I feel my immortality o’ersweep all pains, all tears, all time, all fears, and like the eternal thunders of the deep, peal to my ears this truth—“Thou livest forever.”
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.
—Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–47) French Moralist, Essayist, Writer
For the great hereafter I trust in the infinite love of God as expressed in the life and death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–81) American Editor, Novelist
The first condition of immortality is death.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (1909–1966) Polish Aphorist, Poet
To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
This world is like a road-side inn, but the world to come is like the real home.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
Immortality is what nature possesses without effort and without anybody’s assistance, and immortality is what the mortals must therefore try to achieve if they want to live up to the world into which they were born, to live up to the things which surround them and to whose company they are admitted for a short while.
—Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
As often as I hear of some undeserved wretchedness, my thoughts rest on that world where all will be made straight, and where the labors of sorrow will end in joy.
—Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1796–1879) German Philosopher
The belief that we shall never die is the foundation of our dying well.
—Francis Turretin (1623–87) Swiss Scholastic Theologian
When I consider the wonderful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past, and such a capacity of penetrating into the future; when I behold such a number of arts and sciences, and such a multitude of discoveries thence arising, I believe and am firmly persuaded that a nature which contains so many things within itself cannot but be immortal.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–99) American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic
The just of all nations have a portion in the future reward.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
Not all the subtleties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
Deathlessness should be arrived at in a… haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
Nothing short of an eternity could enable men to imagine, think, and feel, and to express all they have imagined, thought and felt.—Immortality, which is the spiritual desire, is the intellectual necessity.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
The old, old fashion—death! Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet—of immortality!
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
Matter immortal? and shall spirit die?—
Above the nobler, shall less nobler rise?
Shall man alone, for whom all else revives,
no resurrection know? Shall man alone,
Imperial man! Be sown in barren ground,
Less privileg’d than grain, on which he feeds?
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.
—Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) Romanian-American Writer, Professor, Activist
Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, and animates, is something celestial, divine, and, consequently, imperishable.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The thought of being nothing after death is a burden insupportable to a virtuous man; we naturally aim at happiness, and cannot bear to have it confined to our present being.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
All things by immortal power. Near of far, to each other linked are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star.
—Francis Thompson (1859–1907) English Poet, Ascetic
We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth.—There is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beings that now pass over before us like shadows, will stay in our presence forever.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
The first requisite for immortality is death.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (1909–1966) Polish Aphorist, Poet
All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are both immortal and divine.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.
—Joseph Heller (1923–99) American Novelist
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