouble? ↗

— H.G. Wells

#life #mortality #death

It was not man who implanted in himself what is infinite and the love of what is immortal: those lofty instincts are not the offspring of his capricious will; their steadfast foundation is fixed in human nature, and they exist in spite of his efforts. He may cross and distort them – destroy them he cannot. The soul wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains be taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amidst the enjoyments of sense. ↗

— Alexis de Tocqueville

#eternity #immortal #satisfy #love

But man by his nature is an unnatural animal. If any creature stands a chance of defeating death, it is man. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#immortality #death

The idea that all souls are mortal is the only notion surely terminating love and all its forms. ↗

— Criss Jami

#atheism #belief #capability #damnation #death

The vampire Dimitri calmly looked up at Reese and smiled. “Commander, everything gets easier over time,” he answered. “Especially if you have all the time that there is. And I do. As a human, you live such a short span of time that you do not learn that life is a continuous battle with one enemy—and that compromise is the only way to ultimately win. Those that do not understand this and think they can control everything; fall to the death of illusion. ↗

— Tony Ruggiero

#death

I could not do this, I realized, if I were immortal. This degree of love of life and of one another is granted, I saw for once and for ever, not to immortals, but to those who live briefly and always under the shadow of death and loss. ↗

— Dan Simmons

#death