Again, bhikkhus, as though he were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, one, two, or three days dead, bloated, livid, and oozing matter, a bhikkhu compares this same body with it thus: 'This body too is of the same nature, it will be like that, it is not exempt from that fate.'
He still had that marvelous swing, and what a follow-through, just beautiful, like a great golfer. But he was forty years old. He couldn’t run, he could hardly bend down for a ball, and of course he couldn’t hit the way he used to. One of the saddest things of all is when an athlete begins to lose it … and to see it happening to Babe Ruth, to see Babe Ruth struggling on a ball field, well, then you realize we’re all mortal and nothing lasts forever.
To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
You must drink quickly as from a rapid stream that will not always flow.
The ungodly ... reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves,...
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool,All men think all men mortal but themselves.