Quotes & Sayings About Immortality

Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone. — Mitch Albom

Men are taught from childhood that they are weak and sinners. Teach them that they are all glorious children of immortality, even those who are the weakest in manifestation. — Swami Vivekananda

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, - the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heavens artillery, - but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggots life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear od death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, - the hope of the Resurrection and the life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, - it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.
- The White Silence — Jack London

In the shining hours of togetherness
Light of the morning on your eyes
Bridge to immortality sang a bird of paradise
Peaceful we laughed on the banks
Where breathed freedom in the eternal river — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

We are all working for the immortality of the human consciousness. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality. — Jean Paul

Intellectual knowledge exists in and of the brain.
Because the brain is part of the body, which must one day expire, this collection of facts, however large and impressive, will expire as well.
Insight, however, is a function of the spirit.
Because your spirit follows you through cycle after cycle of life, death, and rebirth, you have the opportunity of cultivating insight in an ongoing fashion.
Refined over time, insight becomes pure, constant, and unwavering.
This is the beginning of immortality. — Lao-Tzu

The presence of the messianic salvation is also seen in Jesus' miracles of healing, for which the Greek word meaning "to save" is used. The presence of the Kingdom of God in Jesus meant deliverance from hemorrhage (Mk 5:34), blindness (Mk 10:52), demon possession (Lk 8:36), and even death itself (Mk 5:23). Jesus claimed that these deliverances were evidences of the presence of the messianic salvation (Mt 11:4-5). They were pledges of the life of the eschatological Kingdom that will finally mean immortality for the body. The Kingdom of God is concerned not only with people's souls but with the salvation of the whole person. — George Eldon Ladd

And I may stand where health, success, and power Await my coming, if, each fleeting hour I cling to love and patience; and abide With stainlessness; and never step aside From high integrity; so shall I see At last the land of immortality. — James Allen

Even that. What is the point in living forever, if it is not with the woman I love? — Michael Scott

Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love. — Rabindranath Tagore

Immortality: "It is impossible to be conscious of being unconscious."

It is not possible to be aware of being unconscious from your own perspective. You cannot be aware of not being aware. You can be less aware/conscious, such as when you are asleep, but not completely unconscious (dead), because time would stand still for you. A billion years could pass, and you would not know it.

How do you know you are dead? It is not possible to be aware of any gaps in life; it is continuous and never-ending from your own point of view.

Death and birth are a continuous event from your own perspective.

You will die physically, but you will be born into a new physical body. Being born happens, or you would not be here now. You were born into this life. It is what we know happens. There is no evidence anything else happens. True or false? — Michael Smith

It is not the fear of death which creates the desire for immortality, but the desire for immortality which causes the fear of death. — Otto Weininger

A great irony is that the quest for secular immortality is being funded by foundations and individuals who seem to hate life — Dean Cavanagh

By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. — William Hazlitt

You are young men and not children. The idea is that art allows the child imprisoned inside the adult to come out to play and celebrate the world and its beauty." He said that art was intimately linked with immortality: a challenge to death and time, a celebration of life. — Sinan Antoon

The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Either the soul is immortal and we shall not die, or it perishes with the flesh, and we shall not know that we are dead. Live, then, as if you were eternal. — Andre Maurois

No matter what happens around us, or to us, through love, our soul reaches immortality, conquering all dimensions and all destinies. — Akiane Kramarik

Here I've given him a good eight inches and a shot at immortality and he'll turn on me the same way he did last year when I asked him to pose for a few nude sketches. Ingrate — David Sedaris

Let us take birth in our immortality courageously, the way lion walks in the forest roaring.
Let us live the way the tiger looks for its prey, to search the Supreme Power in our godliness. — Vishal Chipkar

IT SEEMS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE, but there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am. — Daniel Silva

Shadowed beneath his brow bone were cold dark eyes containing secrets and sadness, bitterness and grief. — T.L. Parker

Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable altogether. — Michael Shermer

Affliction by that falsehood is the act of dying. To be free from that delusion is to attain Immortality. — Sathya Sai Baba

I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen. — J.G. Ballard

Our blessed Savior chose the Garden for his Oratory, and dying, for the place of his Sepulchre; and we do avouch for many weighty causes, that there are none more fit to bury our dead in than in our Gardens and Groves, where our Beds may be decked with verdant and fragrant flowers, Trees and Perennial Plants, the most natural and instructive Hieroglyphics of our expected Resurrection and Immortality. — John Evelyn

In the end, the only thing that really matters is how we treated all living things. — Ka Chinery

The sun had now set the sky ablaze with glorious hues of orange. She squinted to focus in the brilliance and thoughts of distant fire breathing dragons lit up her imagination once again. — Kim Cormack

Human reason is so little able, merely by its own strength, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, that it was absolutely necessary religion should reveal it to us. It is of advantage to society in general, that mankind should believe the soul to be immortal; faith commands us to do this; nothing more is required, and the matter is cleared up at once. — Voltaire

Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar. — Margaret Atwood

Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details of the accident are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying. — Douglas Adams

Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond; But is there anything Beyond? — Rupert Brooke

the legend of Adapa. He called up that tale now to examine it in his mind. The story went that Adapa had been a sage of Eridu, city of the god Enki. He had been taken into heaven and offered the bread and water of immortality by Anu. But he turned them down because his patron deity, Enki, had advised him against it, claiming they were the bread and water of death. So Adapa missed out on the opportunity of immortality. He was clothed with new garments and returned to Eridu to die. — Brian Godawa

That's immortality my darlings" Spencer said. — Sara Shepard

How can a person who has awakened to the truth about his body ever die? Such a one attains to immortality. — Mahatma Gandhi

He had read in the newspaper satirical remarks about initial-carvers, who could find no other road to immortality. — D.H. Lawrence

Eternity is the mentality for immortality. Make your mark; leave a positive legacy! — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

I believe we lose immortality because we have not conquered our opposition to death; we keep insisting on the primary, rudimentary idea: that the whole body should be kept alive. We should seek to preserve only the part that has to do with consciousness. — Adolfo Bioy Casares

I don't buy art in order to leave a mark or to be remembered; clutching at immortality is of zero interest to anyone sane. — Charles Saatchi

The possibilities for immortality are endless. Here you sit reading these words, a butterfly resting on a flower! — Frederick Lenz

Besides, if I am truly immortal, I am my own grandchild, my own descendant, my own dynasty. I am not obliged to live on through what I pass down to others. — Tom Robbins

Religion, philosophy, art - those three pillars on which the world has rested - were invented by man in order symbolically to encapsulate the idea of infinity, setting against it a symbol of its possible attainment (which in real terms is of-course impossible). Humanity has found nothing else on such an enormous scale. Admittedly man found it by instinct, without understanding why he needed God (easier that way!) or philosophy (explains everything, even the meaning of life!) or art (immortality). — Andrei Tarkovsky

Pain has an odd way of expressing itself in the acts of business. No matter how many setbacks a leader might experience, there always seems to be a new opaque watermark of endurance testing, invisibly triggered for erratic combustion in each compounding decision. Every CEO in the world knows this, yet few have the good sense to walk away from the table when their cards are hot. Why win in Act Two when a comeback in Act Three gives you a longer biography? Ego is not so much about immortality as it is about demonstrating stately resistance to nightmarish attacks in public forums. Any good smack to the head is a continuity wake up call, or at least another invitation to be interviewed by Charlie Rose. — Ken Goldstein

If you want to live forever you are dreadfully dangerous because you're not living now. — Joanna Russ

Men are mere mortals but their quest for knowledge leads them to the brink of immortality."

Excerpt from novel You Can't Escape Love by Grace Willows — Grace Willows

We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive ... Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die. — Candace Fleming

Opposition is dangerous to immortality. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Now let us regard the idea of God from the magic standpoint, according to the four elements, the so-called tetragrammaton, the unspeakable, the supreme: the fiery principle involves the almightiness and the omnipotence, the airy principle owns the wisdom, purity and clarity, from which aspect proceeds the universal lawfulness. Love and eternal life are attributed to the watery principle, and omnipresence, immortality and consequently eternity belong to the earth principle. These four aspects together represent the supreme Godhead. — Franz Bardon

The authentic religion teaches you to discover your immortality, to discover the god within you. — Rajneesh

I am not even six feet tall. Yet I am praying to the Absolute Supreme to reach His infinite Height, which is far beyond even my imagination's flight. For me to long to grow into that Height - is this not a miracle? I am mortal. My thoughts, my deeds, my experiences - everything that I have and everything that I am - represent mortality. Yet despite everything that I have and everything that I am, I am longing for Immortality. Is this not a miracle? — Sri Chinmoy

But you must have all the things you never had of life and make of immortality a junk shop in which both of us become grotesque. — Anne Rice

Meditation is the royal road to the attainment of freedom, a mysterious ladder that reaches from earth to heaven, darkness to light, mortality to Immortality. — Sivananda

Outside the rain finally began to fall, surging in fits and starts. "I love the way it rains here," he told her. "It reminds me that some forces of nature can never be entirely subdued. They are eternal, which is a far better thing to be than immortal. — Neal Shusterman

Jaden felt their boredom, their tired eternity. Beyond that, she felt their dying essence. They were immortal - all-powerful beings - and yet they were powerless against the onslaught of ever-changing time. They were lost in a modern world, one they didn't have the energy to understand. And, in being lost, they were immobilized against it. Not even their judgments could assuage their exhausted wisdom of forever. — Michelle M. Pillow

I doubt I'm any wiser than I was five hundred years back. I'm older. I've been up, and been down, and been up again. Have I learned aught? I've learned from my mistakes, but I've had more time to commit more mistakes. — Neil Gaiman

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. — Epicurus

the definition of immortality centered on being remembered. The "living dead" were kept from fading into anonymity by being called to life in communal story, song, and dance. Remembering, whether by written or oral means, is an act of distillation. Some memories fall away; others survive, are embellished, and become stronger with the passage of time. Stories — Milton C. Sernett

Opening his eyes, gazing at the vastness above, below, and all around, J.D. inquired, "Do you believe in immortality?" as casually as if inquiring if she believed in free trade. "I don't know. Do you?" "I don't know either. I want terribly to believe that there's a chance for such happiness as this to be carried on somehow, somewhere, if not in this life, then in the next. — Olive Higgins Prouty

While the Bible teaches that immortality of the soul is conditional upon well-doing, it makes no distinction in respect of the spirit. — Max Heindel

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul. — Honore De Balzac

How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! They that soared so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree, and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if the time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and as ripe,
with such an Indian-summer serenity will shed their bodies, as they do their hair and nails. — Henry David Thoreau

Death is a grave mistake! Physical immortality takes forever. It is the
only cause that you can't die for. — Leonard Orr

Every punch I threw with bad intentions to a vital area ... I aimed for his ear ... I wanted to bust his eardrum ... Every punch had bad intentions ... My record will last for immortality, It'll never be broken ... I want to live forever ... I refuse to lose ... I would have to be carried out dead to lose ... I was coming to destroy and win the Heavyweight Championship of the World, which I done. — Mike Tyson

By 1998, members of the United States National Academy of Sciences, an elite elected group sponsored by the federal government, were approaching complete atheism. Only 10 percent testified to a belief in either God or immortality. Among them were a scant 2 percent of the biologists. In modern civilizations, there is no overwhelming importance in the general populace to belong to an organized religion. Witness, — Edward O. Wilson

And now because you are His child, live as a child of God; be redeemed from the life of evil, which is false to your nature, into the life of goodness, which is the truth of your being. Scorn all that is mean; hate all that is false; struggle with all that is impure Live the simple, lofty life which befits an heir of immortality. — Frederick William Robertson

Nlarge the pupil of the eye, so that the body with its attendant personality will no longer obstruct the view. Immortality is then experienced as a present fact ... — Joseph Campbell

Does my soul suffer
When my body breaks down
When I feel mortal
When my body is weak
Does the soul rejoice
The end is near — A.A. Patawaran

From my spirit's gray defeat, From my pulse's flagging beat, From my hopes that turned to sand Sifting through my close-clenched hand, From my own fault's slavery, If I can sing, I still am free. For with my singing I can make A refuge for my spirit's sake, A house of shining words, to be My fragile immortality. — Sara Teasdale

We are living in the falsehood due to the erroneous teachings of the society, community and the bordered nations. — Vishal Chipkar

Carry religious principles into common life, and common life will lose its transitoriness. The world passes away. The things seen are temporal. Soon business, with all its cares and anxieties, the whole "unprofitable stir and fever of the world" will be to us a thing of the past. But religion does something better than sigh and moan over the perishableness of earthly things. It finds in them the seeds of immortality. — John Caird

The problem with living forever, of course, is you have to live forever before you know you're immortal ... or invincible. Even the gods, in this way, must always remain uncertain. Time trumps immortality just as uncertainty trumps omniscience, for a knower can only ever know what it knows, never what it doesn't.
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

It's not lost on me that everyone dies, but some people have a kind of immortality about them, and you can't imagine that they will ever be gone. — Henry Rollins

I ask of any God, of any gods, that if they give immortality, I hope to be granted oblivion also. — Jorge Luis Borges

The person who doesn't read lives only one life. The reader lives 5,000. Reading is immortality backwards. — Umberto Eco

Among the poor, the approach of dissolution is usually regarded with a quiet and natural composure, which it is consolatory to contemplate, and which is as far removed from the dead palsy of unbelief as it is from the delirious raptures of fanaticism. Theirs is a true, unhesitating faith, and they are willing to lay down the burden of e weary life, in the sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality. — Robert Southey

Death must be an evil and the gods agree; for why else would they live for ever? — Sappho

Books are the key to immortality. — Tootsie Miller

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you ... Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you. — Ernest Hemingway,

The power of an idea is never to be underestimated. Many a thought has survived long after its host has ceased to be. It is the power of an idea that no shield can defend against, nor sword divide, nor poison infect. As such, we must aspire to create ideas, rather than preserve life. In a sense, this is how we achieve true immortality and live on past our time. — A.J. Darkholme

Play on, mortal. Every god falls at a mortal's hands. Such is the only end to immortality. — Steven Erikson

Books are our best possessions in life, they are our immortality. — Alberto Manguel

Dr. Jubal Harshaw, professional clown, amateur subversive, and parasite by choice, had long attempted to eliminate "hurry" and all related emotions from his pattern. Being aware that he had but a short time left to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in his own immortality, it was his purpose to live each golden moment as if it were eternity - without fear, without hope, but with sybaritic gusto. — Robert A. Heinlein

I will murder you by the billions to give you immortality. I will set fire to your civilization to light your way forward. But know this: My species is not defined by your dying, but by your living. — Daniel H. Wilson

Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death. — Rebecca West

For centuries explorers, scientists and religious followers have sought a way to make the hooded figure of death fail in his quest. And none have persevered. But they didn't know what I know. They sought fountains of youth and treasures and other sacrificial regimens that would secure their immortality. But it's not about the blood that runs through our veins. It's about the approach. Death can't be thwarted with a miracle cure. It has to be outmaneuvered. — Sarah Noffke

If I cannot have a religion that will lead me to God, and place me en rapport with him, and unfold to my mind the principles of immortality and eternal life, I want nothing to do with it. — John Taylor

Every word he wrote would be strong with that sweet purity and simplicity that was his gift alone, placing him higher than any living poet, secure on his pedestal apart from the world, like a great silent god above the little dwarfs of men tossed hither and thither in the stream of life. From the crystal clearness of his brain the images became words, and the words became magic, and the whole was transcendent of beauty, one thread touching another, alike in their perfection and their certitude of immortality. Thus it seemed to me he was not a living figure of flesh and blood, but a monument to the national pride of his country, his England, and now and then he would bow gravely from his pedestal and scatter to the people a small quantity of his thought, which they would grub for on their poor rough ground, then clasp to their hungry hearts as treasure. — Daphne Du Maurier

The real wages of potters are in the daily silent appreciations of each of their customers as they pour the morning tea from their teapot, or drink coffee from their mug, or eat dinner off their plate. To be this involved in the daily lives of people who appreciate and admire your work enough to buy it must bring deep reassurance. It is a kind of immortality you can enjoy while still living.
The same goes for the woodworker. You are part of the community. — Roger Deakin

There is no other immortality:
in the cold spring, the purple violets open.
And yet, the heart is black,
there is its violence frankly exposed.
Or is it not the heart at the center
but some other word? — Louis Gluck

I entered what I can only describe as an alternate universe, and experienced timelessness for myself, first-hand. There was no refuting the immortality of the soul for me ever again after that. — Susan Schneider

A person who lives moment to moment, who goes on dying to the past, is never attached to anything. Attachment comes from the accumulated past. If you can be unattached to the past every moment, then you are always fresh, young, just born. You pulsate with life and that pulsation gives you immortality. You are immortal, only unaware of the fact. — Rajneesh

Till we attain immortality, all life will remain just an illusion! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Peter sank. "I'd give anything to see time. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

I think there's a sort of agony with all intelligent and very creative designers that it's only fashion, that in the end it's only the decorative arts. I had a feeling towards the end that Saint Laurent and Berge were very keen to attain that immortality that a lot of designers long for. You know, those endless exhibitions. — Suzy Menkes

Either by silencing the mind or by opening the heart, today's man can become tomorrow's God, tomorrow's Divinity. And embodied Divinity soon becomes revealed Immortality. — Sri Chinmoy

Forget it, Jonathan, and go back to sleep. And before you go to sleep, pray that no well-meaning god ever makes you immortal. — Peter S. Beagle

Greatness! Extraordinariness! Conquest of the world and immortality of the name! What good was all the happiness of people eternally unknown compared with this goal? — Thomas Mann

If I should die," said I to myself, "I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd. — Dan Simmons

Be the first to say something obvious and achieve immortality. — Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach