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.
