“Even before I was me, I was God in God;
And I can be once again, as soon as I am dead to myself”
Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer
The Cherubinic Wanderer
Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 726
“Even before I was me, I was God in God;
And I can be once again, as soon as I am dead to myself”
Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer
The Cherubinic Wanderer
“I am dead to them, even though I once flowered.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Journals Of Sylvia Plath
Nahum Tate (1652–1715) Anglo-Irish poet and playwright
Dido and Aeneas (opera; music by Henry Purcell)
“That God of the clergymen, He is for me as dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that?”
Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)
In his letter to Theo, from Etten, c. 21 December 1881, Letter #164 http://webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/10/164.htm, as translated by Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, as published in The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1991) edited by Robert Harrison] <!-- also quoted in Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh (1995) Edited by Irving Stone --> <br class="br">1880s, 1881 <br class="br">Context: That God of the clergymen, He is for me as dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me as such — be it so; but I love, and how could I feel love if I did not live, and if others did not live, and then, if we live, there is something mysterious in that. Now call that God, or human nature or whatever you like, but there is something which I cannot define systematically, though it is very much alive and very real, and see, that is God, or as good as God. To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, but a living one, who with irresistible force urges us toward aimer encore; that is my opinion.
“I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead.”
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author
“I am dead. Only vengeance can restore me! Only victory can return my life to me!”
Terry Goodkind book Stone of Tears
Source: Stone of Tears
“I am dead: dead, but in the Elysian fields.”
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Remark to Lord Aberdare on being welcomed to the House of Lords (1876), cited by Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography (1993), p. 563.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Courtship of Miles Standish
Pt. III, The Lover's Errand.
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)