George Santayana Quotes

If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a flying: And this same flower that smiles to day, Tomorrow will be dying.

We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying and our strength leaves us, and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood, cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.

We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose dying: Everything!

The thought of death deceives us; for it causes us to neglect to live.

Taking life seriously requires taking death seriously.

Don't die until you're dead.

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

Life is a charity ball given by the leaders of society. A few dance, get their charity's worth to the last penny; and the poor stand outside the gate and watch with hungry eyes the glint of jewels in the warm air. Then comes the lackey Death, and he says: "Madam and my Master, your carriage waits." So they go away into the dark in the carriage of the black plumes, and the dancing continues.

Remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment.

Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.

While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone.

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

whereas, up to the present, there is only one known way of getting born, there are endless ways of getting killed.

So good to be alive when the eulogies are read.

I'm being made aware of my mortality all the time.

Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all.

Birth, and copulation, and death; that's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.

Our lives are but our marches to the grave.

The only certainty is death.

Your mother’s heartbeat is the first sound you ever hear and your own heartbeat is the last.

Don't take anything for granted, because tomorrow is not promised to any of us.

It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.

The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality.