Nothing will die...

Perhaps reincarnation

Memories.

He's a ledgend.

He well never die, he will be talked about for ages to come, he is such a rare treasure... in scince and in hearts, he's truely moved so many people.

no it is about afterlife probably.Souls has no shape anyway. his being an elephant man is no important at all.

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I also vote Reincarnation (but in Lynch's own weird way)

I saw that as his mother somehow comforting him that the next life will be better.

I think its open to interpetation, I would read from the cathedral miniature that it refers to soul and he sees his mother again, as he wanted to.

The quote is actually from Alfred Tennyson´s poem "Nothing will die":

When will the stream be aweary of flowing
Under my eye?
When will the wind be aweary of blowing
Over the sky?
When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
And nature die?
Never, oh! never, nothing will die;
The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.

Nothing will die;
All things will change
Thro’ eternity.
‘Tis the world’s winter;
Autumn and summer
Are gone long ago;
Earth is dry to the centre,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro’ and thro’,
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill’d with life anew.

The world was never made;
It will change, but it will not fade.
So let the wind range;
For even and morn
Ever will be
Thro’ eternity.
Nothing was born;
Nothing will die;
All things will change.

In context, it's a reference to the Christian beliefs of John (Joseph), his deceased mother and his doctor Frederick.

The promise of eternal life.