"Push away pride! Your strength, your power, are yours for how many years? Soon you'll return them where they came from, sickness or a sword's edge will end them, or a grasping fire, or the flight of a spear, or surging waves, or a knife's bite, or the terror of old age, or your eyes darkening over. It will come, death comes faster than you think, no one can flee it."
—Hrothgar, Beowulf: 25