“The dead are specters of the living, but the living are specters of the dead.”
Light (1919), Ch. XIV - The Ruins
Context: I am not in pain. I am extraordinarily calm; I am drunk with tranquillity. Are they dead, all — those? I do not know. The dead are specters of the living, but the living are specters of the dead. Something warm is licking my hand. The black mass which overhangs me is trembling. It is a foundered horse, whose great body is emptying itself, whose blood is flowing like poor touches of a tongue on to my hand.
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Henri Barbusse 197
French novelist 1873–1935Related quotes
“If the living are haunted by the dead. Then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.”
Source: Damned (2011)
“The living will envy the dead.”
The attribution of this widely quoted remark about nuclear war to Khrushchev is disputed in Respectfully Quoted : A Dictionary of Quotations (1989) http://www.bartleby.com/73/1257.html.
In Russia this quote is usually attributed to the translation of Treasure Island by Nikolay Chukovsky: "А те из вас, кто останется в живых, позавидуют мертвым!" ("Those of you who will be still alive will envy the dead", originally: "Them that die'll be the lucky ones"). http://www.chitaem-vmeste.ru/pages/material.php?article=89&
Disputed
No instance of this statement, allegedly in reference to nuclear war, has been found in Khrushchev's writings or documented remarks, as indicated in Respectfully Quoted : A Dictionary of Quotations (1989) http://www.bartleby.com/73/1257.html. Herman Kahn used "the survivors [will] envy the dead" in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War.
“The live dead-man is dead as a producer and alive insofar as he consumes”
139
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
