Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Life begins when a person first realizes how soon it will end.

No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.

My dear fellow,' Burlingame said, 'we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careening into time forever. Not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. We are dying men, Ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!

Our life is our own to-day, to-morrow you will be dust, a shade, and a tale that is told. Live mindful of death; the hour flies.

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

We are fastened to a dying animal.

Life is wasted on the living.

You don't waste your entire life waiting to go back to dust.

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.

It even feels absurd to be writing or singing a song at all - in the context of actual death, being alive feels absurd.

What's the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die, and then it makes sense.

Live mindful of how brief your life is.

Consider when thou art much vexed or grieved, that man's life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead.

All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.

Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.

It is the very joy of this earthly life to think that it will come to an end.

Hodie mihi cras tibi, said the inscription. Sic transit gloria mundi. My turn today, yours tomorrow. And thus passes away the glory of the world.

A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.

The plain truth is we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny spec surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the whole of creation, shaking my fist, sputtering, growing even eloquent at times, and then-poof! I am gone. Swept off once and for all. I think that is very, very funny.

Some men spend their whole life furnishing for themselves the things proper to life without realizing that at our birth each of us was poured a mortal brew to drink.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

We are nothing. - Tomorrow we may be die. We are nothing. - You and me.

A celebration of insignificance, Is that all we are in the end? And one day I’ll just be one more of those faces, frozen in death and wonder

Anyway I know only too well that all life is nothing but a brief reprieve from death.