“Life would be a great deal easier if dead things had the decency to remain dead.”

— Doug MacLeod

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Life would be a great deal easier if dead things had the decency to remain dead." by Doug MacLeod?

Doug MacLeod 1

Australian writer 1959

Related quotes

“I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

On Jan Moir's column on the death of Stephen Gately.
Quoted in The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/16/jan-moir-column-on-stephe_n_323964.html
2000s

“The great thing about the dead, they make space.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Rabbit is Rich (1981)

“What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) British writer

Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)

“God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 125
The Gay Science (1882)
Context: God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

“Suddenly I am furious, that with my life on the line, they don’t even have the decency to pay attention to me. That I’m being upstaged by a dead pig.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“There always remains a certain amount of arbitrary spontaneity in its action, without which it would be dead.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)
Context: But no mental action seems necessary or invariable in its character. In whatever manner the mind has reacted under a given sensation, in that manner it is the more likely to react again; were this, however, an absolute necessity, habits would become wooden and ineradicable, and no room being left for the formulation of new habits, intellectual life would come to a speedy close. Thus, the uncertainty of the mental law is no mere defect of it, but is on the contrary of its essence. The truth is, the mind is not subject to "law," in the same rigid sense that matter is. It only experiences gentle forces which merely render it more likely to act a given way than it otherwise would be. There always remains a certain amount of arbitrary spontaneity in its action, without which it would be dead.