#Immortality Quotes

“Shall I compare thee to a summer day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate... When in eternal lines to time thou growst So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

“All life is an experiment. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”

“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date . . .”

“How many ages henceShall this our lofty scene be acted overIn states unborn and accents yet unknown!”

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade.”

“Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die Live. House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, old man and young maid, Day's toil and it's guerdon, They are all vanishing, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored”

“Yet, do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,My love shall in my verse ever live young.”

“in black ink my love may still shine bright.”

“What strange beings we are! That sitting in hell at the bottom of the dark, we're afraid of our own immortality.”

“If a man carefully examine his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. Such a creature is probably immortal.”

“The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.”

“Death makes no conquest of this conqueror: For now he lives in fame, though not in life.”

“If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say, 'This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'”

“But say, my lord, it were not regist'red,Methinks the truth should live from age to age,As 'twere retailed to all posterity,Even to the general all-ending day.”

“You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.”

“The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.”

“For wisdom is the property of the dead,A something incompatible with life; and power,Like everything that has the stain of blood,A property of the living; but no stainCan come upon the visage of the moonWhen it has looked in glory from a cloud.”

“It is not men that interest or disturb me primarily; it is ideas. Ideas live; men die.”

“They do not need our praise. They do not need that our admiration should sustain them. There is no immortality that is safer than theirs. We come not for their sakes but for our own, in order that we may drink at the same springs of inspiration from which they themselves drank.”

“Land of Heart's Desire Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.”

“To spend life for something which outlasts it.”

“Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

“I cast my heart into my rhymes,That you, in the dim coming times,May know how my heart went with themAfter the red-rose-bordered hem.”

“For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.”

“Once out of nature I shall never takeMy bodily form from any natural thing,But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make”

“Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.”

“And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind,Or who have found a painter to make them so for payAnd smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind:I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.”

“What can be shown?What true love be?All could be known or shownIf Time were but gone.”

“If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.”

“... the random talk of people who have no chance of immortality and thus can speak their minds out has a setting, often, of lights, streets, houses, human beings, beautiful or grotesque, which will weave itself into the moment for ever.”

“It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterward return again.”

“I know I am deathless…We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.”

“I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time.”

“The smallest sprout shows there is really no death. And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it.”

“My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley.”

“Man does not understand nor accept immortality except on condition of self-remembrance.”

“There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man's bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.”

“When I'm dead I don't want a funeral. I want people to remember me alive.”

“Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.”

“I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.”

“Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that isGood steadily hastening towards immortality,And the vast all that is called Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.”

“What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour?”

“The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.”

“What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

“Good bye may seem forever. Farewell is like the end, but in my heart is the memory and there you will always be.”

“Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”

“Goin insane, never die, live eternal, who shall I fear?”

“The only thing that can kill me is death, that's the only thing that can ever stop me, is death, and even then my music will live forever.”

“Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. . . . For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried them all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. When I go down to the grave, I can say "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say "I have finished my life's work."”