quotations about immortality
He ne'er is crown'd
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
Even peace of conscience, without the glory of immortality, were but a shadowy happiness.--Were this hope a mere delusion, how could we justify thy procedure, O thou wise and holy governor of the world?
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Immortality", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
We are immortal, if we form a link in the great chain of life. It is this unbroken continuity of life, ever rising to nobler levels from the ashes of apparent death that is so beautifully typified by the Phoenix.
M. D. CHATTERTON
Immortality of Man
'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone,
Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness,
The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill.
That only, and that amply this performs.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
The only way to find out if you're immortal is to make it to the end of time and look around to see if you're still alive. Until you've done that, all you know is that you haven't died yet.
JOHN PATRICK LOWRIE
Dancing with Eternity
There's one form of immortality I like to think about. It's that all those who from the very first have given anything to the world are living in the world to-day.
SUSAN GLASPELL
Little Masks
The woe of mortality makes humans God-like. It is because we know that we must die that we are so busy making life. It is because we are aware of mortality that we preserve the past and create the future. Mortality is ours without asking--but immortality is something we must build ourselves. Immortality is not a mere absence of death; it is defiance and denial of death. It is 'meaningful' only because there is death, that implacable reality which is to be defied.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies
The question of human immortality is the most momentous that the mind is capable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the dead live all other facts are in comparison trivial and without interest. The prospect of obtaining certain knowledge with regard to this stupendous matter is not encouraging. In all countries but those in barbarism the powers of the profoundest and most penetrating intelligences have been ceaselessly addressed to the task of glimpsing a life beyond this life; yet today no one can truly say that he knows. It is as much a matter of faith as ever it was.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Immortality", A Cynic Looks at Life
Oh how wrong we were to think immortality meant never dying.
GERARD WAY
attributed, Les Clowns Vengeurs
We stand upon the earth, and see that the same destiny has been appointed to all her children. We see all the generations of plants and animals pass away as the generations of men pass away. We know that the bird which mounts with the gladdest song to heaven will soon be voiceless and motionless; we know that the beast which treads the forest with the lordliest step will soon roam its depths no more; just as we know that the crowds of busy men that throng our city streets will disappear, and the places that now know them will know them no more forever. And so we think that the same shadow has fallen upon all the children of the earth. We find a certain sad consolation in this common fellowship, in the thought that the doom of mortality has fallen upon all alike; but we are wrong. Though all pass through the valley of death, all do not feel the shadow of it. Man stands alone in the consciousness of mortality. To him alone the secret has been whispered.
CHARLES CARROLL EVERETT
Immortality and Other Essays
Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn't a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.
STEPHEN KING
Hearts in Atlantis
Rejoice, ye wise and good! tremble, ye knaves and fools! (who is anxious for your happiness?) for immortality, that pleasing awful thought, is no fantastic dream. Not only is it brought to light in the gospel; it is written in the volumes of creation and providence.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Immortality", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
Everything mortal has moments immortal,
Swift and God-gifted, immeasurably bright.
AMY LOWELL
"A Winter Ride", A Dome of Many-coloured Glass
If I have any beliefs at all about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
JAMES THURBER
People Have More Fun Than Anybody
A heavenly idea comes up a lot in what might be called Silicon Valley metaphysics. We anticipate immortality through mechanization. A common claim in utopian technology culture is that people--well, perhaps not everyone--will be uploaded into cloud computing servers later in this century, perhaps in a decade or two, to become immortal in Virtual Reality. Or, if we are to remain physical, we will be surrounded by a world animated with robotic technology. We will float from joy to joy, even the poorest among us living like a sybaritic magician. We will not have to call forth what we wish from the world, for we will be so well modeled by statistics in the computing clouds that the dust will know what we want.
JARON LANIER
Who Owns the Future?
Most children feel immortal--they have no sense that they're ever going to die. For a child, even growing up is something that's barely comprehensible.
JOHN SAUL
Shadows
Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
"The Old Manse," Mosses from an Old Manse
While death and darkness girdle me
I grope for immortality.
LIONEL JOHNSON
"Magic"
The belief in immortality is not excluded from a legitimate place in human thought, because it does not admit of an absolute demonstration. It is a future event, and as such, cannot be proved. Human immortality is incapable of demonstration--that absolute logical justification upon such a subject is impossible and inconceivable. The problem is the permanence of the human personality--the continuance of the soul after the death of the body, in the possession of memory, reason, and a self-conscious life. This means the ultimate reasonableness or unreasonableness, of the intelligence or brutality, of the Power that is responsible for our existence. Immortality is one of the greatest spiritual needs of man.
M. D. CHATTERTON
Immortality of Man