Mortis Quotes & Sayings

Hold her arm out. I grabbed the body's right arm and pulled it straight. Rigor mortis makes a body so stiff you can barely move it, but it only lasts about a day and a half and this one had been dead so long the muscles had all relaxed again. Though the skin was papery, the flesh underneath was soft, like dough. Margaret sprayed the arm with disinfectant and began wiping it gently with a cloth. — Dan Wells

My life has taught me that true spiritual insight can come about only through direct experience, the way a severe burn can be attained only by putting your hand in the fire. Faith is nothing more than a watered-down attempt to accept someone else's insight as your own. Belief is the psychic equivalent of an article of secondhand clothing, worn-out and passed down. I equate true spiritual insight with wisdom, which is different from knowledge. Knowledge can be obtained through many sources: books, stories, songs, legends, myths, and, in modern times, computers and television programs. On the other hand, there's only one real source of wisdom - pain. Any experience that provides a person with wisdom will also usually provide them with a scar. The greater the pain, the greater the realization. Faith is spiritual rigor mortis. — Damien Echols

The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure.
[Lat., Et metus ille foras praeceps Acheruntis agundus,
Funditis humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo,
Omnia suffuscans mortis nigrore, neque ullam
Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque relinquit.] — Lucretius

Timor mortis conturbat me. The fear of death disturbs me. — William Dunbar

I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis. — Criss Jami

In those days it was possible for a Greek to flee from an over-abundant reality as though it were but the tricky scheming off the imagination-and to flee, not like Plato into the land of eternal ideas, into the workshop off the world-creator, feasting one's eyes on the unblemished unbreakable archetypes, but into the rigor mortis off the coldest emptiest concept off all, the concept of being. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The city lay cool and dim beneath a vaulting sky of high-scudding gray clouds. A gray shroud that covered the corpses of buildings, stiff in brick-and-steel rigor mortis, pale in their eternity of sooty death. — Harlan Ellison

Death when to death a death by death hath given
Then shall be op't the long shut gates of heaven.
[Mors, mortis morti mortem nisi morte dedisset (dedisses).] — Thomas Heywood

Lucern felt himself "She called my erections wonderful?"
Entienne just gaped, then raised a fist to knock on his brother's forehead as if it were a door "Hello! Earth calling Luc! She thinks it's rigor mortis. — Lynsay Sands

'Crucible' was going to be a 'passing of the torch' story. So something that was big enough to be worthy of that, that could show these characters being changed - along with their respective outlooks about life, the galaxy, and the Force - was Mortis. — Troy Denning

Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis. — Robert Heilbroner

There's really no point in doing anything in life because it's all over in the blink of an eye. The next thing you know, rigor mortis sets in. — Wes Anderson

A lot of bands have intense names, like "Rigor Mortis" or "Mortuary". We weren't that intense, we called ourselves "Injured". Later on we changed it to "Acapella" when we were walking out of the pawn shop. — Mitch Hedberg

Goku: But I'm so hungry, I have rigor mortis! — Kazuya Minekura

And we'll see what happens when we say Yes while this rigor mortis world screams No. — Isaac Marion

Real serious waiting is done in waiting rooms, and what they all have in common is their purpose, or purposelessness, if you will; they are places for doing nothing and they have no life of their own ... their one constant is what might be called a decorative rigor mortis ... — Ada Louise Huxtable

We don't become mature human beings by getting lucky or cleverly circumventing loss, and certainly not by avoidance and distraction. Learn to lament. Learn this lamentation. We're mortals, after all. We and everyone around are scheduled for death (mortis). Get used to it. Take up your cross. It prepares us and those around us for resurrection. - Eugene Peterson — Peter Scazzero

Thou fool, what is sleep but the image of death? Fate will give an eternal rest.
[Lat., Stulte, quid est somnus, gelidae nisi mortis imago?
Longa quiescendi tempora fata dabunt.] — Ovid

The earth was a grave: our life was lent to it by its elements and had to be returned: a time came when the simple elements seemed to long for release from the complicated forms of life, when every element of every cell said, "Enough!" The planet was our mother and our burial ground. No wonder the human spirit wished to leave. Leave this prolific belly. Leave also this great tomb. Passion for the infinite caused by the terror, by timor mortis, needed material appeasement. — Saul Bellow

. . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae,' he repeated yet again, and felt the lap of water on his foot. He looked up. The people had gone; the pyre was no more than a dark patch with the sea hissing in its embers; and he was alone. The tide was rising fast. — Patrick O'Brian

Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately it also brought mortis. — Kenneth E. Boulding

Museum collections have given photography rigor, and mortis. — Bill Jay

Theism, as a way of conceiving God, has become demonstrably inadequate, and the God of theism not only is dying but is probably not revivable. If the religion of the future depends on keeping alive the definitions of theism, then the human phenomenon that we call religion will have come to an end. If Christianity depends on a theistic definition of God, then we must face the fact that we are watching this noble religious system enter the rigor mortis of its own death throes. — John Shelby Spong

Why did you laugh right before you lost consciousness."
"Death's an adventure. I lived big. Rigor mortis makes your face stick. So, who knew how to thaw me?"
"Death's an insult."
"At least an affront," I agree. — Karen Marie Moning

Rigor mortis was caused by a natural build-up of calcium in the muscles; living bodies used that calcium for various things, but in dead bodies it just built up and built up until the muscles grew rigid. In a day or so she'd be loose again from decay, but for now we had to knead the calcium out by hand, stroking and pressing and rubbing the flesh until it was soft and pliable. — Dan Wells

I found my grandmother dead. It shook me up. I got up to make her breakfast, and I knew it was strange that she wasn't stirring. I went in to wake her, and she was laying in rigor mortis, and I'm done. I called next door, and the kid picked up the phone, and I was so wild, he dropped it. — Gil Scott-Heron

Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death. — Tom Robbins

The use of mathematics has brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it has also brought mortis. — Robert Heilbroner

Amatus waited a long time, but at last he broke the silence.
"There is much I don't understand."
"That will never change," Mortis said decisively. "Except that what you don't understand will change. — John Barnes

I know I'm not going to say good-bye. And if these staggering refugees want to help, if they think they see something bigger here than a boy chasing a girl, then they can help, and we'll see what happens when we say yes while the rigor mortis world screams no. — Isaac Marion

I that in heill wes and gladnes Am trublit now with gret seiknes And feblit with infermite: Timor Mortis conturbat me.* * Fear of Death troubles me. — William Dunbar

I am beginning to be sorry that I ever undertook to write this book. Not that it bores me; I have nothing else to do; indeed, it is a welcome distraction from eternity. But the book is tedious, it smells of the tomb, it has a rigor mortis about it; a serious fault, and yet a relatively small one, for the great defect of this book is you, reader. You want to live fast, to get to the end, and the book ambles along slowly; you like straight, solid narrative and a smooth style, but this book and my style are like a pair of drunks; they stagger to the right and to the left, they start and they stop, they mutter, they roar, they guffaw, they threaten the sky, they slip and fall ...
And fall! Unhappy leaves of my cypress tree, you had to fall, like everything else that is lovely and beautiful; if I had eyes, I would shed a tear of remembrance for you. And this is the great advantage in being dead, that if you have no mouth with which to laugh, neither have you eyes with which to cry. — Machado De Assis

I started rocking and rolling when Guns N' Roses came out. It wasn't until Garth Brooks came around that I really got back to country. He made it fun again. To me, in country music, the rigor mortis was setting in and it just wasn't fun anymore. Garth brought everyone back over to country and made it cool again. — Christian Kane

Anyone who can be cool about his first visit to the Oval Office has lost so much body heat that rigor mortis is probably about to set in. — David Frum

The stakeout. The least glamorous and yet often the most valuable activity in investigations. To endure the agonizing boredom and forestall restlessness, I slowed my metabolism into near rigor mortis until I was nothing more than a pair of eyeballs fixed — Mario Acevedo

Learning and sex until rigor mortis. — Maggie Kuhn

The man may not be dead, but he was certainly stiff. And this had nothing to do with rigor mortis. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago [Without learning, life is but the image of death] — Dionysius Cato

Why do we resist the mystery that change brings? When we get too rigid and inflexible, rigor mortis of the soul sets in. For proof of this, we need look no further than to those who choose to stay in a relationship or job long after the soul, or life force, that originally brought it passion and joy has vacated the premises. — Dennis Merritt Jones