c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction - a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in under or over-protectiveness, in a distrust in parental authority which becomes all authority. It can later, with maturity - a flexible concept - be laughed away, dispelled by determined clear thinking. Or it can be encouraged by self-abusive resentment and brooding self-pity. It can grow ever greater until the original authority becomes intolerable, and a change becomes imperative. Not to a radical one in thinking; that would be too troublesome, too painful. The change is simply to authority in another guise which, in time, and under any great stress, must be distrusted and resented even more than the first.
— Jim Thompson, The Getaway
A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile or On Education
...when the room goes silent, someone has spoken with authority...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...true authority is not based on control - it's based on truth...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
The lesson I learned is that when you give someone authority, you must be conscious you are doing so and continue to ask yourself whether it is in your best interests.
— Margie Warrell, Find Your Courage!
We have already seen that when positive authority suggests a change in behavior, the recipient will accept it provided he is capable of doing so and provided it does not require drastic modification of belief or frustrate important needs. By carrying out the suggestion, one can simultaneously reduce dissonance and preserve intact one's relation to positive authority. But what can reasonably be expected when the suggestion to change is beyond the recipient's capability or frustrates his deep needs or predispositions? In such a situation, a conflict arises between his desire to comply with authority and the abilities or needs which make compliance impossible.One way to resolve such a conflict situation (or to reduce the dissonance) is to change one's conception of authority. If a suggestion emanating from positive authority is unacceptable, the conflict may be removed by becoming disaffected with the authority and transforming it either into a negative authority or into a nonexistent one. This is exactly what Leon and Joseph did.
— Milton Rokeach, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: A Psychological Study
What we are trying to do at Virgin is not to have one enormous company in one sector under one banner, but to have two hundred or even three hundred separate companies. Each company can stand on its own feet and, in that way, although we've got a brand that links them, if we were to have another tragedy such as that of 11 September - which hurt the airline industry - it would not bring the whole group crashing down.
— Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
A distinctive appearance and a simple set of characteristics lead to an extremely flexible brand. (pg. 38)
— Woodrow Phoenix, Plastic Culture: How Japanese Toys Conquered the World
I put the bra in brand, and I top it!
— Natalya Vorobyova, Better to be able to love than to be loveable
We are … the un-proud non-possessors of objects whose chief substance is that of the transient symbol. Our Puritan fear of the love of things turns out to have been groundless after all, for we do not love things or even possess them: they pass through our lives as barium passes through the digestive tract, unassimilated, their function merely to flash signals along the way.
— Ralph Caplan
Since inception, the IPL has worn its brand value like a corroboration of inner virtue. On the eve of this tournament, under the headline 'Brand IPL touches the sky', the league's website reverberated with the announcement that Brand Finance, a branding consultancy, had valued the brand value of the IPL brand at $4.13 billion worth of brand—which is a lot of brand, brand-wise.
— Gideon Haigh
The assumption now is that the interests of the brand and of the game overlap to the degree that cricket need hardly be mentioned.
— Gideon Haigh
Since Modi's Mumbai sign-off, much commentary has been focused on the brand-dilution potential inherent in its scandals. MS Dhoni doesn't think we should worry: 'IPL as a brand can survive on its own.' Shilpa Shetty, 'brand ambassador' of the Rajasthan Royals, tweets that we should: 'Custodians of Cricket must not hamper d Brandvalue of this viable sport.' Hampering d Brandvalue, insists new IPL boss Chirayu Amin, is the furthest thing from his mind: 'IPL's brand image is strong and nobody can touch that.' Harsha Bhogle, however, frets for the nation: 'Within the cricket world, Brand India will take a hit.'Not much more than a week after Modi's first tell-all tweets, the media was anxiously consulting Brand Finance's managing director, Unni Krishnan. Had there been any brand dilution yet? It was, said the soothsayer gravely, 'too early to say'. He could, however, confirm the following: 'The wealth that can be created by the brand is going to be substantially significant for many stakeholders. A conducive ecosystem has to be created to move the brand to the next level… We have to build the requisite bandwidth to monetise these opportunities.' Er, yeah… what he said. Anyway, placing a value on the IPL brand has clearly been quite beneficial to Brand Finance's brand.
— Gideon Haigh
There is no better way to find out the true heart, honor, and professionalism of a person, than seeing how they handle themselves and others when facing a crisis, disaster or intense level of pressure.
— Loren Weisman, The Artist's Guide to Success in the Music Business: The “Who, What, When, Where, Why & How” of the Steps that Musicians & Bands Have to Take to Succeed in Music
If you are ready to face the fears, take the steps, do the work, be more than you thought you ever could, and attack the dream, what is keeping you? Lose all the excuses and replace them with all the reasons for success. Be the change for yourself. Commit to the dream or quit. There really is no middle ground.
— Loren Weisman, The Artist's Guide to Success in the Music Business: The “Who, What, When, Where, Why & How” of the Steps that Musicians & Bands Have to Take to Succeed in Music
Never let them give you their own branding upon your name, brand yourself to avoid being falsely branded.
— Tare Munzara
Embody the Unique Value Proposition through a consistent brand system
— Fernando Rodriguez
Social media is like your own personal brand of junk food
—  some is just added calories.
To reimagine IT, IT branding needs to be part of IT transformation effort.
— Pearl Zhu, Digital It: 100 Q&as
We are addicted to attention, but when it comes to paying attention, we are not accessible.
— Alin Sav
Brands and customers alike, do evolve
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Don’t just do the obvious and predictable stuff, be remarkable!
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Branding is to constantly create a perception in the mind of consumers that there is no product like yours
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Man is a social being; it’s not surprising we love social proofs, it sells brands fast
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Either you follow-up or you fold-up
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Personal brands have become anvils on which great businesses are forged
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Author branding is the process of positioning an author as the center of attraction and influence, to be the preferred choice in a given theme, style, category, niche or genre
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Without differentiation you have no brand
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Make your brand memorable or risk fading out!
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Brands are like shoes, they come in sizes and styles; one size & style doesn't fit everyone.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Lack of credibility slays your character
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Your WHY for your BRAND is more important than the HOW.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Perception is assumed to be reality until clients encounter the reality of the brand, don’t fake it
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
The investments you make into a brand, makes its name worth it
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
An exceptional brand culture has the effect of a charm, it entices and binds people.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
The pride of the digital age is not just in the possession of innovative tools but the ability to skillfully connect with humans behind them
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Feedbacks are means for brands to look back.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Feedbacks are brands free assessment tool
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
What makes your brand stick and tick is your ability to make it memorable
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Consumers care less about your brand’s vision statement, they want value delivered
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Don't beg for platforms, build your platform.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
It does not matter whether your company does have a good logo or bad logo. What matters most is the way you position your company before your stakeholders. The more you see a logo, the more you like it and you talk about it
— Anoop Raghav
Basic geometric shapes communicate universal qualities common to all cultures. Practical design integrates them appropriately.
— Maggie Macnab, Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design
In geometry, as in nature, the circle is the archetypal shape of wholeness and inclusion. It is an effective shape for nonprofits or community-focused efforts.
— Maggie Macnab, Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design
Branding is simply pattern recognition, established across multiple tiers of application and fueled by the energy of money.
— Maggie Macnab, Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design
Optimal design delivers information in ways that are useful, beautiful and improve the experience of all involved: audience, client and designer.
— Maggie Macnab, Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design
A company has integrity when its words and actions consistently match the branding effort.
— Maggie Macnab, Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design
Brand integrity is the ability to present one’s brand both in words and deeds to be true, respectable and acceptable without compromising on standards (brand’s promise).
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Be intentionally infectious. Make your brand contagiously buzz worthy.
— Catrice M. Jackson
Consistency and accuracy instills believability
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
In a competitive crowded world market, it's the well positioned brands that Stands Out!
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
It's your difference that sets you apart not your similarity, stand out!
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Stand out or Fade out! for ‘me-too’ Brands have a shorter shelf life
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Your personal brand is your promise of value to the world, and your commitment to deliver distinctively with every skill developed and talents you have been gifted with.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
You and your brand are as good as the value you bring to the marketplace
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Any Brand that does not bear good fruit, will fade away and die!
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
An advertising campaign should be timely.A branding campaign should be timeless.
— Steven Howard, Marketing Words of Wisdom
In this era where you can be anything you want to be, it is very alluring to miss the most important mark in life - fulfillment and meaning; Remember that, what you can do may not be necessarily what you are called to do
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
The world doesn't celebrate your similarity but your difference
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Which is what it all comes down to, I suppose—how you’re selling. Welcome to the twenty-first century, where the only opinion of you that matters is the one that isn’t your own. Rate My Tits. Rate My Ass. Rate My Children. Rate My Essential Being. 1 Star: Awful. This Being left me feeling like I wanted more.
— Shalom Auslander
I do not like measuring using soft indicators, like RTs or likes. I prefer the hardcore financial values. The ISO 10668:2010 is an international valuation standard that is very valuable if you are interested in how to measure a brand.
— F. Marco-Serrano, Making Sense of Social Media ROI: A Short Guide Focused on Sales, Marketing and Strategy
Earning trust and being trustworthy constantly is critical to the survival of your brand
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Strip your website down to the basics and do a few things really well.
— B C Designers
The future belongs to those who are building brands now, for they will be sought-after.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
It is no accident that in the field of philosophy ontology is the study of reality, existence and coming into being. In the fields of information retrieval (semantic search) and computing, ontology is the naming of the types, interrelationships and properties of the entities that exist (in reality or conceptually) and which define a particular domain of knowledge or expertise.
— David Amerland, SEO Help: 20 Semantic Search Steps that Will Help Your Business Grow
Branding is he ability to constantly create a perception in the minds of your audience/market that there is no product/service like yours that meet their needs and wants by providing distinct value
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
The power of the brand is not in the name but what has been invested in that name over the years.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive, REBRAND: The Ultimate Guide to Personal Branding
The function of advertising is simply to promote and sustain competitive advantage for brands.
— John Hegarty, Hegarty on Advertising
A brand is the unique story that consumers recall when they think of you. This story associates your product with their personal stories, a particular personality, what you promise to solve, and your position relative to your competitors. Your brand is represented by your visual symbols and feeds from multiple conversations where you must participate strategically.
— Laura Busche, Lean Branding
If building a disruptive, dynamic brand is not in your plans, neither is profit.
— Laura Busche, Lean Branding
A personal (Brand) is more than just a creative name, cute logo or a complimentary card; it's a promise of value, it's a distinctive voice, it’ s a core message, it's passion driven by purpose, it's a positive impact that creates an impression
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
How do you want the world to see you professionally? What kinds of work do you enjoy doing? Why are you on LinkedIn? Those are the questions you should think about when creating your LinkedIn profile, so it’s aligned with your personal brand. While marketing-speak like 'personal brand' feels fake to many of us, we’re really just talking about setting the right tone for your profile and positioning yourself for the kinds of opportunities you’re interested in.
— Melanie Pinola, LinkedIn In 30 Minutes: How to create a rock-solid LinkedIn profile and build connections that matter
Carve-out a niche, craft a personal pitch, push-out content and your brand is enriched.
— Ryan Lilly, #Networking is people looking for people looking for people
I have more than 6670 employees spread across the length and breadth of the country who live and experience the brand 'Bajaj Allianz' everyday. I'd like to believe that these people are the company's most valued brand ambassadors.
— Tapan Singhel
In this value driven and ‘connection economy’, skills & talents alone are dime-a-dozen, you need to be able to add value to others and build great connections
— Bernard Kelvin Clive, The No Nonsense Guide to Personal Branding for Career Success
If your personal brand were at a trade show alongside several thousand others, how would you fare? Now scale that to the global economy.
— Ryan Lilly, #Networking is people looking for people looking for people
For a case study in personal branding. Google “Jarod Kintz.” He’s kind of a big deal.
— Ryan Lilly, #Networking is people looking for people looking for people
Sensible brands lend themselves to all of the senses.
— Ryan Lilly, #Networking is people looking for people looking for people
Contributors and distributors tend to do better at personal branding than takers and fakers.
— Ryan Lilly, #Networking is people looking for people looking for people
Personal Branding is the combination of one’s skills and talents to produce value for people that creates an impression, a perception and reputation in the mind of others
— Bernard Kelvin Clive, The No Nonsense Guide to Personal Branding for Career Success
Without sense of purpose and clear direction of your life, you will only be building a fake brand of you
— Bernard Kelvin Clive, The No Nonsense Guide to Personal Branding for Career Success
apple brand is the school ,Samsung is a brilliant student
— Jinzo Sloatch
There comes a point when you realize that these things, these brands, aren't "enough." Having more or better or best doesn't provide you with a lasting sense of having more or being better or being best. It's a rather fleeting experience, this romantic attachment to brands, and I find that if I'm not careful, the search for having more or better or best is a precarious journey into the infinite. When you depend on finite objects-or brands-to provide you with a long-term sense of self or love or pride or achievement, you start yourself out on a path with no end. No object, no product, and no brand can provide you with ultimate, infinite satisfaction.
— Debbie Millman, Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design
Branding is about everything.
— Tom Peters, The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE
So sure, start with a slogan. But don't bother wasting any time on it if you're merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.
— Seth Godin
The decision to create a book trailer is entirely up to you. I can remember when "video killed the radio star" on MTV and how excited I was with some music videos (the ones that lived up to or exceeded my imagined vision of the song) and the ones I disliked so much, I even stopped listening to the song (the imagery just ruined it for me!) Some people argue that in a visual landscape, a book trailer is a must, while others stand firm that books should be read and not seen; unless of course it gets made into a screenplay and then a film. The most practical advice is to trust your instinct. You know what you want to say with your book and if it aligns congruently with your brand, then for a non-fiction book it may be a strategic move. On the other hand, it may come off as too "salesy" and go in the opposite direction. As you can see, I still have a love / hate relationship with matching someone else's images to my own imagination. No matter what you decide, remember to keep it aligned with your brand.
— Kytka Hilmar-Jezek, Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing
A makeover is the rebranding of a human being.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The personal values managers reported being the most under pressure to compromise to do their jobs successfully: 1. Family 2. Integrity.
— Stan Slap
The question is not how to get managers’ emotional commitment but why manager’s don’t give it even if they like their company.
— Stan Slap
Imagination without vision, is like a brand with no passion
— Jaco Snoek
Book authors are in high demand for speaking engagements and appearances; they are the new ‘celebrity’ and celebrities gain access. Authors not only make money from royalties or book advances but from their keynotes, presentations and strategically branded product lines. This includes entrepreneurial ideas for you to extend yourself beyond just writing and prepares you to add speaking and consulting to your revenue stream. You have to begin to look outside book sales and towards the speaking market. There are radio, interviews, news, television, small channel television keynotes, lectures, seminars and workshops. These types of events have the possibility to be much more lucrative than just selling books. In essence, the book builds and brands you in the public eye. It gives you credibility and the opportunity to be more than you are. It enables you to now be a voice, a teacher, a leader, an expert - after all, you wrote the book on it!
— Kytka Hilmar-Jezek, Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing
Your brand is the unique persona and identity of you, your company, product or service that sets it apart from others in the same market space. It is the image you or your business present to the world. A brand is composed of many different pieces which, together, capture the attention of your buyers. Some of the pieces are physical, but much of branding is intangible; ideas and thoughts put into words, pictures and videos. When small business owners ask themselves “What is branding?” the answer is, “the essence of the business, products or services.” Your personal brand conveys the way you are perceived; and how you want people to see and feel about you, your business and your products or services. You may want to sound very dignified and reinforce your ‘expert status’ and credibility depending on your products or services. Or you may want to sound approachable, edgy and smart. Whatever voice you choose, carry it into all your messaging, marketing materials, and web presence (your platform).
— Kytka Hilmar-Jezek, Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing
Bury My Heart is "a life-altering approach to turning managers into unconditionally committed leaders.
— Stan Slap
Man is born to dream, to be enlightened, to connect and to be fulfilled. Managers are too.
— Stan Slap
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
A small fact:You are going to die....does this worry you?
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Life is only precious because it ends, kid.
— Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune
I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?
— Voltaire, Candide: or, Optimism
There is not love of life without despair about life.
— Albert Camus, The Stranger
On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we're been longing for than to be stifled by our longing.
— Thomas Bernhard, Concrete
There is something miraculous in the way the years wash away your evidence, first you, then your friends and family, then the descendants who remember your face, until you aren’t even a memory, you’re only carbon, no greater than your atoms, and time will divide them as well.
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Nothing can last forever. There isn't any memory, no matter how intense, that doesn't fade out at last.
— Juan Rulfo
As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.
— Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain
— Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard
Each of us is merely a small instrument; all of us, after accomplishing our mission, will disappear.
— Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and Prayers
Yet at the last Beren was slain by the Wolf that came from the gates of Angband, and he died in the arms of Tinúviel. But she chose mortality, and to die from the world, so that she might follow him; and it is sung that they met again beyond the Sundering Seas, and after a brief time walking alive once more in the green woods, together they passed, long ago, beyond the confines of this world. So it is that Lúthien Tinúviel alone of the Elf-kindred has died indeed and left the world, and they have lost her whom they most loved.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
I am simply looking for a companion with whom to spend my days, a companion who will cherish as much as I the stupidity of living in the moment, and spend every dull, amazing second with me.
— Heidi Julavits, The Effect of Living Backwards
We know summer is the height of of being alive. We don't believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly, so we know that we're only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better then the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo's Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived your summertime best? What is you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana?
— Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
Love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal.
— Peter S. Beagle
As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragitlity.
— Iris Murdoch, Nuns and Soldiers
All the mortal world is a lethal enemy during those hours between dawn and dusk.
— Anne Rice
This is to be mortal, And seek the things beyond mortality.
— George Gordon Byron
What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream
— Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
Then I could not help wondering what the watching gods thought of us, with our clever masks and our jokes. What we think of crickets, perhaps, whose singing we hear with pleasure, though some of us smash them with our heels when they venture into sight.
— Gene Wolfe, Latro in the Mist
The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness.
— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.
— George Bernard Shaw
Even if their supplies of love are finite, they've figured out that life is, too, and they're no longer rationing.
— Julianna Baggott, Which Brings Me to You
And if I were to open you up - would you see anything less remarkable? Less intricately dazzling, in its squelching, spongy way? Lungs and heart and spleen, and all the rest - ticking away, as it were? Yet you walk down the boulevard, and pass any number of such wonderful devices, all ticking away as they walk, and think it no great marvel.
— K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices
There is nothing serious in mortality! Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible lurking in every fold of his robes and in every corner of his palace.
— Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spinThe Thread of present Life away to win-What? for ourselves, who know not if we shallBreathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!
— Omar Khayyám, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
I had to ride my bike to and from their god damn plant way up north in the high-chemical crime district, and reachable only by riding on the shoulder of some major freeways. I could feel the years ticking off my life expectancy as the mile markers struggled by.
— Neal Stephenson, Zodiac
Me, I'm living under a sword too, as Jack may have told you. An old wino's disease, which could lay me in the grave most anytime. Not that I mind too much; I've done everything I ever wanted to do. But ... as you know, one would like to continue doing the good things over and over again, so long as there's pleasure in it.
— Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
An awareness of mortality is a heavy price to pay for sentience
— Jonathan Maas, City of Gods II: Horsemen
In the end, the body betrayed everyone.
— Gail Tsukiyama, The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
A whole planet of worlds, and not one of them—not one—has a soul. They wander through their lives separate and alone, unable even to communicate except through grunts and tokens: as if the essence of a sunset or a supernova could ever be contained in some string of phonemes, a few linear scratches of black on white. They've never known communion, can aspire to nothing but dissolution. The paradox of their biology is astonishing, yes; but the scale of their loneliness, the futility of these lives, overwhelms me.
— Peter Watts, Beyond the Rift
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but that we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
— Annie Dillard, The Maytrees
I was a couple of summers past twenty but I felt there were stones under that frozen, dun earth that were younger than me.
— Robert Low, The White Raven
life is a battle. it is a struggle renting us time against darkness. It's a fight it will never win. And still in fights. the Universe has no morality. It has no love, no patience. Those are the playthings of Humans..... the seeds of the end are in each beginning.
— Peter Callaway
No one, in the end, made it out of this life alive.
— Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
— Annie Dillard, The Maytrees
I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad didn’t see me coming, either: the kid with the black moods, the kid whose mind was always elsewhere, flinching from real life as from a bruise. Who wanted to lay a fiction-filter on top of everything and pretend it was something else just to keep the sheer disappointment of it all bearable: this limited, empirical experience of ours, trapped inside a decaying shell of meat, mainly able to perceive that nothing lasts, even in our most pleasurable moments.
— Gemma Files, Experimental Film
That flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust That measures all our time; which also shall Be crumbled into dust.
— George Herbert, The Complete English Poems
Mortality was never designed to torture you. It was designed to test you.
— Toni Sorenson
Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. A few bear fruit in happiness; the others go awry. But he who garners day by day the good life, he is happiest.
— Gilbert Murray, The Bacchae
But to elude deathis not easy: attempt it who will,he shall go to the place prepared for eachof the sons of men, the soul-bearersdwelling on earth, ordained them by fate:laid fast in that bed, the body shall sleepwhen the feast is done.
— Michael Alexander, Beowulf
A shapeless figure bent over him, he smelt the fresh leather of the revolver belt; but what insignia did the figure wear on the sleeves and shoulder straps of its uniform—and in whose name did it raise the dark pistol barrel?A second, smashing blow hit him on the ear. Then all became quiet. There was the sea again with its sounds. A wave slowly lifted him up. It came from afar and travelled sedately on, a shrug of eternity.
— Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
They are now informing me that not only are they better than the powerful, the masters of the world whose spittle they have to lick (not from fear, not at all from fear! but because God orders them to honour those in authority) – not only are they better, but they have a “better time”, or at least will have a better time one day. But enough! enough! I can’t bear it any longer. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are fabricated – it seems to me just to stink of lies.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
— Omar Khayyám, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero.
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
I know that we have to live each moment because we won’t be here for ever, and that I wouldn’t want to be anyway, because knowing something’s going to end makes you appreciate it more, makes you want to savour every moment.And I know that I won’t sign the Declaration, even if it makes me different, even if it makes me suspicious. Because no one needs to live for ever.I think that sometimes you can outstay your welcome.
— Gemma Malley, The Declaration
We reach the end of our lives long before we reach the end of ourselves.
— Marty Rubin
The conversation did not go very well and I began telling him about the people with their trays in the great cafeteria and suggesting that it would have done us more good to go there to be put in mind of our own mortality.
— Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
the unconscious is so seductive because mortality is alien to it
— Dean Cavanagh
To die trying is the proudest humans thing.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel
All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral—both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
In that place things begin to wear away even as they are built
—  the living die a little more each day. The sun is too far away
I knew that the Name was still with him, animating his soul, even as his body failed.
— Geraldine Brooks, The Secret Chord
The democratic age mourns the value of human beings.
— Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
The director of one of the nursing homes I have studied said, "We do not become children as we age. But because dependency can look childlike, we too often treat the elderly as though this were the case.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Ere the horne'd owl hoot Once and twice and thrice there shall Go among the blind brown worms News of thy great burial; When the pomp is passed away, 'Here's a King,' the worms shall say.
— Adelaide Crapsey, Verse by Adelaide Crapsey
Likewise, civilizations have throughout history marched blindly toward disaster, because humans are wired to believe that tomorrow will be much like today — it is unnatural for us to think that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things is not stable and permanent. Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium. Yet the reality of global climate change is going to keep intruding on our fantasies of perpetual growth, permanent innovation and endless energy, just as the reality of mortality shocks our casual faith in permanence.
— Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization
I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric productAnd look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. Lady Macbeth
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Hawks with broken wings; lions with broken paws; men with broken hearts, they all have one thing in common: they're all as sure to die as those unbroken.
— Bruce Crown, Chronic Passions
Death like style is the removal of rubbish.
— Will Durant
Your life is a sum of counted breaths.With each breath that passesa part of life is lost. That which gives life brings death every moment nearer,and your caravan is led by onewho will not jest with you.
— Abu'l-'Atahiya, Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems
Even if it's being a Beatle for the rest of my life, it's still only a temporary thing.
— George Harrison
The to-read pile is more than just a physical stack of books: it's a tower of ambitions failed, hopes unrealised, good intentions unfulfilled. Worse still, it's a cold hard reminder of mortality. Already, I have intentions to read more books than I can hope to manage in a normal lifetime. How will this pile of books taunt me when I'm 64?
— Sam Jordison
It's good to remember…So you know you need to do now,So you know that you ain't got forever just right now,Good to remember death man.
— Tarell Alvin McCraney
Samuel Johnson placed this on his watch as a reminder near the end of his life; "The night cometh.
— David Brooks
Wolf Winter,’ she said, her voice small. ‘I wanted to ask about it. You know, what it is.’He was silent for a long time. ‘It's the kind of winter that will remind us we are mortal,’ he said. ‘Mortal and alone.
— Cecilia Ekbäck, Wolf Winter
It isn't about being fair and equal. It's about the difference between right and wrong." He stared out at the bloody Elinarch. "And this was wrong.
— Jim Butcher, Cursor's Fury
Be Mindful of Death" (Memento Mori)
— Peter Swanson
I write this in the moonlight, straining my ears to hear beyond the cold mechanical clock to the warm biological noises of the night, but my being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time.If I could only smash the clock and stop time from advancing! Crush the infernal machine! Shatter its bland face and rip those cursed hands from their torturous axis of circumscription! I can almost feel the sturdy metal body crumpling beneath my hands, the glass fracturing, the case cracking open, my fingers digging into the guts, spilling springs and delicate gearing. But now, there is now use, now way of stopping time.
— Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?" "I do," Dunbar told him. "Why?" Clevinger asked. "What else is there?
— Joseph Heller
Bugle"Black beetles know where the most recent bonesbake in the heat, tendons and meat long gone, bleached white, and if you give them cheap wine --drizzle a few red drops on a flat stone--they will lead you to a barren gulchsurrounded by sages and nettles, dirtburnt to powdery sand and sharp thorns. Hunchabove the skeleton, bow your head, start reciting verses you learned as a child, there, under the sun with rocks and brush, bare locust tree a telling reliquary of dust to dust, all so brutally hot. You must pull ribs from that rotting body,words that matter: love me, love me not.
— Tod Marshall
But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.
— Ernest Hemingway
There are some fights none of us can win.
— Amy Rae Durreson, Reawakening
he had offered some of his own background. A youth in the South. An education in the North. Bred for life in the East. Trying not to die in the West.
— Mary Doria Russell, Doc
And we went through AIDS... which was as good a course in mortality as anyone is likely to get, short of war.
— Stephen Greco
Can you hear me? Sighing. You were right. My requiem is well prepared. Still to be written is the poem that is never complete, an endless rubbing on the ink block, an endless dipping of the pen, an endless swoop over the white paper, the poem of my life. I will try to write it down. Soon, no, now, I will try. The first line. I called him Necktie. I will write: He taught me to see with eyes of feeling.
— Milena Michiko Flašar, I Called Him Necktie
If you don't make peace with your own mortality, you'll never know what it's like to truly be alive.
— Moxie Mezcal, Concrete Underground
Your faces are very beautiful,but they are wooden cages.You had better run from me.My words are fire.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing
The vast and terrible depth."“Of course,” he said.“The inexhaustibility.”“I understand.”“The whole huge nameless thing.”“Yes, absolutely.”“The massive darkness.”“Certainly, certainly.”“The whole terrible endless hugeness.”“I know exactly what you mean.
— Don DeLillo, White Noise
I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and her book in my hands. Like a lot of things in my life, I'd just about worn it out, but it was worn out with love, and that's the best kind of worn-out there is. Maybe we're like all those used cars, broken hand tools, articles of old clothing, scratched record albums, and dog-eared books. Maybe there really isn't any such thing as mortality; that life simply wears us out with love.
— Craig Johnson, Kindness Goes Unpunished
I had turned my mind from my survival just as a man suffering from a deadly sickness manages by a thousand tricks never to look at death squarely; or rather, as a woman alone in a large house refrains from looking into mirrors, and instead busies herself with trivial errands, so that she may catch no glimpse of the thing whose feet she hears at times on the stairs.
— Gene Wolfe
She's thirty-four years old. In fifty, sixty years, she'll be dead, and everything reminds her of this fact but him. With Arnie, she imagines she might live forever.
— David James Poissant, The Heaven of Animals: Stories
I should like to ask you:-Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat at your mother's knee, seem days of very long ago?"Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered:"Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by my many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me." "I understand the feeling!" exclaimed Carton, with a bright flush. "And you are the better for it?""I hope so.
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
[T]he habit of living as if in the shadow of death has remained with me, and I consider that, too, a gift.
— Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World
You will not be here--I shall not be here--much lo
— A.S. Byatt, Possession
Ignorance of mortality is a comfort.
— Tennessee Williams
The most optimistic part of life is its mortality… God is a real genius.
— Rana Zahid Iqbal
I do not understand how you know you only have one life if you have never died, because if you have never died, then you cannot possibly know if you would go on living a second life, or go on living no more lives.
— Cassandra Kemper, The Madder Woman
The seeds of life - fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they are weighed down by the bodies' ills or dulled by limbs and flesh that's born for death. That is the source of all men's fears and longings, joys and sorrows, nor can they see the heaven's light, shut up in the body's tomb, a prison dark and deep.
— Virgil, The Aeneid
The things that frighten us most are those that remind us of our fragile existence
— Sumiko Saulson, Things That Go Bump In My Head
Every nation ends and every empire. Every baby born was going to die, given enough time. If being fated for destruction were enough to take the joy out of things, we’d slaughter children fresh from the womb. But we don’t. We wrap them in warm cloth and we sing to them and feed them milk as if it might all go on forever.
— Daniel Abraham, The Price of Spring
I don't think you can hold in your mind the full conception of what the world is.
— Anne Rice, The Queen of the Damned
You will always be special to someone. Unless you grow so old, everyone you knew went ahead
— Psyche Roxas-Mendoza
Without time, you have only the bottomless, shapeless mire of eternity....Time is what gives life significance.
— J.R. Ward, Lover Avenged
In my mind, I gave the woman gifts. I gave her a candle stub. I gave her a box of wooden kitchen matches. I gave her a cake of Lifebuoy soap. I gave her a ceilingful of glow-in-the-dark planets. I gave her a bald baby doll. I gave her a ripe fig, sweet as new wood, and a milkdrop from its stem. I gave her a peppermint puff. I gave her a bouquet of four roses. I gave her fat earthworms for her grave. I gave her a fish from Roebuck Lake, a vial of my sweat for it to swim in.
— Lewis Nordan, Music of the Swamp
Your death rides a fast camel.
— Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies
Here, Mortimer Wheeler thought, is power. And a reminder of our mortality.
— Robert M. Edsel, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History
Malady of mortality
— Anne Rice
The young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December.
— Charles Lamb
Over the years, I have developed a visceral reaction to families and victims expressing surprise at tragedy. Why are we surprised? Why do we forget we are mortal? Bad, bad things happen everywhere, every day. Humans, for better or worse, harbor this feeling that we - individually - are special. A patch of ice or a pea-sized blood clot makes a mockery of that illusion in a heartbeat. We are not special at all.
— Michael Perry, Population: 485
In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
— John F. Kennedy
Maybe I'll have a tumour like his someday. At first it will be a small but growing sphere that will branch out, growing larger in my stomach like a fetus. I will probably feel it when it starts to take motion, moving inward with the fury of a sleepwalking child, traveling through my intestines blindly -
— Gabriel García Márquez, Collected Stories
You're mortal, and only a mortal can afford to be romantic. When we conquered death, we murdered love.
— Rick Yancey, Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales
Death defeats us in the end. But our children are our revenge against it.
— Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus
How is it possible to write one's autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this?
— Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man, ergo... No, that isn't what I mean. I know that you know that. What I'm asking is: Have you ever actually believed it, believe it completely, believe not with your mind but with your body, actually felt that one day the fingers now holding this very piece of paper will be yellow and icy...?
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the applause of the populace. Just as it was started on its first day, so it will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay.
— Seneca