William Wordsworth Quotes

I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation.

I was fascinated by mortality. Most people are, even if they don't admit it.

I always know I can die at any moment.

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

I'm just observing the world. I was born into it, like you were, and then I found out there were some really disturbing aspects to being alive, like the fact that you weren't going to be alive forever - that bothered me.

Humans may be the only creatures on Earth who spend significant time thinking about the fact that someday their lives will end.

I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.

Unlike other animals, all of which are undoubtedly oblivious to their eventual demise, humans are fully aware that their time on Earth is limited. This is a reality that for most individuals is difficult if not impossible to bear.

Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.

Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality.

When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.

Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning? Preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death, until it arrives like thunder?

Anything that has to deal with our mortality is always going to be interesting to us. Life and death is always going to be something that draws our attention.

If a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.

It's not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It's like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death's terror. We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.

In childhood, death stirred me not; in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road; now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.

How can a people who do not mean to understand death hope to understand love, and who will sound the alarm?

Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.

So the first thing: become aware of death. Think about it, look at it, contemplate it. Do not be afraid, do not escape the fact. It is there and you cannot escape it! It has come into existence with you.

To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.

I contemplate the body, dead and diseased as well as alive and healthy.

And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it.

age is nothing but death that is conscious.