The Curse of Immortality — Gulliver's Travels

At Luggnagg, Gulliver learns about the Struldbrugs: rare people born with a spot over the left eyebrow that marks them immortal. The mark changes colour and size with age; only about eleven hundred exist. He is delighted and launches into a long fantasy of compound interest, mastering every science, becoming the nation's oracle, mentoring youth, and hosting immortal brotherhood dinners while mortal friends wither like last year's tulips. His hosts smile and explain the reality. After thirty Struldbrugs grow melancholy; at eighty they are dead in law, their heirs take the estate, and they lose property, employment, and legal standing. At ninety they lose teeth, hair, taste, and memory; language drifts until they live like foreigners at home. They envy the young and mourn every funeral, remember little, beg slumskudask tokens, and are hated as omens when born. Gulliver meets five or six, the youngest two hundred years old, and finds them the most mortifying sight he has ever seen. His appetite for eternal life collapses; he would run from such a life into any death. The king jokes he should send a couple to England to cure the fear of dying, but export is forbidden. Gulliver agrees the kingdom's laws are necessary: otherwise immortal avarice would eventually swallow the state.