We must take human nature as we find it, perfection falls not to the share of mortals.
I am mortal, born to love and to suffer.
If he took her into his arms, he would keep her. He wouldn't let her suffer the way the other mortals had when he'd left them. He would keep her, with his court's permission or without it. Irial wouldn't take her, and Keenan wouldn't stand between them.
Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.
I-I am going to be a storm-a flame- I need to fight whole armies alone; I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms; I feel too strong to war with mortals- BRING ME GIANTS!
Patiently enduring some things is part of our mortal education.
When it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil, you leave your ashes to be composted.
The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the easy life of the gods would be a lifeless life.
We are all mortals, and each is for himself.
It's my belief that when you're dealing with the supernatural, the supernatural still has to trump we mortals, it still has to be more powerful than we are. You can't really defeat it. You can live to fight another day but it's very rare that a human being can actually destroy a supernatural force.
Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly.
There's a tendency to attribute magical skills and knowledge to people who've been elevated in some way - appearing on TV, or having an impressive title, or coming from a wealthy family. There's often an assumption that these people possess some rare, mysterious qualities mere mortals lack. What crap.
Failure may be cruel, but success is crueller still. The gods are usurers, you know; they lend to mortals, but they exact a desperate interest.
You're a Demigod Percy, half god and half mortal!
But nothing is better than a truth which appears not to have the semblance of truth. There is always something incomprehensible about the great heroic deeds performed by humanity because they rise so far beyond the mediocre measure of mere mortals; but it is always only because of the incredible feats that human beings have accomplished that humanity recovers its faith in itself.
Selfless service to mankind makes you free in the world of mortals.
Lie down among the pines for a while, then get to plain pure white love-work. . . to help humanity and other mortals and the Lord.
Fresh grapes and wine are perhaps the most luscious foods we mortals encounter during our sojourn here.
Astrology presupposes that the heavenly bodies are regulated in their movements in harmony with the destiny of mortals: the moral man presupposes that that which concerns himself most nearly must also be the heart and soul of things.
[On dishonest business methods:]. . . frequently the defender of the practice falls back on the Christian doctrine of charity, and points out that we are erring mortals and must allow for each other's weaknesses! - an excuse which, if carried to its legitimate conclusion, would leave our business men weeping on one another's shoulders over human frailty, while they picked one another's pockets.