Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like the flame read more

Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like the flame of a candle, I say, is a gloriously fine thing. It makes us sober; it makes us a little sad; and many of us it makes poetic. But above all,

Consider
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:--
We are as they;
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Consider
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:--
We are as they;
Like them we fade away
As doth a leaf.

This is the spot where I am mortal.
[Ger., Hier ist die Stelle wo ich sterblich bin.]

This is the spot where I am mortal.
[Ger., Hier ist die Stelle wo ich sterblich bin.]

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a
brief sojourn; for what read more

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a
brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses
it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that
one exists for other people.

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool,
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty, read more

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool,
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve,
In all the magnanimity of thought;
Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same.
And why? because he thinks himself immortal,
All men think all men mortal but themselves.

That flesh is but the glasse, which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
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That flesh is but the glasse, which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust.

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, read more

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.

"O Charidas, what of the underworld?"
"Great darkness."
"And what of the resurrection?"
"A read more

"O Charidas, what of the underworld?"
"Great darkness."
"And what of the resurrection?"
"A lie."
"And Pluto?"
"A fable; we perish utterly."

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no
less are thoughts of mortality read more

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no
less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.