immortality quotes

It must be soPlato, thou reason'st well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!

-Joseph Addison
  Cato, act 5, sc.1, l.1^10.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work† I want to achieve it through not dying.

-Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg Allen
Quoted in Eric Lax Woody  Allen and His Comedy (1975), ch.12.

The first sense he had of God was when he was eleven years oldat Chigwell being retired intoa chamberalone: he was so suddenly surprised with a sense of inward comfort and (as he thought) an external glory in the room that he had many times said that from thence he has the Seal of Divinityand Immortality, that there was a God and thatthesoul of manwas capable ofenjoying his divine communications.

-John Aubrey
  Of  William Penn, early Quaker. Brief Lives (published 1813).

But thesouls of therighteous are inthehand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, And their going from us to be utter destruction: but theyare in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. And having beena little chastised,theyshall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them, and found them worthy for himself.

-Bible (Apocrypha)
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1^5.

Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me The carriage held but just Ourselves And Immortality.

- Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
c.1863  Complete Poems, no.712 (first published1890).

   If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.

-James Harold Doolittle
^80  The Brothers Karamazov, bk.2, ch.6.

Immortality will cometosuch as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

- RalphWaldo Emerson
  The Conduct of Life,'Worship'.

Someone has somewhere commented on the fact that millionslong forimmortality who don't know whattodo with themselves on a rainy Sundayafternoon.

- Susan pseudonym of  Mrs Ronald McCrindle Ertz
  Anger in the Sky, ch.5.

Cheese, milk's leap toward immortality.

- Clifton Fadiman
  Any Number Can Play,'The Cheese Stands  Alone'.

The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth, Life's paradise, great princess, the soul's quiet, Sinews of concord, earthly immortality, Eternity of pleasures; no restoratives Like to a constant woman.

-John Ford
  The Broken Heart, act 2, sc.2.

What isscience? Science is angling in the mudangling for immortalityand for anything elsethat may happen to turn up.

- Aldous Leonard Huxley
  After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.

Hombre, tienes un hijo, un hijo que te hicieron creer podr|a inmortalizarte llevando el germen de ti mismo por siglos de generaciones† Tu carne, Hombre, carne deleznable, carne podrida que no puede soportar el peso de tu inmortalidad. No, no hay nada de ti mismo en esa carne. ‚Tu hijo no te hara   inmortal!' Man, you have a son, a son who they made you believe would make you immortal by carrying your seed through centuries of generations† Your flesh,O man, your despicable and rotten flesh that cannot bear the sight of your immortality. No: there's nothing of yourself in that flesh.Your son won't make you immortal!'

- Rene Marque  s
  El hombre y sus suen‹  os ('Man and His Dreams'), act 2.

In the final analysis, all architecture reveals the application of human ingenuity to the satisfaction of human needs. And among these needs are not only shelter, warmth and accommodation, but also the needs, felt at every moment in every part of the world in endlessly different ways, for something more profound, evocative and universal, for beauty, for permanence, for immortality.

- Patrick Nuttgens
  'The Nature of  Architecture', in Ben Farmer and Hentie Louw (eds) Companion to Contemporary  Architectural Thought (1993).

Unsterblichkeit der Individualit a« t verlangen heiÞt eigentlich einen Irrtum ins Unendliche perpetuieren wollen. Denn im Grunde ist doch jede Individualit a« t nur ein spezieller Irrtum, Fehltritt, etwas, das besser nicht w a« re, ja wovon uns zuru«  ckzubringen der eigentliche Zweck des Lebens ist. To desire immortality for theindividual isreally thesame as wanting to perpetuate an error for ever; for at bottom every individuality is really only a special error, a false step, something that it would be better should not be, in fact something from which it isthe real purpose of life to bring us back.

- Arthur Schopenhauer
  DieWelt alsWille undVorstellung (TheWorld asWill and Representation), vol.2, ch.41 (translated by E F J Payne).

In the realm of science, all attempts to find any evidence of supernatural beings, of metaphysical concepts, as God, immortality, infinity, etc have thus far failed, and if we are honest, we must confess that in science there exists no God, no immortality, no soul or mind, as distinct from the body.

- Charles Proteus Steinmetz
  In the American Freeman, Jul.

The woods decay, the woods decayand fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after manya summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world.

-Tennyson
  'Tithonus' (revised1864),1.1^7.