Nick Harkaway Quotes

The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

Mankind is a dream of a shadow.

Everybody's human. You are only on this planet for a little bit of time.

It's true that the biggest value of life is that it's going to stop. I was thinking when I was in New York the last time that all that we see that has importance is man-made. It isn't nature-made. And when I was looking through the window, looking at New York, I was so moved by humanity's desire for immortality-because that's what it is.

He is dead who called me into being, and when I shall be no more the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

One day I'll be old, dead, forgotten. And at this very moment, while I'm sitting here thinking these things, a man in a dingy hotel room is thinking, "I will always be here."

Have not all past human beings parted, And must not all the present, one day part?

Life is a memory, and then it is nothing.

Out of the people that ever were, almost all of them are dead. There are way more dead people, and you're all gonna die and then you're gonna be dead for way longer than you're alive. Like that's mostly what you're ever gonna be. You're just dead people that didn't die yet.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man, Less than a span.

One day you will disappear on a funeral pyre - just into nothingness, as smoke.

The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.

We’re beings toward death, we’re … two-legged, linguistically-conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms.

Certainly people have a lot tougher situations than I've had to deal with. But I will say we are all dying from the moment we are born. This is not just rehearsal.

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

Time stays, we go.

I know all human beings will be successful. How do I know? They all die.

Acquisition means life to miserable mortals.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time.

Mortality defines the human condition.