It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.
Many a survivor of a plane crash who is or was against cannibalism and had never eaten human flesh once found themselves in a situation where they had to either eat human flesh, or go the way of all flesh.
Most sane human beings who have managed to attain and retain fame each uses it to dramatically increase their name’s chances of being remembered until Jesus comes back, since their heart cannot do what they consciously or unconsciously lust for, that is to say, for it to beat until Jesus returns.
Life is a process during which one initially gets less and less dependent, independent, and then more and more dependent.
A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain.
Most of us cling to life as if our existence were a result of our deed or choice.
Most human beings would have never been pained by the death of a human being if they had never seen a human being or pretending to be pained by that.
With regard to things such as independence, mental capabilities, and sexuality, a very old man is nothing but a gigantic infant with white hair and wrinkles.
We envy people who are extremely old because we wish to live that long, not because we want to be that old.
The real reason the number of things that are shared via social media every single minute is so astronomical is because, whenever they each do, most users do not share or say something because they believe they have something worth remembering; they do mainly or only because they fear being forgotten.
To them, as to Magnus, time was like rain, glittering as it fell, changing the world, but something that could also be taken for granted.Until you loved a mortal. Then time became gold in a miser's hands, every bright year counted out carefully, infinitely precious, and each one slipping through your fingers.
Death would not surprise us as often as it does, if we let go of the misbelief that newborns are less mortal than the elderly.
Attending a funeral would leave the average person insane, if they truly believed that sooner or later they are also going to die.
Most people do not mind dying, as long as that does not happen today.
In Egyptian Arabic, the word 'insan' means 'human'. If we remove the 'n', the word becomes 'insa', which means 'to forget'. So you see, the word 'forget' is taken from the word 'human'. And since it was God who created our minds and hearts, He knew from the very beginning that we would quickly forget our history, only to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. So the ultimate test of every human is to seek wisdom. After all, wisdom is gained from having a good memory. Only after we have passed this test will we evolve to become better humans. Man is only a forgetful mortal, but God — He sees, hears and remembers everything.
Sit here, so I may writeyou into a poem and make you eternal.
The only problem with her is that she is too perfect. She is bad in a way that entices, and good in a way that comforts. She is mischief but then she is the warmth of home. The dreams of the wild and dangerous but the memories of childhood and gladness. She is perfection. And when given something perfect, it is the nature of man to dedicate his mind to finding something wrong with it and then when he is able to find something wrong with it, he rejoices in his find, and sees only the flaw, becoming blind to everything else! And this is why man is never given anything that is perfect, because when given the imperfect and the ugly, man will dedicate his mind to finding what is good with the imperfect and upon finding one thing good with the extremely flawed, he will only see the one thing good, and no longer see everything that is ugly. And so....man complains to God for having less than what he wants... but this is the only thing that man can handle. Man cannot handle what is perfect. It is the nature of the mortal to rejoice over the one thing that he can proudly say that he found on his own, with no help from another, whether it be a shadow in a perfect diamond, or a faint beautiful reflection in an extremely dull mirror.
He remembered Tessa weeping in his arms in Paris, and thinking that he had never known the loss she felt, because he had never loved like she had, and that he was afraid that someday he would, and like Tessa he would lose his mortal love. And that it was better to be the one who died than the one who lived on. He had dismissed that, later, as a morbid fantasy, and had not remembered it again until Alec.
The world suddenly opened up, and she was coming to new realizations and a greater awareness, concerning the nature of reality, and the world, which her mortal mind had previously been unable to conceive. She smiled her radiant goddess smile and began to laugh. Her omnipresent peals of mirth resonated through the forest, seeming to echo to the edges of the universe and back. She was getting her first glimpses of the world, seen through the eyes of a goddess; the first sweet tastes of a consciousness empowered beyond all human levels of comprehension, and her spirit was in exultant bliss.
Maybe that was one of the problems with these men who lived forever, they'd built up an immunity or resistance to affection. Perhaps because when everyone they knew and loved continued to die, they realized the value of distance, of not losing one's self completely to love.
It wasn’t only his city that was healing, Raphael thought, his eyes catching the refracted light that betrayed Aodhan’s presence in the sky; his people were, too. And it had all begun with a single, vulnerable mortal who did not accept that to be an archangel was to be always right.
The sky was growing dangerously light when I left Lestat and made my way to the secret place, below an abandoned building where I kept the iron coffin in which I lie.This is no unusual configuration among our kind-the sad old building, my title to it, or the cellar room cut off from the world above by iron doors no mortal could independently seek to lift.
Now that the wars are coming to an end, I wish you to prosper in peace. May all mortals from now on live like one people in concord and for mutual advancement. Consider the world as your country, with laws common to all and where the best will govern irrespective of tribe. I do not distinguish among men, as the narrow-minded do, both among Greeks and Barbarians. I am not interested in the descendance of the citizens or their racial origins. I classify them using one criterion: their virtue. For me every virtuous foreigner is a Greek and every evil Greek worse than a Barbarian. If differences ever develop between you never have recourse to arms, but solve them peacefully. If necessary, I should be your arbitrator.
Louis found me in the rear parlor, the one more distant from the noises of the tourists in the Rue Royale, and with its windows open to the courtyard below. I was in fact looking out the window, looking for the cat again, though I didn't tell myself so, and observing how our bougainvillea had all but covered the high walls that enclosed us and kept us safe from the rest of the world. The wisteria was also fierce in its growth, even reaching out from the brick walls to the railing of the rear balcony and finding its way up to the roof. I could never quite take for granted the lush flowers of New Orleans. Indeed, they filled me with happiness whenever I stopped to really look at them and surrender to their fragrance, as though I still had the right to do so, as though I still were part of nature, as though I were still a mortal man.
A week passed, and Jean Valjean had not taken a step in his room. He still remained in bed. The portress said to her husband:–"The good man upstairs yonder does not get up, he no longer eats, he will not last long. That man has his sorrows, that he has. You won't get it out of my head that his daughter has made a bad marriage."The porter replied, with the tone of marital sovereignty:"If he's rich, let him have a doctor. If he is not rich, let him go without. If he has no doctor he will die.""And if he has one?""He will die," said the porter.
How did Biot arrive at the partial differential equation? [the heat conduction equation] . . . Perhaps Laplace gave Biot the equation and left him to sink or swim for a few years in trying to derive it. That would have been merely an instance of the way great mathematicians since the very beginnings of mathematical research have effortlessly maintained their superiority over ordinary mortals.