The soul secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds.
It must be so—Plato, thou reasonest well!— Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.
Woody Allen, The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader (1993)
The joke about immortality also appears in On Being Funny (1975)
In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine from April 9, 1987, Allen said "Someone once asked me if my dream was to live on in the hearts of people, and I said I would prefer to live on in my apartment."
Oh Gilgamec! Enlil, the Great Mountain, the father of gods, has made kingship your destiny, but not eternal life.
The next two hundred years will see the abolition of death, as we now understand that great transition, and the establishing of the soul's existence. The soul will be known as an entity, as the motivating impulse, and the spiritual centre back of all manifested forms. . . . Our essential immortality will be demonstrated and realised to be a fact in nature.
Alice Bailey, Esoteric Psychology II, p. 96 (1936), Esoteric Healing, p. 412 (1953)
With that inner conviction (of immortality), we face death, and we know that we shall live again, that we come and we go, and that we persist because we are divine and the controllers of our own destiny... The spirit in man is undying; it forever endures, progressing from point to point, and stage to stage upon the Path of Evolution, unfolding steadily and sequentially the divine attributes and aspects... The immortality of the human soul, and the innate ability of the spiritual, inner man to work out his own salvation under the Law of Rebirth, in response to the Law of Cause and Effect, are the underlying factors governing all human conduct and all human aspiration.
Alice Bailey, The Reappearance of the Christ, p. 146/147, (1947)
There is no death. There is... entrance into fuller life. There is freedom from the handicaps of the fleshly vehicle. The rending process so much dreaded does not exist, except in the cases of violent and of sudden death, and then the only true disagreeables are an instant and overwhelming sense of imminent peril and destruction, and something closely approaching an electric shock... For the average good citizen, death is a continuance of the living process in his consciousness and a carrying forward of the interests and tendencies of the life.
Alice Bailey, The Way of the Disciple (1934) p. 300/1
Clov: Do you believe in the life to come? Hamm: Mine was always that.
The doctrine of Metempsychosis has been abundantly ridiculed by men of science and rejected by theologians, yet if it had been properly understood in its application to the indestructibility of matter and the immortality of spirit, it would have been perceived that it is a sublime conception. Should we not first regard the subject from the stand-point of the ancients before venturing to disparage its teachers? The solution of the great problem of eternity belongs neither to religious superstition nor to gross materialism. The harmony and mathematical equiformity of the double evolution — spiritual and physical — are elucidated only in the universal numerals of Pythagoras, who built his system entirely upon the so-called "metrical speech" of the Hindu Vedas.
H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Part One, Science, Ch. 1 (1877)
Nothing is lasting but change; nothing perpetual but death.
Attributed to Karl Ludwig Börne, in his Denkrede auf Jean Paul; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
That which is the foundation of all our hopes and of all our fears; all our hopes and fears which are of any consideration: I mean a Future Life.
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Introduction (1736).
I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon another.
Lord Byron, letter to Francis Hodgson, 3 September 1811.
All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom, The sun himself must die, Before this mortal shall assume Its immortality.
[E]nergy is conserved, or is indestructible. This form of speech might be applied to other cases of alternate immortality, where one of two things comes into existence on disappearance of the other.
William Kingdon Clifford, "Energy and Force" (Mar 28, 1873) A previously unpublished lecture by Prof. Clifford before members of the Royal Institution, as described in Nature (May-Oct, 1880) Vol. 22, pp. 122-124. with an introduction by J. F. Moulton.
With my assumption... life need never end. There is no decisive argument for deciding between [certain] assumptions. I prefer the one that allows the possibility of endless life. One may hope that some day the question will be decided by direct observation.
Paul Dirac, Untitled, Nature (1961) Vol. 192, p. 441, as quoted by Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality (1994) p. 11. Described as Dirac's Postulate of Eternal Life
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Immortality is the privilege of the few, and, according to the Aryan conception, specifically the privilege of heroes. Continuing to live – not as a shadow, but as a demigod – is reserved to those which a special spiritual action has elevated from the one nature to the other.
Eugène Ionesco, Exit the King (Le roi se meurt, 1962), translated by Donald Watson. New York: Grove Press, 1963, p. 45.
No, no, I'm sure, My restless spirit never could endure To brood so long upon one luxury, Unless it did, though fearfully, espy A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
I long to believe in immortality. I shall never be able to bid you an entire farewell. If I am destined to be happy with you here — how short is the longest life. I wish to believe in immortality — I wish to live with you forever.
John Keats, letter to Fanny Brawne, July 1820. H. Buxton Foreman (ed.), The Complete Works of John Keats Vol. V (1901), Letter CCII.
Most men live in order to make a living; when they have that, they live in order to make a good living; when they have that, they die. … This comment can be developed into a demonstration of human immortality. This demonstration could be stated as follows: It is the destiny of every human being to make a good living. If he dies before he does that, he has not fulfilled his destiny. … But if he makes a good living, then he has achieved his destiny, but the destiny of making a good living cannot be that he is supposed to die, but, on the contrary, that he is supposed to live well on his good living—ergo, man is immortal.
Søren Kierkegaard, Judge William ridiculing the bourgeois view of life, Either-Or, H. Hong, trans. (1987), part 2, p. 279.
What is it that has given rise to this whole error about immortality? Is it that the placement of the issue has been shifted, that immortality has been turned into a question, that what is a task has been turned into a question, what is a task for action has been turned into a question for thought. Would not the most corrupt of all ages be one that managed to have “duty” completely changed into problem of thought? What is duty? Duty is what one ought to do. There ought not to be a question about duty, but there ought to be only the question about whether I am doing my duty. There ought not to be a question about immortality, but the question ought to be whether I am living in such a way as my immortality requires of me. There ought not to be a discussion about immortality, whether there is an immortality, but about what my immortality requires of me, about my enormous responsibility in my being immortal.
Soren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses 1848 Hong 1997 p. 205
Immortality is the only thing which doesn't tolerate being postponed.
'Tis this which makes The best assurance of our promised heaven: This triumph intellect has over death— Our words yet live on others' lips; our thoughts Actuate others. Can that man be dead Whose spiritual influence is upon his kind?
The fame of the brave outlives him; his portion is immortality. What more flattering homage could we pay to the manes of Paul Jones, than to swear on his tomb to live or to die free? It is the vow, it is the watch-word of every Frenchman.
Paul Henri Marron, officiating Protestant clergyman, discourse at the funeral of John Paul Jones, Paris, France (July 20, 1792); reported in Life and Correspondence of John Paul Jones (1830), p. 68.
For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?
Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss.
Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, Volume I: Essays on the Science of Religion (1867), p. 45.
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
Attributed to Albert Pike; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
If what I assume is true, it is still excellent to be convinced of it, but if there is nothing after death, I will at least during the time before my death be less burdensome to my companions because of complaints, and furthermore this folly of mine will not last long—for that would indeed be an evil—but in a short time will vanish.
Plato, Phaedrus, 91a, translated in Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, p. 79.
I hold it ever, Virtue and cunning were endowments greater Than nobleness and riches: careless heirs May the two latter darken and expend; But immortality attends the former, Making a man a god.
The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal.... We feel and know by experience that we are eternal.
The anxiety about death is met in two ways. The reality of death is excluded from daily life to the highest possible degree. The dead are not allowed to show that they are dead; they are transformed into a mask of the living. The other and more important way of dealing with death is the belief in a continuation of life after death, called the immortality of the soul. This is not a Christian and hardly a Platonic doctrine. Christianity speaks of resurrection and eternal life, Platonism of a participation of the soul in the transtemporal sphere of essences. But the modern idea of immortality means a continuous participation in the productive process.
Paul Tillich, describing the American response to anxiety about death, The Courage To Be (1952), p. 110.
Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death.
Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), translated by Anthony Kerrigan, Princeton University Press, 1972.
They ask us who are we, vile earthworms, to pretend to immortality; in virtue of what? wherefore? by what right? "In virtue of what?" you ask; and I reply, In virtue of what do we now live? "Wherefore?"—and wherefore do we now exist? "By what right?"—and by what right are we? To exist is just as gratuitous as to go on existing for ever.
If it is necessary that each sentient being must have the possibility of achieving an overwhelming good, then it is clear that there must be some form of life after earthly death. Despite the many pointers to the existence of God, theism would be falsified if physical death was the end, for then there could be no justification for the existence of this world. However, if one supposes that every sentient being has an endless existence, which offers the prospect of supreme happiness, it is surely true that the sorrows and troubles of this life will seem very small by comparison. Immortality, for animals as well as humans, is a necessary condition of any acceptable theodicy; that necessity, together with all the other arguments for God, is one of the main reasons for believing in immortality.
Keith Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), pp. 201-202.
A man really and practically looking onwards to an immortal life, on whatever grounds, exhibits to us the human soul in an enobled attitude.
William Whewell, "Remarks on the Phaedo", Platonic Dialogues for English Readers Volume I (1859), pp. 441-2.
Immortal, my arse. That’s just an error of parallax.
Sean Williams, A Glimpse of the Marvellous Structure (and the Threat it Entails) (2010), in Godlike Machines (ed. Jonathan Strahan), published by The Science Fiction Book Club, ISBN 978-1-61664-759-9, p. 334
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there.
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night I, line 89.
'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone, Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness, The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill. That only, and that amply this performs.
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VI, line 573.
No, no! The energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun; And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing—only he His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.
If I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time; I press God's lamp Close to my breast; its splendor soon or late Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes, XII. 7.
Thus God's children are immortall whiles their Father hath anything for them to do on earth.
Thomas Fuller, Church History, Book II. Century VIII. 18. On Bede's Death.
Yet spirit immortal, the tomb cannot bind thee, But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee A name which before thee no mortal hath won.
Attributed to Lyman Heath, The Grave of Bonaparte.
'Tis true; 'tis certain; man though dead retains Part of himself; the immortal mind remains.
Homer, The Iliad, Book XXIII, line 122. Pope's translation.
Exegi monumentum ære perennius Regalique situ pyramidum altius, Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens Possit diruere aut innumerabilis Annorum series et fuga temporum. Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei Vitabit Libitinam.
I have reared a memorial more enduring than brass, and loftier than the regal structure of the pyramids, which neither the corroding shower nor the powerless north wind can destroy; no, not even unending years nor the flight of time itself. I shall not entirely die. The greater part of me shall escape oblivion.
But all lost things are in the angels' keeping, Love; No past is dead for us, but only sleeping, Love; The years of Heaven with all earth's little pain Make good, Together there we can begin again In babyhood.
Of such as he was, there be few on earth; Of such as he is, there are few in Heaven: And life is all the sweeter that he lived, And all he loved more sacred for his sake: And Death is all the brighter that he died, And Heaven is all the happier that he's there.
Tamque opus exegi quod nec Jovis ira necignes Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas. Cum volet illa dies quæ nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi siniut ævi; Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum.
And now have I finished a work which neither the wrath of Jove, nor fire, nor steel, nor all-consuming time can destroy. Welcome the day which can destroy only my physical man in ending my uncertain life. In my better part I shall be raised to immortality above the lofty stars, and my name shall never die.
Thy lord shall never die, the whiles this verse Shall live, and surely it shall live for ever: For ever it shall live, and shall rehearse His worthy praise, and vertues dying never, Though death his soule do from his bodie sever: And thou thyselfe herein shalt also live; Such grace the heavens doe to my verses give.
I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.
Happy he whose inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O'er the rabble's laughter; And, while Hatred's fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter.
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).
Immortality! We bow before the very term. Immortality! Before it reason staggers, calculation reclines her tired head, and imagination folds her weary pinions. Immortality! It throws open the portals of the vast forever; it puts the crown of deathless destiny upon every human brow; it cries to every uncrowned king of men, "Live forever, crowned for the empire of a deathless destiny!"
Earthly providence is a travesty of justice on any other theory than that it is a preliminary stage, which is to be followed by rectifications. Either there must be a future, or consummate injustice sits upon the throne of the universe. This is the verdict of humanity in all the ages.
Whence comes the powerful impression that is made upon us by the tomb? Are a few grains of dust deserving of our veneration? Certainly not; we respect the ashes of our ancestors for this reason only — because a secret voice whispers to us that all is not extinguished in them. It is this that confers a sacred character on the funeral ceremony among all the nations of the globe; all are alike persuaded that the sleep, even of the tomb, is not everlasting, and that death is but a glorious transfiguration.
See truth, love, and mercy in triumph descending, And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom! On the cold cheek of death smiles and roses are blending, And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb.
Tell me why the caged bird nutters against its prison bars, and I will tell you why the soul sickens of earthliness. The bird has wings, and wings were made to cleave the air, and soar in freedom in the sun. The soul is immortal — it cannot feed upon husks.
I feel that I was made to complete things. To accomplish only a mass of beginnings and attempts would be to make a total failure of life. Perfection is the heritage with which my Creator has endowed me, and since this short life does not give completeness, I must have immortal life in which to find it.
Heaven begun is the living proof that makes the heaven to come credible. Christ in you is "the hope of glory." It is the eagle eye of faith which penetrates the grave, and sees far into the tranquil things of death. He alone can believe in immortality who feels the resurrection in him already.
No martyr ever went the way of duty, and felt the shadow of death upon it. The shadow of death is darkest in the valley, which men walk in easily, and is never felt at all on a steep place, like Calvary. Truth is everlasting, and so is every lover of it; and so he feels himself almost always.