Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like the flame read more

Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like the flame of a candle, I say, is a gloriously fine thing. It makes us sober; it makes us a little sad; and many of us it makes poetic. But above all,

That flesh is but the glasse, which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
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That flesh is but the glasse, which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust.

When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box

When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box

Life in a box is better than no life at all ... I expect.

Life in a box is better than no life at all ... I expect.

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no
less are thoughts of mortality read more

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no
less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.

"O Charidas, what of the underworld?"
"Great darkness."
"And what of the resurrection?"
"A read more

"O Charidas, what of the underworld?"
"Great darkness."
"And what of the resurrection?"
"A lie."
"And Pluto?"
"A fable; we perish utterly."

Consider
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:--
We are as they;
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Consider
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:--
We are as they;
Like them we fade away
As doth a leaf.

Cats are magical. . .the more you pet them the longer you both live.

Cats are magical. . .the more you pet them the longer you both live.

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, read more

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.