Mortality Quotes (page 13)
You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies, - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.
Joseph Conrad
I to my perils. Of cheat and charmer. Came clad in armour. By stars benign. Hope lies to mortals. And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine. The thoughts of others. Were light and fleeting, Of lovers' meeting. Or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, And mine were steady; So I was ready. When trouble came.
A. E. Housman
I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing. And the first motion, all the interimis. Like a phantasm, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments. Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffer then. The nature of an insurrection.
William Shakespeare
The weeping of the guitar begins. The goblets of dawn are smashed. The weeping of the guitar begins. Useless to silence it. Impossible to silence it. It weeps monotonously as water weeps as the wind weeps over snowfields. Impossible to silence it. It weeps for distant things. Hot southern sands yearning for white camellias. Weeps arrow without target evening without morning and the first dead bird on the branch. Oh, guitar! Heart mortally wounded by five swords.
Federico Garcia Lorca
In the same way that certain sections of the city were mortal battlegrounds, some parts of the calendar were always more warlike than others, and during the days between Christmas and the new year all elements seemed to conspire to subdue the soul. Fire, rain, sickness, cold, and death were everywhere spread through the dark as in a painting of hell. People struggled until exhaustion, giving everything they had, and the days were packed with trials and mysteries.
Mark Helprin
They met me in the day of success: and I havelearned by the perfectest report, they have more inthem than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desireto question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt inthe wonder of it, came missives from the king, whoall-hailed me 'Thane of Cawdor;' by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referredme to the coming on of time, with 'Hail, king thatshalt be!' This have I thought good to...
William Shakespeare
She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.
Jeffery Deaver