Memento Mori Meaning: A Reminder That Life Is Short

Memento mori meaning, word by word

Memento is an imperative, an order, from the Latin verb meaning "remember", so it means "remember" or "be mindful". Mori means "to die". Put together, the phrase is often translated "remember that you will die", "remember that you must die" or simply "remember death".

English also uses memento on its own as a noun for a keepsake, a small object kept to remember a person or event. That is a related idea: a memento mori is a keepsake of death itself. Note the spelling: memento, not "momento", a very common slip.

Symbols you will see

• Skulls and skeletons, the most direct reminder.
• Hourglasses and clocks, showing time running out.
• Candles that are burned low or snuffed out.
• Wilting flowers and rotting fruit, showing how beauty fades.
• Soap bubbles, beautiful and gone in a moment.

Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painters made a whole style of still life around these objects, called vanitas, from the Latin for emptiness or vanity. Mourning rings, carved gravestones and pocket watches with skulls on them served the same purpose in daily life.

History of the idea

The thought behind memento mori is ancient. Greek and Roman philosophers, especially the Stoics, advised thinking about death each day so that you would not waste time on trivial worries and would face loss calmly. An often repeated story says that during a Roman victory parade someone stood behind the triumphant general and reminded him that he was only a mortal man. An early Christian writer mentions a reminder of this kind, but the exact words and details are uncertain, and the phrase memento mori itself is not clearly recorded in that setting.

Across the Middle Ages and the centuries after, the idea became central to Christian art and teaching about preparing the soul for death and judgment. It appears in church carvings, prayer books and the painted dance of death, in which skeletons lead people of every rank away. English writers borrowed the Latin phrase by the late 16th century.

Memento mori and carpe diem

The two big phrases are two sides of one coin. Memento mori says life is short; carpe diem says therefore make use of today. Some people treat them as a pair.

How people use the phrase today

• The old tree outside the hospital window felt like a memento mori to the patients.
• She keeps a small brass skull on her desk as a memento mori, to remind her not to sweat small stuff.
• The documentary's final scene, an empty chair, worked as a quiet memento mori.
• Memento mori has become a popular motto among people who study Stoic ideas.
• Walking through the old graveyard was a memento mori that made him call his parents.

Usage notes

As a noun, memento mori takes a: a memento mori. Many dictionaries give the plural as unchanged (several memento mori), though mementos mori is also used. It is not italicised in most modern writing, though you may italicise it as a foreign phrase. The tone is serious and reflective; it is not a gloomy wish or a threat. More Latin and other borrowed sayings sit under foreign phrases, and related themes on our pages for elegy and stoic.