Immortal

“ By some unconquerable impulse thrilled,
Within the compass of a crowded hour
Outlived a lifetime, and "all hours fulfilled."
"Immortal dead!" I hear our Virgil sigh,
"How can the dearest and the noblest die?" ”

“ Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.—II. Timothy, i. 10.
Immortal honour, endless fame
Attend the Almighty Father’s name.
Dryden.
Thy nature, immortality! who knows?
And yet who knows it not? It is but life
In stronger thread of brighter colour spun,
And spun for ever, dipt by cruel fate
In Stygian die, how black, how brittle here! ”

“ The grave is their house, and so must be till the trumpet shall sound, and the heavens pass away like a scroll. Now, I say, the immortality of the soul shows the greatness of it, as the eternity of God shows the greatness of God. It cannot be said of any angel but that he is immortal, and so it is, and ought to be said of the soul. ”

“ I am dreaming ...? Let me dream, if this dream is my life. Do not awaken me from it. I believe in the immortal origin of this yearning for immortality, which is the very substance of my soul. But do I really believe in it ...? And wherefore do you want to be immortal? you ask me, wherefore? Frankly, I do not understand the question, for it is to ask the reason of the reason, the end of the end, the principle of the principle. ”

“ But God bestowed upon us an immortal soul, to watch as a guardian angel over the body, and placed it in the loftiest part of our frame, to teach us to look upward, and remember our birth,—that men are not creatures of clay but children of God and heirs of immortality. ”

“ Can it be? to live for ever! I have heard of enchantments, in which the victims were plunged into a deep sleep, to wake, after a hundred years, as fresh as ever: I have heard of the Seven Sleepers--thus to be immortal would not be so burthensome: but, oh! ”

“ But here's the thing I could never get out of the way—and if I only could! If my soul is immortal, why did it have a beginning? If I'm to know eternal life, why don't I reach out to infinity behind as well as before? How can a thing be immortal that has its moment of birth? ”

“ This child of dust—Man, all-immortal! hail;
Hail, Heaven! all lavish of strange gifts to man!
Thine all the glory; man’s the boundless bliss. 300
Where am I rapt by this triumphant theme?
On Christian joy’s exulting wing, above
Th’ Aonian mount?—Alas! small cause for joy!
What if to pain immortal? if extent
Of being, to preclude a close of woe?
Where, then, my boast of immortality?
I boast it still, though cover’d o’er with guilt;
For guilt, not innocence, his life he pour’d;
’Tis guilt alone can justify his death ”

“ But, as they touched the first flowers of earth, and flung only rays of light, and cast no shadows, then the earnest Queen of gods and men, Fate, raised her eternal sceptre, and said: "The immortal becomes mortal upon the earth, and every spirit becomes a human being!" ”

“ Is he immortal, and if immortal whence came he and whither does he go? if immortal, whence come these new souls which are being delivered on the face of the globe at the rate of nearly a hundred a minute? ”

“ Yes, and that it was immortal, too! You see a body, and therefore you believe in it. You see that it is mortal and therefore you believe in its mortality. You do not see the soul--therefore you believe in one? ”

“ Love's immortality so blind
Dreams that all things with it conjoined
Must share with it immortal day:
But not of this—but not of this—
The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss,
Fall from it and it goes its way. ”

“ How can the spirit of man, deprived of virtue, cognition, will, personality and life, remain immortal? Still more, how can he enjoy such immortality? The dim feeling of such eternal rest we all can understand, who have gone suddenly from a lighted room into the vast night, and have felt our souls suddenly invaded and possessed by a sense of mystery and silence. We have felt this; but in his final beatitude the Mystic must not feel: “He must be as one dead.” ”

“ We watched the women, drank a great deal, and conversed on the immortality of the soul.
“It’s foolish,” said one of my comrades who was older than I, “it’s foolish to believe that it would be a blessing to have an immortal soul. Look at that old harridan dancing there, whose head and hands tremble if she stays still a moment. One sees directly that she is wicked and ugly and entirely worthless, and that she’s getting more and more so every day. How ridiculous it would be to imagine that she had an immortal soul! ”

“ And in the same way, he says, admittedly the immortal is mortal and the mortal immortal, in such words as these: “Deathless are mortals, and mortals are deathless, when the living take death from these, and the dead life from those.” ”

“ Although in me each part will be forgotten. ⁠4
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. ”

“ But even the man who has not this faith beholds his own immortality in his children. "Why of course I am immortal," said a scientist who believed that death ends all. "Of course I am immortal," said he, "there goes my reincarnation"; and he pointed to his little son, glorious with the promise of an exhaustless vitality. ”

“ Swept on and up in ecstasy, perception becoming ever clearer, he beheld the so-called soul-self of man unravelled into its component parts and laid before him like the unwoven threads of a garment, and behold in these was no durability nor immortality, for there is but one Immortal, one Infinite, and the man who claims his own, his separate immortality, is dying and reborn through the ages and but the fierce desire of life gives him its simulacrum and the long-linked chain of births and deaths and griefs immeasurable. ”

“ Thou hast told me already, O Lord, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that thou art eternal and alone hast immortality. Thou art not changed by any shape or motion, and thy will is not altered by temporal process, because no will that changes is immortal. ”

“ Mid mortal men he is the light immortal. Here was he born, firm-seated in his station Immortal, ever waxing in his body. 5. A firm light hath been set for men to look on: among all things that fly the mind is swiftest. All Gods of one accord, with one intention, move unobstructed to a single purpose. ”

“ Of course, a man bent upon holding to the doctrine of the soul’s immortality will continue to see in the return of the child’s soul the return of an immortal entity. But let us ask such an one, Do you find the word immortal prefixed to soul here? Since you do not why will you add it? Which is the child, the body or the soul? ”

“ Still, again, there is immortality, and an infinitely hospitable immortality, which the hand and the whole body and the soul, be it yours or be it mine, all have a place and a part in. There is immortality, and, besides those things that were just named, divinity is also immortal. But even a God dies, this being just one of the things that make him God. Any man, then, or any being, or any thing, may say, "I am immortal." ”

“ The immortal could we cease to contemplate, The mortal part suggests its every trait. God laid His fingers on the ivories Of her pure members as on smoothèd keys, And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies. ”

“ Of that death which can affect an immortal soul, and of that to which the body is subject.
But I see I must speak a little more carefully of the nature of death. For although the human soul is truly affirmed to be immortal, yet it also has a certain death of its own. For it is therefore called immortal, because, in a sense, it does not cease to live and to feel; while the body is called mortal, because it can be forsaken of all life, and cannot by itself live at all. ”

“ If the world is to last for ever, you may justly regard as immortal the indefinite transmission of Thought, and the perpetuity of the memory of certain great men. But will all this avail, if the world must perish? ”

“ Who can say what the absolute personality of God or man is? Who living hath seen God or a perfect man? In presence of such thoughts take off thy shoes and tread lightly, for this is holy ground. Surely the probation of mortals must go on after the change called death, that they may learn the definition of immortal being ”

“ With these facts before you, that man is mortal, and that the soul and spirit of man are never spoken in the Scriptures as immortal, we may now ask you to listen to the use of the word immortal, so that you may more fully see that immortality is in no sense man's present possession, and that therefore "immortal soul" and "immortal spirit" are invented phrases--not scriptural. ”

“ And, confessedly, he asserts that what is immortal is mortal, [4] and that what is mortal is immortal, in the following expressions: “Immortals are mortal, and mortals are immortal, that is, when the one derive life from death, and the other death from life.” ”

“ With strong attrition rubbed to life, laid down with careful hand, a Sage, Agni, make sacrifices good, and for the pious bring the Gods. 13. Mortals have brought to life the God Immortal, the Conqueror with mighty jaws, unfailing. ”

“ To many, the reasoning of the 'Spiritualists,' like that of the ancient, amounts to "It is quite possible that human beings are immortal;" and that is all. Many a man and woman are dying daily deaths from the fearful doubts that constantly arise as to the truth of the Immortality of the Soul ”

“ Everything mortal has moments immortal, Swift and God-gifted, immeasurably bright. ”

“ How godlike, how immortal, is he? ”

“ These, in just so far as they are real, are immortal, and any real relation between them is immortal also, for the conclusive test of immortality is just reality, reality here and now. Whatever is real in your life or in mine, whatever reality our present personality may possess, be it physical or spiritual, be it both or neither of these, that and only that is immortal. ”

“ Carl shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe the story's true. Sometimes I find myself wondering what it would be like to be immortal—I mean after all the willful-wishing's over with, and you get down to thinking about it in terms of 'what's-in-it-for-me.' Most of us think of immortality as being something we could have on our own terms. But suppose everyone were immortal, the way they'll be—or could be—after this so-called migration starts. How much will people have really changed. ”

“ The idea of immortality, like the idea of God, in a certain sense, is born in us, and fast as we come to consciousness of ourselves we come to consciousness of God, and of ourselves as immortal. The higher we advance in wisdom, goodness, piety, the larger place do God and immortality hold in our experience and inward life. I think that is the regular and natural process of a man's development. ”

“ which was not imprinted by God, who, as he is immortal himself, had put a coal, a beam of immortality into us, which we might have blown into a flame, but blew it out by our first sin; we beggared ourselves by hearkening after false riches, and infatuated ourselves by hearkening after false knowledge. ”

“ Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades. ”

“ Nor can he make mortals immortal, or recall to life those who are dead; nor can he effect, that he who has once lived shall not have lived, or that he who has enjoyed honors shall not have enjoyed them ”

“ Immortality in this world, immortality in another! Suppose that we were as certain of the latter as we are of getting to Paris [Pg 68] by the 11 a.m. from Victoria. Either the world would be emptied by suicide, or—it wouldn’t! Suppose that immortality for a poem was a matter of formula. Take of universality so much, of heart so much, of grace so much: add tears, so much, and simmer gently till done ...! What would be the result? Everybody’s poems would be immortal. The Golden Treasury would stretch from here to Easter. ”

“ It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly floats in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life. ”

“ Not to the curious or impatient soul
That in the start, demands the end be shown,
And at each step, stops waiting for a sign;
But to the tireless toiler toward the goal,
Shall the great miracles of God be known
And life revealed, immortal and divine. ”

“ As set forth in the various Scriptures we have given, when the word is used otherwise than of the person or being, it is always employed to express the variety of aspects in which a living being can be contemplated, such as life, individuality, mind, disposition, breath, etc.; but it never expresses the idea of immortality, and is never used in the popular form, "immortal soul." ”

“ Strong as the death it masters, is the hope
That onward looks to immortality:
Let the frame perish, so the soul survive,
Pure, spiritual, and loving. I believe
The grave exalts, not separates, the ties
That hold us in affection to our kind. ”

“ But what he spoke to him of immortality we need not here repeat, for the while he spoke out of the romantic eloquence of his heart, his matter-of-fact mind kept incorrigibly whispering to him that immortality is the theory that life is a rough ocean voyage and the soul a club breakfast. ”