Death (or reference to death)

makes men precious and pathetic;
their ghostliness is touching;
any act they perform may be their last;
there is no face that is not on the verge
of blurring and fading away
like the faces in a dream.
Everything in the world of mortals
has the value of
the irrecoverable and contingent.

Among the Immortals,
on the other hand,
every act (every thought) 

is the echo of others
that preceded it in the past,
with no visible beginning,
and the faithful presage of others
that will repeat it in the future, advertiginem.
There is nothing that is not as though lost
between indefatigable mirrors.
Nothing can occur but once,
nothing is preciously in peril of being lost.
The elegiac, the somber, the ceremonial
are not modes
the Immortals hold in reverence. 

- Borges (The Immortals)

(©Vergvoktre)