This muddy vesture of decay. [ William Shakespeare ]

All that's bright must fade -
The brightest still the fleetest;
All that's sweet was made
But to be lost when sweetest. [ Moore ]

Like angels' visits, short and bright;
Mortality's too weak to bear them long. [ J. Norris ]

To contemplation's sober eye.
Such is the race of man;
And they that creep, and they that fly.
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay,
But flutter through life's little day. [ Gray ]

All, that in this world is great or gay.
Doth, as a vapor, vanish and decay. [ Spenser ]

'Tis a stern and a startling thing to think
How often mortality stands on the brink
Of its grave without any misgiving;
And yet in this slippery world of strife,
In the stir of human bustle so rife.
There are daily sounds to tell us that Life
Is dying, and Death is living! [ Hood ]

'Tis but an hour ago, since it was nine;
And, after one hour more, 'twill be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe.
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot. [ William Shakespeare ]

Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return. [ Pope ]

There is no flock, however watched and tended.
But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoever defended,
But has one vacant chair. [ Longfellow ]

No might nor greatness in mortality
Can censure escape; brick-wounding calumny
The whitest virtue strikes: what king so strong
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? [ William Shakespeare ]

What surety of the world, what hope, what stay.
When this was now a king, and now is clay! [ William Shakespeare ]

Who breathes must suffer; and who thinks, must mourn;
And he alone is bless'd, who never was born. [ Prior ]

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow claspest the limits of mortality. [ Shelley ]

Our continual desire for praise ought to convince us of our mortality, if nothing else will. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping? [ Anna Letitia Barbauld ]

To smell a fresh turf of earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul. Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. [ Fuller ]

Short is the life of those who possess great accomplishments, and seldom do they reach a good old age. Whatever thou lovest, pray that thou mayest not set too high a value on it. [ Martial ]

When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever. [ Johnson ]

A broken heart is a distemper which kills many more than is generally imagined, and would have a fair title to a place in the bills of mortality, did it not differ in one instance from all other diseases, namely, that no physicians can cure it. [ Fielding ]

Flowers are esteemed by us, not so much on account of their extrinsic beauty - their glowing hues and genial fragrance - as because they have long been regarded as emblems of mortality - because they are associated in our minds with the ideas of mutation and decay. [ Bovee ]