Life & Mortality Quote by Solomon Ibn Gabriol

The line works because it refuses the usual bargain between ambition and piety. Ibn Gabirol doesn’t ask you to choose the worldly life or the spiritual one; he asks you to be radically competent at both, and to feel the strain of holding them together. The first clause flatters the builder instinct: act with the patience of someone who will be here for decades, investing in craft, community, and consequences. It’s a rebuke to the short-termism of panic and improvisation. The second clause snaps the leash: keep your moral books as if time is about to run out, because it is. Not someday - now.

The subtext is a psychological trick that doubles as theology. “As if” signals that certainty is unavailable; what you can control is orientation. By toggling between forever and tomorrow, the quote weaponizes two different time horizons to discipline desire: long-term planning tames waste, while imminent death punctures vanity. It’s less about fear of judgment than about clarity. If you might die tomorrow, you stop pretending you’ll eventually become the person who apologizes, gives, repents, changes.

Context matters: Ibn Gabirol was a medieval Jewish poet-philosopher in al-Andalus, a world where learning, court life, and religious devotion braided tightly - and precariously. Life expectancy was low, politics volatile, illness common. The quote reads like survival advice for an educated class tempted by status and intellectual pride: build as though your work must endure, but keep your soul packed for sudden departure. In two balanced clauses, he turns mortality into an organizing principle instead of a mood.