Yes! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'To MargueriteöContinued', l.1^4.

Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?

-Bible (Old Testament)
Job 4:17.

Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown: He raised a mortal to the skies; She drewan angel down.

-Dryden,John
  Of 'Divine Cecilia'.  Alexander's Feast, l.177^80.

The doctor found, when she was dead, Her last disorder mortal.

-Goldsmith, Oliver
  'Elegy on Mrs Mary Blaize'.

And when thy Lord said to the angels,'See, I am creating a mortal of a clay of mud moulded.When I have shaped him, and breathed My spirit in him, fall you down, bowing before him!'

-The Koran
Sura15, l.28^9.

Past ruined Ilion Helen lives, Alcestis rises from the shades; Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives Immortal youth to mortal maids.

-Landor,Walter Savage
  'To Ianthe'.

Life is too short to silver over this tarnish. The gods, employed to haunt and punish husbands, have no hand for trigger-fine distinctions, their myopia makes all error mortal.

-Lowell, RobertTraill Spence,Jr
  'NewYear's Eve'.

'Twas beyond a mortal's share To wander solitary there: Two paradises 'twere in one To live in paradise alone.

-Marvell, Andrew
c.1650^1652  'The Garden' (published1681), stanza 8.

Oh thou, that dear and happy isle The garden of the world ere while, Thou paradise of four seas, Which heaven planted us to please, But, to exclude the world, did guard With watery if not flaming sword; What luckless apple did we taste, To make us mortal, and thee waste?

-Marvell, Andrew
c.1650^1652  'Upon  Appleton House, to My Lord Fairfax' (published1681), stanza 41.

The unexempt condition By which all mortal frailty must subsist, Refreshment after toil, ease after pain.

-Milton,John
  Comus,  A Mask, l.684^6.

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, l.78.

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, opening lines.

Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.7, l.23^6.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal!

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Adonais, stanza 21.

I presume you're mortal, and may err.

-Shirley,James
  The Lady of Pleasure, act 2, sc.2.

   One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washe'  d it away; Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. 'Vain man,'said she,'that doest in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalise, For I my self shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wipe'  d out likewise.' 'Not so,'quod I,'let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, And in the heavens write your glorious name. Where when as death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.'

-Spenser, Edmund
  Amoretti, sonnet 75.

What man that sees the ever-whirling wheel Of Change, the which all mortal things doth sway, But that thereby doth find, and plainly feel, How mutability in them doth play Her cruel sports, to many men's decay?

-Spenser, Edmund
  The Faerie Queen,'Mutability', canto 6, stanza1.

   Think of the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and carried him through triumphantly until the end! Who, if he were wisely considerate of things at large, would ever embark upon any work much more considerable than a halfpenny post-card? Who would project a serial novel, afterThackeray and Dickens had each fallen in mid-course? Who would find heart enough to begin to live, if he dallied with the consideration of death?

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
Virginibus Puerisque,'AesTriplex'.

Surely mortal man is a broomstick!

-Swift,Jonathan
  A Meditation upon a Broomstick.

Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands.

-Swinburne, Algernon Charles
  Poems and Ballads,'The Garden of Proserpine'.