Do not believe that others will die, not you.... I have wrestled with Thanatos knee to knee and I know how death is vanquished. Man's immortality is not to live forever; for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear makes a man immortal.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that true immortality comes from living fearlessly rather than the mere desire to avoid death.
Mary Renault's quote reflects the idea that fearing death is a common human experience, but our true essence and immortality are found in how we confront life itself. The act of overcoming fear allows one to truly live in the moment, making every experience meaningful and everlasting, rather than being shackled by the fear of death.
In practice
This quote can inspire a group discussion on fear and how we can find freedom in facing our mortality.
Change is the sum of the universe, and what is of nature ought not to be feared. But one gives it hostages, and lays one's grief upon the gods. Sokrates is free, and would have taught me freedom. But I have yoked the immortal horse that draws the chariot with a horse of earth; and when the one falls, both are entangled in the traces.
One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.
In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.
I thought, There goes my lord, whom I was born to follow. I have found a King. And, I said to myself, looking after him as he walked away, I will have him, if I die for it.
..children know such a lot now, they soon don't believe in fairies, and every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
I don't believe in God. But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people. In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds, I believe that the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day. I believe that having something to hope for -- even if it's just a better tomorrow -- is the most powerful drug on this planet.
But manly set the world on sixe and sevene; And, if thou deye a martir, go to hevene.
The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.
It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell.
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