“And shall the Schoolmen die?
And shall the Schoolmen die?
Five hundred men of Lilliput
Will know the reason why.”
Mistress Masham's Repose (1946)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
T. H. White 25
author 1906–1964Related quotes
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss
Context: I will not say that the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I am about to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture to say that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspires these doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed in strengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps when it is all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work, and above all, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reason or against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die out, I die altogether, then I shall not have died out of myself — that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human destiny shall have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my heart, I will not abdicate from life — life will be wrested from me.
“All that is beautiful shall abide,
All that is base shall die.”
Balder the Beautiful (1877)
Context: Along the melting shores of earth
An emerald flame there ran,
Forest and field grew bright, and mirth
Gladdened the flocks of man. Then glory grew on earth and heaven,
Full glory of full day!
Then the bright rainbow's colours seven
On every iceberg lay!In Balder's hand Christ placed His own,
And it was golden weather,
And on that berg as on a throne
The Brethren stood together!And countless voices far and wide
Sang sweet beneath the sky —
"All that is beautiful shall abide,
All that is base shall die.".
“I shall die unavenged, but I shall die,"
she says. "Thus, thus, I gladly go below
to shadows.”
‘Moriemur inultae,
Sed moriamur’ ait. ‘sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras.’
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, Lines 659–660 (tr. Allen Mandelbaum)
“But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.”
"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)
Context: The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.
They prowl the aromatic hill,
And mate as fiercely as they kill,
To roam, to live, to drink their fill;
But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.
St. 2
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)
Context: "Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.
“And shall I die? and unrevenged?”
she said:
"Yes! let me die! thus—thus I plunge in night."
Book IV, lines 887–888
The Æneis (1817)
Izaac Walton, The Life of Mr Rich. Hooker. In Walton's Lives, George Saintsbury, ed., reprinted in Oxford World's Classics (1927).
About
“I shall be like that tree; I shall die from the top.”
Predicting that he would go senile, as quoted in The Highway of Letters and its Echos of Famous Footsteps (1893) by Thomas Archer, p. 380