When we look on the roses and gaiety of youth, the mournful idea of mortality is altogether alien to our thoughts. We have heard of it as a speculation and a tale, but nothing but experience can bring it home to us.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think that there is something beautiful about mortality. It makes our decisions mean more.
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
As you get older, subconsciously you start thinking about mortality and protecting your offspring. It opens up a whole new avenue of life experiences.
I was fascinated by mortality. Most people are, even if they don't admit it.
We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality.
I have an obsession with mortality. I saw a friend die when I was 18, and I can't get over it.
I think ancient cultures incorporated death into the experience of life in a more natural way than we have done. In our obsessive focus on youth, on celebrity, our denial of death makes it harder for people who are grieving to find a place for that grief.
Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.
I think mortality makes you live a fuller existence. When I was a kid I was scared of death, and maybe that's what made me desperate to get the most out of life.
Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.