Bob Dylan Quotes

Jump to the day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter. Jump to the day another house will stand here and the people living there won't know we ever happened.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
 The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Only death reveals what a nothing the body of man is.

In the end, we all lose it. Remember that. In the end, we own nothing.

What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise.

Life is a memory, and then it is nothing.

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

He knows that after him everything will continue on much as before, except that there will be a minuscule absence, a barely detective gap in the so-called grand scheme, one unit fewer now. Or not even that, not even an empty space where he once was, for all will rush immediately to fill that vacuum. Pft. Gone. Recollections of him will remain in the minds of others for a while, but presently those others too will die and his few relics with them. And then all will be dark.

Worms'-Meat, n. The finished product of which we are the raw material. The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Granitarium. Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that houses it, but "this too must pass away." Probably the silliest work in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for himself. The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by contrast the foreknown futility.

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

I care not how worldly you may be: there are times when all distinctions seem like dust, and when at the graves of the great you dream of a coming country, where your proudest hopes shall be dimmed forever.

Glory comes too late, after one as been reduced to ashes.

The last suit that you wear, you don't need any pockets.

We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.

I think that's what we're all most terrified about: that we'll just die and disappear and we'll leave no trace.

Heaven fashioned us of nothing; and we strive to bring ourselves to nothing.

Even if you live forty or fifty years in this world, and then die, you cannot take all your goods with you.

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

If we one day cease to exist, what will be remarkable is that we were ever here at all.

All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up, And is lightly laid again.