Quotes & Sayings About Mortals

I have fallen a hopeless victim to the Turk; he is the most charming of mortals ... — Gertrude Bell

Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals ... must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther. — Isaac Watts

Nature is all the body of God we mortals will ever see. — Frank Lloyd Wright

As we walked, I kept taking glances at her through the crowd, quick snapshots: a photographic series entitled Perfection Stands Still While Mortals Walk Past. — John Green

We must take human nature as we find it, perfection falls not to the share of mortals. — George Washington

Some mortals
like you
are already half in love with death. It is who you are, and I'll not make it harder on you by telling you things you don't need to know. Ask me again when you die. Then I'll tell you everything, anything, nothing. — Melissa Marr

This town must learn,
even against its will, how much it costs
to scorn a God's mysteries and to be purged.
So shall I vindicate my virgin mother
and reveal myself to mortals as a God,
the son of God. — Euripides

Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay. — Abraham Lincoln

I am not the first Buddha who came upon Earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time, another Buddha will arise in the world - a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals. — Buddha

Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past. — Anne Rice

Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals. — Joyce Maynard

Mortals have become spoiled and ungracious, and fail to appreciate the things right around them. They forget that Christmas is about love, and God's perfect, selfless gift. — Cameo Renae

If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste for death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin's answer. — Yann Martel

Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Remember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal or mortals could have prevented this. — Woodrow Wilson

A certain ultra-dignified gentleman of unusual prominence carried himself so stiffly that nobody felt free to call him by his first name. He quarreled with a friend of earlier days and from then on the two never spoke. The day the friend died an associate found the ultra-dignified gentleman staring through the window. When he came out of his reverie, he soliloquized with a sigh, ""He was the last to call me John."" Is any man really entitled to regard himself a success who has failed to inspire at least a goodly number of fellow mortals to greet him by his first name? — B.C. Forbes

Thus have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals: that they live in grief while they themselves are without cares; for two jars stand on the floor of Zeus of the gifts which he gives, one of evils and another of blessings. — Homer

I-I am going to be a storm-a flame- I need to fight whole armies alone; I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms; I feel too strong to war with mortals- BRING ME GIANTS! — Edmond Rostand

Humility and level-headedness are traits, which have accrued upon me over the years, during the rites of my passage through time. They were thrust down my throat by the hands of Destiny and the Almighty, both of who are far greater, far grander, and far more mysterious and mystic, than all that we ordinary mortals can ever humanly conceive or comprehend.
- Bhakti Vedanta Anandamurthy Thiruvadiar. ( A Character in the book) — Biju Vasudevan

Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the little-regarded truth, that the act of the passing generation is the germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far-distant time; that, together with the seed of the merely temporary crop, which mortals term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth, which may darkly overshadow their posterity. The — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Only thus may we carry the truth to those without, and though the likelihood of our narrative being given credence is, I grant you, remote, so wedded are mortals to their stupid infatuation for impossible superstitions, we should be craven cowards indeed were we to shirk the plain duty which confronts us. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

We professional athletes are very lucky. Unlike most mortals, we are given the privilege of dying twice - once when we retire and again when death takes us. — John McNally

What greater pain could mortals have than this: To see their children dead before their eyes? — Euripides

The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist — Thomas Carlyle

I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them. — Michael Eric Dyson

There are only two kinds of Mortals in the backwater town of Gatlin, South Carolina - the stupid and the stuck. At least, that's what they say. — Kami Garcia

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

Goblins do not feel the way mortals do," he went on. "You humans live and love so fiercely. We crave that. We need that. That fire sustains us. It sustains me. — S. Jae-Jones

Earthly life is a temporary phenomenon only", Jesus said thoughtfully. "Death comes sooner or later to all mortals. It is honour that is the eternal thing. I asked you not about your life, but about your honour and your good name. — Viktor Shel

There are some mortals who are worth sacrificing eternity for. — Morgan Rhodes

Powerful grateful in the demons mortals in the courier of shadows, Darkened protectors of the rest and dusk of sea, Shadow broken and ashes in my eclipse, Crave force the demons flesh — Brandice Snowden

It is a common failing of mortals to deem the more difficult the fairer. — Rene Descartes

For my part I have no joy in tears after dinnertime. There will always be a new dawn tomorrow. Yet I can have no objection to tears for any mortal who dies and goes to his destiny. And this is the only consolation we wretched mortals can give, to cut our hair and let the tears roll down our faces. — Homer

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young;
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,
Guess now who holds thee?
Death, I said, But, there,
The silver answer rang,
Not Death, but Love. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And he enjoyed listening to Caramon's gossip. Raistlin enjoyed proving to his own satisfaction that his fellow mortals were fools and idiots, while Caramon took immense pleasure in bringing a smile - albeit a sardonic smile - to his twin's lips. — Margaret Weis

Stupid, fragile mortals. — Carrie Vaughn

The Holy Ghost serves ... as a revelator, revealing great, new, and important truths. God, with his infinite knowledge and power has developed a system of communication far superior to anything mortals have yet developed or even conceived. Through the Holy Spirit, he is able to communicate with his children instantly, individually, and personally. — Daniel H. Ludlow

Mortals building things the same in the hope that conformity will set them free. — Kate Griffin

I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman or child. — Joseph Campbell

No one likes to fail. But we mortals do not become champions without effort and discipline or without making mistakes. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

This looks good."
"That's Metamucil," Bricker said with disgust, snatching it from her hand.
"So?" She turned to scowl at him. "What's wrong with Metamucil?"
"It's
" He glanced at the container and read, "A dietary supplement."
"That sounds healthy," she said, trying to grab it back.
"Eshe," he said, his disgust giving way to amusement. "It's what old mortals take to get regular."
"To get regular what?" she asked, and then poked him in the stomach, hard. The moment Bricker bent over with an "oomph," she snatched the container back and repeated, "Regular what?"
"Crap," he gasped, clutching his stomach.
"I didn't hit you that hard," she said with some disgust of her own.
"No." He sighed, straightening. "I meant that's what they get regulated. Crap."
Eshe dropped the can in dismay. "They buy crap? — Lynsay Sands

Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is - which was the only way he could get there - thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely his was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be a true philosopher, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have 'broken his digester. — Herman Melville

Who could look on these monuments without reflecting on the vanity of mortals in thus offering up testimonials of their respect for persons of whose very names posterity is ignorant? — Marguerite Gardiner

Don't play with mortals, Cupid. They carry all sorts of diseases. — E.A.Gray

The power of belief, of God is beyond what mere mortals can Imagine. There is no restrictions in my Life. If I do what I love, work night and day, and I'm open to the spirits. that's when the "Greats" take over. — Richard Cabral

It is the way of mortals. They fling themselves at life and emerge broken. — Patricia Briggs

Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine. — A.E. Housman

How joyful to be together, alone as when we first were joined in our little house by the river long ago, except that now we know each other, as we did not then; and now instead of two stories fumbling to meet, we belong to one story that the two, joining, made. And now we touch each other with the tenderness of mortals, who know themselves — Wendell Berry

Maybe that's why monsters fade. Maybe it's not about what the mortals believe. Maybe it's because you give up on yourself. — Rick Riordan

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts - not to hurt others. — George Eliot

The gods, so says the old superstition, do not like to behold too happy mortals. It is certain, at least, that some human beings do not. — L.M. Montgomery

Wherefore all these things are but the names which mortals
have given, believing them to be true — Parmenides

That you always need to look closer at people's lives. You can't just assume that just because they have beauty and wealth that they aren't touched by tragedy, heartbreak, cheating, and everything else that plagues us mere mortals. They put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. — Annie Jocoby

Nay even in the life, of the same individual there is succession and not absolute unity: a man is called the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses between youth and age, and in which every animal is said to have life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and reparation - hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are always changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any one of us, but are always coming and going; and equally true of knowledge, and what is still more surprising to us mortals, not only do the sciences in general spring up and decay, so that in respect of them we are never the same; but each of them individually experiences a like change. — Diotima

They have feared the gods, as they should, for gods are a bunch of sodden bastards. For a man who does not fear them, does not fear the terrible consequences. If mortals fail, gods fall. — Alaric Longward

For what that passes among mortals everywhere is not full of folly, done be fools in the presence of fools? — Erasmus

It is the nature of mortals to kick a fallen man. — Aeschylus

My king, I do not know all things but I do know that we mortals cannot orchestrate for the gods what they have agreed to accomplish. — Ray Anyasi

The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other. — Samuel Johnson

Mortals. I envy you. You think you can change things. Stop the universe. Undo what was done long before you came along. You are such beautiful creatures. — Kami Garcia

I committed the first crime by creating men as mortals. After that, what more could you do, you the murderers? Come on; they already had death in them: at most you simply hastened things a little. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship - just so long as those prayers are sincere. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You may not mean to, but you do seem to look down your nose at many of us mere mortals muddling along down here. I feel as though you think everyone should be better than they are. I certainly think you expect me to behave like some sort of perfect princess. But I'm just an ordinary girl who wants to grow up and find out where I belong in the world. — Emily Arden

Pain is the curse of mortals. We must learn to live with it. — Uday Mane

He knocked absurdly on the skull like a man impatient for a door to open. His eyes glazed over. He appeared to be in the grasp of something beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.
'Time is slowing,' he said in a leaden voice. 'Each moment grows and fattens like a drop of rain on a window sash, waiting to fall. — Norman Lock

In this mortal life, nothing is blessed throughout. — Francois Rabelais

Sleep, Silence's child, sweet father of soft rest, Prince whose approach peace to all mortals brings Indifferent host to shepherds and kings Sole comforter to minds with grief oppressed. — William Drummond

Since the beginning of time, we have expected our leaders to be supermen, unlike mere mortals. We want them to be much greater than us so that we can look up to them. — Jonathan Powell

For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be, if not called forth by this very harmlessness itself? — Herman Melville

The ever-whirling wheele Of Change, to which all mortal things doth sway. — Edmund Spenser

There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the vale that separates mortals from the immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear the beatings, and feel the pulsations of the heart of the Infinite. — James A. Garfield

[On dishonest business methods:] ... frequently the defender of the practice falls back on the Christian doctrine of charity, and points out that we are erring mortals and must allow for each other's weaknesses! - an excuse which, if carried to its legitimate conclusion, would leave our business men weeping on one another's shoulders over human frailty, while they picked one another's pockets. — Ida Tarbell

The Tylwyth Teg were immortal beings, but the burden of living for endless millennia was often tedium. It was one reason that the Fair Ones tended to play terrible pranks upon mortals. Like bored children, they sprang upon the unwary, seeking diversion. So it had been when a weary Celtic warrior turned reluctant gladiator had fought his way to freedom at last. Wounded and near death, pursued by his former captors, he'd blundered straight into the territory of the Tylwyth Teg in the steep hills northwest of Isca Silurum ... . — Dani Harper

Why have we books in heaven?"
"Why not?" asked my brother. "What strange ideas we mortals have of the pleasures and duties of this blessed life!... — Rebecca Ruter Springer

Some feelings are to mortals given With less of earth in them than heaven. — Walter Scott

Remember that we are not gods who can fashion events to our desires. We are mere mortals who must learn not to contend with life but to yield to it. — Bette Bao Lord

C. S. Lewis pointed out that some people are angry with God for His not existing, and others for His existing but for failing to do as mortals would have Him do. Instead of such childishness, we are urged to know God and to learn of His attributes. — Neal A. Maxwell

I wanted to touch the edges of my life - the same instinct, I think, that inspires young mortals to flip tractors and enlist in foreign wars. — Karen Russell

I wish that strife would vanish away from among gods and mortals, and gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind, that gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man's heart and becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of honey. — Homer

Since the dawn of existence, you mortals have feared dying, feared the unknown and the pain of it, and yet, pain is a part of life, not death. And I - I am the first moment after pain ceases," he [Death] pronounced. "It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer ... Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other. — Vera Nazarian

My people understood that time is an ocean, not a river," she said to them all. "It doesn't flow away and pour itself out, done and gone. It simply is - eternal and entire. Mortals might move through it in one direction, but that's no reflection of its true nature - only of our limitations. Past and future are our own constructs. — Laini Taylor

Ever since the gods created the world, mortals have been forgetting from where their blessings come. — Megan Whalen Turner

Of all things we mortals are called upon to do, the most difficult is forgiveness; in order to truly do it, you will probably have to behave as if you already have forgiven for quite a while before you have actually done so. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

Most ordinary mortals, mistake money or visualize money in its physical form - as coins or currency. Thus they begin counting it, hoarding it and hiding it behind faceless numbers and faceless vaults in anonymous places all over the world. They value money for its form or the form of the acquisitions it is able to have - properties, jewellery, clothes, food etc. But the real connoisseur of money knows that its true value is elsewhere. It's in the simple though propitious word, 'influence'. — Vinod Pande

Equality is what does not exist among mortals. — E. E. Cummings

On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires are lighted on every hill in honour of St. John, the fairies are at their gayest, and sometime steal away beautiful mortals to be their brides. — W.B.Yeats

In my Future of an Illusion I was concerned [ ... ] with what the ordinary man understands by his religion, that system of doctrines and pledges that on the one hand explains the riddle of this world to him with an enviable completeness, and on the other assures him that a solicitous Providence is watching over him and will make up to him in a future existence for any shortcomings in this life. The ordinary man cannot imagine this Providence in any other from but that of a greatly exalted father, for only such a one could understand the needs of the sons of men, or be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality, that to one whose attitude to humanity is friendly it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud

For us mortals, love is greater than justice. — Melanie Dickerson

It always disappointed me when mortals put themselves first and failed to see the big picture - the importance of putting me first — Rick Riordan

No, something far more mysterious has taken Felix. He has heard the unicorn." Like a performer, the cat gave a dramatic pause.
"Um," said Lionheart.
"You have no idea what I'm talking about, have you?"
"No, sorry."
"Mortals," growled the cat. — Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow. — Barbara Kingsolver

Mortals have perfected the art of not seeing what they don't expect to be there. — Julie Kagawa

They were also invincibly arrogant, a characteristic fueled by the fact that they were, by and large, as talented as they thought themselves, a situation which engendered in less-favored mortals a certain reluctant respect. Not that Cynsters demanded respect - they simply took it as their due — Stephanie Laurens

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people
amongst whom your life is passed
that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people, whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire
for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. — George Eliot

Aristotle ... imputed this symphony of the heavens ... this music of the spheres to Pythagorus ... But Pythagoras alone of mortals is said to have heard this harmony ... If our hearts were as pure, as chaste, as snowy as Pythagoras' was, our ears would resound and be filled with that supremely lovely music of the wheeling stars. — John Milton

Oh! ye poor mortals," she went on, with a sudden burst of passion; "ye beseech your gods for the gift of many years, being ignorant that ye would sow a seed within your breasts whence ye must garner ten thousand miseries. Know ye not that this world is indeed the wide house of hell, in whose chambers from time to time the spirit tarries a little while, then, weary and aghast, speeds wailing to the peace that it has won. — H. Rider Haggard

Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
We are but mortals, and must sing of men. — Theocritus

Glamour is fueled by the dreams and imagination of mortals. Writers, artists, little boys pretending to be knights - the fey are drawn to them like moths to flame. Why do you think so many children have imaginary friends? — Julie Kagawa

So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast. — William James

Mortals did not need gods to order them to kill eachother. They were quite capable of finding reasons to do so themselves. — Trudi Canavan