Hannah Arendt Quotes

Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

If we are immortal, it is a fact of nature, and that fact does not depend on bibles, on Christs, priest, or creeds.

Immortality is a chancy thing; it cannot be promised or earned. Perhaps it cannot even be identified for what it is.

Immortality—dazzling idea! who first imagined thee! Was it some jolly burgher of Nuremburg, who with night-cap on his head, and white clay pipe in mouth, sat on some pleasant summer evening before his door, and reflected in all his comfort, that it would be right pleasant, if, with unextinguishable pipe, and endless breath, he could thus vegetate onwards for a blessed eternity? Or was it a lover, who in the arms of his loved one, thought the immortality-thought, and that because he could think and feel naught beside!—Love! Immortality!

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

The pursuit of eternity is no longer the prerogative of the gods - it is the business of us all, here and now.

And in which we say that life is eternal but continue to struggle to survive.

He could not die when trees were green, for he loved the time too well.

We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.

Man was made to be immortal; else, he could not survive being the fool he is.

Who wants to live forever?

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

Lies here food for the worms yet the work shall not be lost.

We all have to die some day. Not very many immortals have shown up in this world.

We are made to be immortal, and yet we die. It's horrible, it can't be taken seriously

We conceive of immortality as having a beginning, but no end; but we conceive of eternity as having neither beginning nor end. Hence it is proper to speak of eternity as the attribute of God, but of immortality as the attribute of man.

It's our mortality that terrifies us, because what we're really seeking is immortality - that is, after all, a fool's errand.

If death disappears there will be no mystery in life. That's why a dead thing has no mystery in it, a corpse has no mystery in it, because it cannot die anymore. You think it has no mystery because life has disappeared? No, it has no mystery because now it cannot die anymore. Death has disappeared, and with death automatically life disappears. Life is only one of the ways of death's expression.

We're all immortal until we die.

Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.

If there wasn't death, I think you couldn't go on.

One thing is certain, that when you die and are resurrected you belong to the earth and whatever is of the earth is yours inalienably. You become an anomaly of nature, a being without shadow; you will never die again but only pass away like the phenomena about you.

E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

Immortality--twin sister of Eternity.