Immortality is not a gift, Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it.
quote by Edgar Lee Masters
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Village Atheist
Ye young debaters over the doctrine
Of the soul's immortality
I who lie here was the village atheist,
Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments
Of the infidels.
But through a long sickness
Coughing myself to death
I read the Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.
And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition
And desire which the Shadow,
Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,
Could not extinguish.
Listen to me, ye who live in the senses
And think through the senses only:
Immortality is not a gift,
Immortality is an achievement;
And only those who strive mightily
Shall possess it.
poem by Edgar Lee Masters
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Birth of death
Birth of death
(Stream of consciousness poetry)
This is a well thinking thought
How to control
A robot
Before inventing,
How do you cherish
The success of poetry
Before composing,
This is a well thinking thought
Of the immortality
To give the meaning
The state of being
As the creator
Can not create
The enemy of
Immortality,
Which He Himself is,
Death
Is the success
Of the game plan
Before the game
Was invented
But loophole lies
The immortality
Does not have life.
What's the pleasure
Of being an entity
Of immortality
Without taste
Of life and death!
(He Himself knows)
poem by Abdul Wahab
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Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.
aphorism by Rabindranath Tagore from Stray Birds (1916), translated by Rabindranath Tagore
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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You Have The Soul Into Your Words
you may have the soul
into your words
you may have the oil
and the canvass and the
shapes and forms
to immortalize
what have you
something
for posterity for your immortality
but what use
is posterity
what use is this immortality?
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now that I have five children, my only hope is that they are all out of the house before I die.
quote by Bill Cosby
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I don't want to achieve immortality by being inducted into the Hall of Fame. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.
quote by William De Morgan
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Some—Work for Immortality
406
Some—Work for Immortality—
The Chiefer part, for Time—
He—Compensates—immediately—
The former—Checks—on Fame—
Slow Gold—but Everlasting—
The Bullion of Today—
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality—
A Beggar—Here and There—
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight—
One's—Money—One's—the Mine—
poem by Emily Dickinson
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Poems On Life
Life is given to us,
we earn it by giving it.
Let the dead have the immortality of fame,
but the living the immortality of love.
Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty
that can modulate their isolation into a
harmony with the whole.
Life, like a child, laughs,
shaking its rattle of death as it runs.
poem by Rabindranath Tagore
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On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger.
In My Dream, light plays!
Night is the time,
Sleeping in infinite nothing,
becoming nothing in beloved
embrace,
forgetting everything! In the lap of beloved enjoy
dreams,
may some come true,
Some may not,
Observing dreams one sees the
light within,
Randomly light plays in my dream
At the dawn, with gentle breeze,
Dreams melt, innerlight into light
of world,
Never go back to sleep,
If you sleep at dawn,
What will be there at dusk? If dustfree dawn make you sleep,
Failing to Smile and work,
If can't feel lighter in the light of
dawn,
Sure the darkness covering light,
Will make you faint at dusk!
Seeds says seed of immortality
is packed in mortal seed coat!
DNA sings, its immortality
covered in mortality of seed,
Finally Life sings,
Immortality of life is packed in mortal DNA,
and Self whispers, my
immortality is sung by mortal
life!
poem by Ramdas Bhandarkar
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World Falls
Im coming home with a stone
Strapped onto my back
Im coming home with a burning hope
Turning all my blues to black
Im looking for a sacred hand
To carve into my stone
A ghost of comfort
Angels breath
To keep this life inside my chest
This world falls on me
Hopes of immortality
Everywhere I turn
All the beauty just keeps shaking me
Now I woke up in the middle of a dream
Scared the world was too much for me
Sejarez said, dont let go
Just plant the seeds and watch them grow
Ive slept in rainy canyon lands
Cold drenched to my skin
I always wake to find a face
To calm these troubled lands
Ah this world falls on me
With dreams of immortality
Everywhere I turn
All the beauty just keeps shaking me
Now Im running
To the end of the earth
And Im swimming
To the edge of the sea
And Im laughing
Im under a starry sky
This world was meant for me
Dont bury me
Carry me
I wish I was a nomad
An indian or a saint
The edge of death would disappear
Leave me nothing left to taint
I wish I was a nomad
An indian or a saint
Give me walking shoes
Feathered arms
And a key to heavens gate
Ah this world falls on me
Dreams of immortality
Everywhere I turn
All the beauty just keeps shaking me
Im running
(this world falls on me)
To the end of the earth
(with hopes of immortality)
Im swimming
(everywhere I turn)
To the edge of the sea
(the beauty keeps on shaking me)
And Im laughing
(this world falls on me)
Cause Im under a starry sky
(hopes of immortality)
This world was meant for me
(everywhere I turn)
Ive got hopes of immortality
song performed by by Indigo Girls
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Some—Work for Immortality
406
Some—Work for Immortality—
The Chiefer part, for Time—
He—Compensates—immedia tely—
The former—Checks—on Fame—
Slow Gold—but Everlasting—
The Bullion of Today—
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality—
A Beggar—Here and There—
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight—
One's—Money—One's&m dash;the Mine—
poem by Emily Dickinson
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The Giant’s Ring
BALLYLESSON, NEAR BELFAST
Whoever is able will pursue the plainly
False immortality of not having lived in vain but leaving some
mark in the world.
Secretly mocking at his own insanity
He labors the same, he knows that no dead man's lip was ever
curled in self-scorn,
And immortality is for the dead.
Jesus and Caesar out of the bricks of man's weakness, Washington
out of the brittle
Bones of man's strength built their memorials,
This nameless chief of a knot of forgotten tribes in the Irish darkness
used faithfuller
Simpler materials: to diadem a hilltop
That sees the long loughs and the Mourne Mountains, with a ring
of enormous embankment, and to build
In the center that great toad of a dolmen
Piled up of ponderous basalt that sheds the centuries like raindrops.
He drove the labor,
And has earmarked already some four millenniums.
His very presence is here, thick-bodied and brutish, a brutal and
senseless will-power.
Immortality? While Homer and Shakespeare are names,
Not of men but verses, and the elder has not lived nor the
younger will not, such treadings of time.
Conclude that secular like Christian immortality's
Too cheap a bargain: the name, the work or the soul: glass beads
are the trade for savages.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Innocence Matter: Restoration Perfection
Innocence is the question?
Innocence is the X factor?
Innocence is life mortality?
Innocence is sinless state immortality?
Innocence is physical perfection?
Innocence is purity soul divinity?
Innocence is state of grace harmony?
Innocence is Trinity creation link eternity?
Innocence is life breath immortality?
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Something at the back of your mind.
If I had done something wonderful in my life
Or left a book with my name in print
Would that be my immortality?
Or is immortality a done deal
If you believe in Christ
Then where are the rules?
Kindness, love and an attitude
That would please Christ
Surely that is the answer?
Man interferes and proposes
A complete turn
Even if there has been murder
Theft or a lapse in the ten
Commandments
Be born again
What is that?
In my life I have learnt
And seen people savaged
By corruption and fear
In the next life will
All of us be there?
Good or bad?
The holocaust survivor
And the men that sent
Thousands to their death?
It is the eternal question.
poem by Willow Moon Pearce
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I cannot sufficiently admire the divine tact of thus training the chosen race for centuries in religion before even hinting the shining secret of eternal life. He behaves like the rich lover in a romance who woos the maiden on his own merits, disguised as a poor man, and only when he has won her reveals that he has a throne and palace to offer. For I cannot help thinking that any religion which begins with a thirst for immortality is damned, as a religion, from the outset. Until a certain spiritual level has been reached, the promise of immortality will always operate as a bribe which vitiates the whole religion and infinitely inflames those very self-regards which religion must cut down and uproot.
C.S. Lewis in The Grand Miracle
Submitted by Rebeca Bucur
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Gift
a living treasure that everybody wish, a pleasure
that each one desire to reach, an innate passion
that return where it belongs
leaving all alone is but a new way of knowing what
the world drifted the vessel of immortality of its
existence, nay apace the angels of heaven, but
elude the sting of what is death whose own
happiness shout the joy of what life had achieve
what is bought is not worth to receive, and what is
given is of everything to cherish the essence of a
gift, it’s a heart that gives and the spirit that receive
of nothingness to repay
priceless recompense makes the whole world see
the value of what is given, a gift that never tells the
head and only the heart that feels the wonderful
spirit of acceptance every souls remised
take it, for a gift is a gift unless it is freely shared to
any one who believes that life is a gift to salute
the beginning of what is the origin of everything, a
venue to live that life is gift to give until it leaves
nothing to remember
that you are what you are, who exist......amongst
every lives TODAY
poem by Antonio Liao
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Gratitude
I thank thee, friend, for the beautiful thought
That in words well chosen thou gavest to me,
Deep in the life of my soul it has wrought
With its own rare essence to ever imbue me,
To gleam like a star over devious ways,
To bloom like a flower on the drearest daysÂ
Better such gift from thee to me
Than gold of the hills or pearls of the sea.
For the luster of jewels and gold may depart,
And they have in them no life of the giver,
But this gracious gift from thy heart to my heart
Shall witness to me of thy love forever;
Yea, it shall always abide with me
As a part of my immortality;
For a beautiful thought is a thing divine,
So I thank thee, oh, friend, for this gift of thine.
poem by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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Hymn
To the too-dear, to the too-beautiful,
who fills my heart with clarity,
to the angel, to the immortal idol,
All hail, in immortality!
She flows through my reality,
air, mixed with the salt sea-swell:
into my soul’s ecstasy,
pours the essence of the eternal;
Ever-fresh sachet, that scents
the dear corner’s atmospheric light,
hidden smoke, of the burning censer,
in the secret paths of night.
How, incorruptible love,
to express your endless verities?
Grain of musk, unseen, above,
in the depths of my infinities!
To the too-dear, to the too-beautiful,
who is my joy and sanity,
to the angel, to the immortal idol,
All hail in immortality!
poem by Charles Baudelaire
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Mortals And Immortals
Behold, the mortals of blood
Are not powerful like us;
The windows we see through
Show us light of our moods.
The silence of immortality is,
Greed shall conquer the young
Who are yet too evil and kind,
Much like mortals of blood.
It is grand sourness to hurt
The blood of folk who learn;
The immortals of desire can craze
Over the health they possess.
Infer from thoughts of gold and silver,
They glisten and you must listen.
poem by Naveed Akram
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