open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
"I know, I'm well aware already. Humans die too easily. Their lives are short, they come and go in a flash, while dragons can live longer than this planet..."
— Tohru, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid
Comic Books
"It Ends. That is what gives it value."
— Death of the Endless, The Sandman
Fan Works
The clock of stars wheeled overhead in his dreams, showing him the path home. It would take longer than his short life-cycle to fly there and this was by design. Any ill-will he held towards Her for abandoning him on this doomed planet died with the understanding the voices brought. His life would be short but bright.
— A Clock of Stars
, a Brightburn fanfic by oorsprong
, a Brightburn fanfic by oorsprong Films — Live-Action
"I really should thank you - after all, it was your life that taught me the purpose of all life. The purpose of life is to end."
— Agent Smith, The Matrix Revolutions
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
— Roy Batty, Blade Runner
Literature
"How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks."
— Lord Peter Wimsey, in Gaudy Night
[L]ook at the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (trans. George Long)
"It was the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now, also, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! ...My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end and be buried in universal ruin?"
— A mayfly, "The Ephemera: An Emblem of Human Life" by Benjamin Franklin
"39. Either there've been thirty-eight other Grandson Richards, and I don't think that's what that means, or it's a newspaper human way of saying that he's thirty-nine years old. Nearly half as old as the Store. And the Store nomes say the Store is as old as the world. I know that can't be true, but-
I wonder what it feels like to live nearly for ever?"
I wonder what it feels like to live nearly for ever?"
Live-Action TV
"…A short time for you is a lifetime for someone else."
—Luke Skywalker to Grogu, The Book of Boba Fett, "From the Desert Comes a Stranger"
"People like us, we go on too long. We forget what matters. The last thing we need is each other. We need the mayflies. See, the mayflies, they know more than we do. They know how beautiful and precious life is because it's fleeting. Look how Sam Swift made every last moment count, right to the gallows. Look how glad he is to be alive. I looked into your eyes and I saw my worst fears. Weariness. Emptiness."
— The Doctor, Doctor Who, "The Woman Who Lived"
"Our quick and messy little lives are so small to them. They build their homes up here so the clutter of our existence is out of their sight."
— Detective Kristin Ortega, Altered Carbon
D'Argo: You have to go through with it, John.
Crichton: Eighty... cycles. My college loans will be delinquent. I'll miss the strippers on my 100th birthday. I'll get a utility bill... for three trillion dollars for a single porch light I left on, and everybody I know will be dead!
D'Argo: The alternative is having your brain dissected by Scorpius.
Crichton: Humans do not live as long as Sebaceans, or Hynerians, or Delvians. When I get back, everyone - my Dad, DK, my sisters, Cameron Diaz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer - will be dead!
Crichton: Eighty... cycles. My college loans will be delinquent. I'll miss the strippers on my 100th birthday. I'll get a utility bill... for three trillion dollars for a single porch light I left on, and everybody I know will be dead!
D'Argo: The alternative is having your brain dissected by Scorpius.
Crichton: Humans do not live as long as Sebaceans, or Hynerians, or Delvians. When I get back, everyone - my Dad, DK, my sisters, Cameron Diaz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer - will be dead!
Linda: You know I'm not going anywhere, right?
Maze: Not on purpose. But you're going to drop dead in what, five years?
Linda: How old do you think I am?!
Maze: I don't know, thirty?
Maze: Not on purpose. But you're going to drop dead in what, five years?
Linda: How old do you think I am?!
Maze: I don't know, thirty?
Music
If we were vampires and death was a joke
We'd go out on the sidewalk and smoke
Laugh at all the lovers and their plans
I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand
Maybe time running out is a gift
I'll work hard 'til the end of my shift
And give you every second I can find
And hope it isn't me who's left behind
It's knowing that this can't go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we'll get forty years together
But one day I'll be gone
Or one day you'll be gone
We'd go out on the sidewalk and smoke
Laugh at all the lovers and their plans
I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand
Maybe time running out is a gift
I'll work hard 'til the end of my shift
And give you every second I can find
And hope it isn't me who's left behind
It's knowing that this can't go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we'll get forty years together
But one day I'll be gone
Or one day you'll be gone
— "If We Were Vampires", Jason Isbell
Religion and Myth
"The river rises, flows over its banks and carries us all away like mayflies floating downstream. They stare at the sun, then all at once there is nothing."
— Utanapishtim, The Epic of Gilgamesh
"Mortals, born of woman,
are few of days and full of trouble.
They spring up like flowers and wither away,
like fleeting shadows, they do not endure."
are few of days and full of trouble.
They spring up like flowers and wither away,
like fleeting shadows, they do not endure."
So I say to you -
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:
Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.
So is all conditioned existence to be seen.
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:
Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.
So is all conditioned existence to be seen.
— The Buddha, The Diamond Sutra
Tabletop Games
"Every man is a spark in the darkness, by the time he is noticed he is gone forever.
A retinal after-image that fades and is obscured by newer, brighter lights."
A retinal after-image that fades and is obscured by newer, brighter lights."
"Do not waste your tears. I was not born to watch the world grow dim. Life is not measured in years, but by the deeds of men."
— Saint Sabbat, Warhammer 40,000
"Life's a journey. Shame about the destination."
— Commissar Ciaphas Cain, Warhammer 40,000
"You, as a human, fear death. But you are - what - fifty? If you were to die today, what would you lose? Twenty years of life, perhaps thirty at the most, and the last decade or more racked with pain and tortured with the humiliation of failing faculties. Bah! Nothing.
I, as a vampire, fear nonexistence. I have lived ten years for every one of yours. And if I were to be destroyed today, what would I lose? Eternity!
Thirty years? I could spend thirty years studying a well-written book or a finely-wrought painting. I have time enough to think, to experience the changing of the world.
Now do you understand why your deaths mean nothing to me? ...And mine means everything?"
I, as a vampire, fear nonexistence. I have lived ten years for every one of yours. And if I were to be destroyed today, what would I lose? Eternity!
Thirty years? I could spend thirty years studying a well-written book or a finely-wrought painting. I have time enough to think, to experience the changing of the world.
Now do you understand why your deaths mean nothing to me? ...And mine means everything?"
— Vampire, Van Richten's Guide to Vampires, Ravenloft
Video Games
''Before the Day of Awakening, they say we used to live very little...Only a few days or moons! And most of that time, we were helpless larvae... Marriage marked the end of life! It's inconceivable nowadays. For one, we don't even remember being larvae! Truly, becoming an adult is like being born. And then, we get to enjoy this beautiful land for many years. It's hard not to pity our antcestors, who had to give up life soon after becoming aware of it...!
—Ant Kingdom Lore Book, Bug Fables
"Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind.
Have you drunk your fill?"
Have you drunk your fill?"
— Lady Deirdre Skye, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
"YOUR LIVES ARE MEASURED IN YEARS AND DECADES. YOU WITHER AND DIE. WE ARE ETERNAL, THE PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION AND EXISTENCE. BEFORE US, YOU ARE NOTHING."
"In the vast depths of the Universe, the history of humanity is but a flash of light from a lone star. The life of a single person should be lost in time and space."
— Intro Narration, Metroid Prime
Real Life
"Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their whole lives in the course of a single day. From the point of view of a mayfly, human beings are stolid, boring, almost entirely immovable, offering hardly a hint that they ever do anything. From the point of view of a star, a human being is a tiny flash, one of billions of brief lives flickering tenuously on the surface of a strangely cold, anomalously solid, exotically remote sphere of silicate and iron."
