Top 110 Mortality Quotes

We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality.

Most of my childhood revolved around wondering when we would be blown up by the Russians. I couldn’t stand the news, I knew that if the missile were launched, mortality would arrive in half an hour, so I spent a lot of my childhood feeling that I was 30 minutes from being dead.

‘They Both Die At The End’ is about coming face to face with your own mortality.

I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn’t work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.

What I’m exploring right now is the subject of my own mortality. It’s an area that I’m curious about, and I’m researching it to see if there’s a photographic essay in it for me. If images don’t start to come, I’ll go to something else.

Historians once assumed that when childhood mortality was high, people must not have loved their children very much; it would have been too painful. Research has since proved that assumption wrong.

The best doctors and the best hospitals in America, if they cannot get the patient information they need when they need it, it can lead to morbid consequences: Higher mortality.

God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.

For me, Charles Xavier is a monk. He’s like a selfless, egoless almost sexless force for the betterment of humanity and mortality.

The pain of loneliness seems to be part of the mortal experience. But the Lord in His mercy has made it so that we need never deal with the challenges of mortality alone.

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

I believe the only way we’ll be able to solve infant mortality – and other huge social problems – is by designing solutions for those with the greatest intent to carry it out.

Delusion means mortality. And awareness means Buddhahood.

If we knew about the real facts and statistics of mortality, we’d be terrified.

As a society, when you have your mortality slapped in your face, it changes you.

The elegy does the work of mourning; it allows us to experience mortality. It turns loss into remembrance, and it delivers an inheritance.

Many of the lessons we are to learn in mortality can only be received through the things we experience and sometimes suffer. And God expects and trusts us to face temporary mortal adversity with His help so we can learn what we need to learn and ultimately become what we are to become in eternity.

With spectacular events taking up so much of the available anxiety quotient, we need to be constantly reminded of the more workaday threats to our mortality – threats that, while they may also be functions of human error, have become so ubiquitous that we’ve begun to apprehend them as natural phenomena.

You realize mortality is everywhere.

Every hour you sit at work increases your mortality 11 percent. Think about that.

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.

Facing your own mortality forces you to re-evaluate your priorities.

When you’re writing about superpowers, you’re writing about power. When you’re writing about immortals, you’re writing about mortality.

Heavenly Father has given us a priceless gift in our capacity to communicate with each other. Our communications are at the core of our relationships with others. If we are to return home safely to Heavenly Father, we must develop righteous relationships with His children here in mortality.

Becoming a mother really put me in touch with not just my mortality but also my baby’s mortality. You spent nine months working on this thing, and it’s finally there, and the first thing you think about is, ‘I don’t want my child to die.’

You have a bout with death, things that touch your mortality, when that happens, all that bling-bling gets thrown away because all you’ve got is you and God.

Something happened to me at the precise moment that my grandmother died. She was three time zones away, but that didn’t matter. I believe that I felt something at that moment she passed… some bit of her mortality slipping away.

Parents, however old they and we may grow to be, serve among other things to shield us from a sense of our doom. As long as they are around, we can avoid the fact of our mortality; we can still be innocent children.

I’m interested in morality and mortality, and ‘Deadpool’ kind of has all of these themes.

I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death – it really lets them see mortality very clearly.

There are no Hollywood stars speaking out for the elderly. They’re forgotten, bewildered, and I don’t think it’s because people are cruel or don’t care. It’s because you don’t want to think about your own mortality. I think people don’t talk about it enough.

The birth of the Savior into mortality is an event of immeasurable significance that occurred almost 2,000 years ago. In much of the world, calendar years are numbered forward and backward from the entire time of His birth.

Just because you’ve faced your own mortality, it doesn’t make it any less frightening.

My children have gone to Catholic school… Part of their whole education is talking about the inner life and looking at your life, even though you’re only 15 or 16 – thinking about your mortality, thinking about the value of your life, thinking about your obligations.

I actually came out the year that AIDS hit the front pages. So there was this mixed feeling about it – excitement that life’s finally begun, but it was completely tied up with mortality and danger and politics.

Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.

Between 2000 and 2010, malaria mortality rates fell by 26 percent around the world. According to the latest World Health Organization estimates, there were about 219 million cases of malaria in 2010 and an estimated 660,000 deaths.

Infant mortality and life expectancy are reasonable indicators of general well-being in a society.

Don’t fear your mortality, because it is this very mortality that gives meaning and depth and poignancy to all the days that will be granted to you.

When we look on the roses and gaiety of youth, the mournful idea of mortality is altogether alien to our thoughts. We have heard of it as a speculation and a tale, but nothing but experience can bring it home to us.

I am now faced with mortality. Definitely not the most generous move.

How children attempt to deal with everyday comedies and tragedies, and mortality, is universal and ultimately such a large part of what it means to be human.

I argued strongly to the American publisher that ‘Reality Hunger’ should come out first. They thought that ‘The Thing About Life’ would have more appeal because it’s on a broader topic; it’s about mortality rather than art.

I find old women at weddings and funerals attractive; I have this weird mortality thing.

Mortality defines the human condition.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

Mortality is very brief but immeasurably important.

Disgust for the female body is always tinged with anxiety, since the body symbolizes mortality.

Mortality means you don’t have forever to work things out. You can live your life unexamined but then on the last day you’re going to think: ‘I’ve left things a little late.’

As a culture, we are not comfortable with mortality. We do not accept it the way other cultures do. We cling to youth, and we don’t want to die. It’s like, ‘Well, too bad, we do.’

It’s always been intriguing to me, the loveability of mortality.

I’m kind of a morbid person. I’m very optimistic, but I also feel like I’m going to die at any moment. I feel very much aware of my mortality. I’m here, and then I’m not.

When I was young, my parents were these titanic, infallible figures. But Mum’s illness and Dad’s battles with diabetes and heart attacks had a ripple effect on me – reminding me of my own mortality and that these illnesses are genetic.

I’ve spent a lot of words on my own mortality.

When you have an intimate encounter with mortality as my family and I did with my mom’s death, I took a long look at my life and I asked myself what was the one thing that I hadn’t done that I had really wanted to do. And it was to write and direct a film.

One of the metaphors that I use for start-ups is, you throw yourself off a cliff and assemble your airplane on the way down. If you don’t solve the right problem at the right time, that’s the end. Mortality puts priorities into sharp focus.

Prenatal care is one of the most effective ways to reduce maternal mortality because it identifies complications or high risks before emergency situations.

Our responsibility is to learn to draw upon the power of the Atonement. Otherwise, we walk through mortality relying solely on our own strength.

I don’t take things for granted, because everything feels more fragile. It’s made me wonder about mortality and how long you’ve got somebody in the world. I’m more fearful than I used to be.

I think mortality makes you live a fuller existence. When I was a kid I was scared of death, and maybe that’s what made me desperate to get the most out of life.

Getting older has compensations, though when you hit 50 you become very aware of your own mortality and it makes you reassess.

Whereas in America we are so fearful of mortality, we don’t want to talk about it, we don’t think about it, and in many ways we treat elderly people as invisible because they are a constant reminder of our own mortality. We put them away and put them in retirement homes so we don’t want to deal with that.

I think when you see an aircraft fire, these angry, black puffs of smoke, knowing that one of them could kill you that you – you – you understand the seriousness of the mission. And you understand your own mortality.

I believe that every human soul is teaching something to someone nearly every minute here in mortality.

I’ve always had an acute sense of mortality, maybe because my father’s a minister.

When you see someone putting themselves out there, particularly when you see someone is failing and failing so passionately, it brings up this bittersweet connection to our mortality.

The slugs are ascending this steep city staircase that leads up to a huge Catholic church, essentially signifying their slow crawl towards death. The work reminds us of religion, mortality, natural decay, and the slow suffocation of commercialized societies.

Obedience to the law of chastity will increase our happiness in mortality and make possible our progress in eternity.

For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But if you embrace the reality of the human body, you embrace mortality, and that is a very difficult thing for anything to do because the self-conscious mind cannot imagine non-existence. It’s impossible to do.

The earliest sensation at the onset of illness, often preceding the recognition of identifiable symptoms, is apprehension. Something has gone wrong, and a glimpse of mortality shifts somewhere deep in the mind. It is the most ancient of our fears.

I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mortality says to us that here’s a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them.

The West has always been the epicentre of possibility. One of the ways we forge against mortality is to head west. It’s to do with catching the sun before it slips behind the horizon.

I’ve had a lot of people pass away in my life. I guess it’s all a matter of how you deal with your mortality – and recognizing that you are mortal. I’m trying to see what a gift life is and how quickly it can be extinguished, without any warning.

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Abortion is child mortality.

Once the subject matter of rock n’ roll changed from cars and pop love songs to songs about really true love and the blues and death and mortality, this light bulb went off in my head and I went, ‘Oh, that’s what they’re doing. That’s kind of – that’s art.’

If anything, all homes should have piped water supply and sanitation, which could improve public-health indicators and reduce infant mortality.

An awareness of one’s mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.

Short stories consume you faster. They’re connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they’re also a total joy.

Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality.

I have been unexpectedly confronted with my own mortality as I was told that I had cancer.

What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide, but existential authenticity each person must find on her own… the angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.

Accepting your own mortality is like eating your vegetables: You may not want to do it, but it’s good for you.

Mental agitations and eating cares are more injurious to health, and destructive of life, than is commonly imagined, and could their effects be collected, would make no inconsiderable figure in the bills of mortality.

What we should care about is health – reduction of morbidity and mortality. Too often, we instead pay attention to whether something is ‘normal.’ A hospital may spend several million dollars separating a pair of conjoined twins, even though that separation is likely to leave them worse off.

I’ve seen my fair share of drama over the years of Children In Need. I had a close brush with mortality in 2009 when a chain collapsed from the studio rigging. I was in mid-spout to camera when I heard an enormous crash behind me – a ton of steel had come hurtling down and smashed to the ground a few feet away.

The self-help section of national bookstore chains in America is one of the largest sections. In a way, it’s nothing new, and in another way, very new. People have always searched for answers; that’s why we have religion. People have always been seeking some relief from their own mortality.

Young women who live in areas with high maternal mortality change their behavior less in response to HIV than young women who live in areas with low maternal mortality.

A Latter-day Saint woman who follows Christ’s example in her daily living begins to fulfill the plan of our Heavenly Father for her. By so doing, she can be a powerful influence for good in today’s world and meet the challenges of mortality. I have known such women, and they have been a guiding light to me.

The truth is women use contraception not only as a way to prevent unintended pregnancies, but also to improve their health and the health of their families. Increased access to contraception is directly linked to declines in maternal and infant mortality.

At the age of 22, I began to consider my own mortality. It had never occurred to me that, with all of the progress that has been made in cancer research, none of the standard treatments would work for me.

Turning 30 was when my parents both got cancer and were fighting it and beat it, but their mortality started to get to me. Everything wasn’t as hunky-dory like it was.

A spiritual voice is urgently needed to underline the fact that global warming is already causing human anguish and mortality in our nation and abroad, and much more will occur in the future without rapid action.

For millions of girls around the world, motherhood comes too early. Those who bear children as adolescents suffer higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and their children are more likely to die in infancy.

Pregnancies spaced too closely together lead to increased rates of infant mortality.

My dad was an agent for Met Life. In the ’50s, I remember the mortality rate was something like – you had – 58 was the average age. Then it was moved up to 62, and then 65, 68.

I believe the biggest themes of life are put into the best focus when held up against the very sharp light of mortality.

You can find episodes like the flu epidemic or war times when mortality rates go up, but sustained increases in mortality for any major group in any society are really quite rare. It’s an indication that something is very wrong.

Becoming a parent gives you access to a whole world of feeling. It gives you a much stronger sense of life and death: becoming a father made me realise my own mortality.

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.

The U.S. routinely ranks lower than other countries in health outcomes such as infant mortality.

I had a sense of mortality since I was a little girl, which has to do with my father, who nearly died eight times in my childhood. He had eight heart attacks.

You never think about your own mortality. At least not until your back gives way when you’re 40.

In reality, we are all travelers – even explorers of mortality.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, and yet so many Americans are left to fight this battle without the coverage, support, and resources they need.

Because sanitation has so many effects across all aspects of development – it affects education, it affects health, it affects maternal mortality and infant mortality, it affects labor – it’s all these things, so it becomes a political football. Nobody has full responsibility.

Thomas More rarely discussed his siblings, and two of them are never mentioned by him. It is likely that they were part of that infant mortality which had provoked such concern for early baptism.

Ultimately, I think, as humans, we all care deeply about our life’s legacy, and contemplating our own mortality is the only real way to approach that question of legacy honestly.

There’s nothing like the vast, dark Atlantic to remind you of your mortality. But terror can also be exhilarating.

Probably I chose immortality because mortality is a universal human obsession.