„Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming but still…
Iris, blue each spring“
Source: Japanese Haiku
A collection of quotes on the topic of death, dead, living, likeness.
„Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming but still…
Iris, blue each spring“
Source: Japanese Haiku
„If Józef Cyrankiewicz finds out I'm here, I'm dead.“
— Witold Pilecki World War II concentration camp leader and resistor 1901 - 1948
In prison, 1948.
„I would have been dead now, but the camera is the only weapon I have.“
— NasserTone Nasser Ali Albahrani is a director, cinematographer, photographer, producer, & YouTuber, who was born on April 3, 1994,… 1994
I'm a Loser (September 8, 2018)
„When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.“
— George Burns American comedian, actor, and writer 1896 - 1996
„Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.“
— Frank Zappa American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer 1940 - 1993
'Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)
Roxy & Elsewhere (1974)
Variant: Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny
„my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.“
— Charles Bukowski American writer 1920 - 1994
„It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.“
— Jane Austen, book Sense and Sensibility
Source: Sense and Sensibility
„Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?“
— Terry Pratchett, book Going Postal
Source: Going Postal
„A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.“
— Oscar Wilde Irish writer and poet 1854 - 1900
The Portrait of Mr. W. H. http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/portrait/wh01.html (1889)
Total 3314 quotes dead, filter:
— Charles Bukowski American writer 1920 - 1994
"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)
Interviews
— Jane Goodall British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist 1934
Reported in Janelle Rohr, Animal rights: opposing viewpoints (1989), p. 100; Jane Goodall and Jennifer Lindsey, Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe (1999), p. 6. Occasionally misreported in truncated form, as "The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves", in, e.g., quote honored on XOEarth eco money http://xoearth.org/jane-goodall/
„That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.“
— H.P. Lovecraft, book The Nameless City
Variant: That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
Source: The Nameless City
„Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.“
— Anne Frank victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary 1929 - 1945
— Michael Jackson American singer, songwriter and dancer 1958 - 2009
Earth Song
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)
„A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.“
— Emily Dickinson, book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
„And Dr. Dre said … nothing, you idiots! Dr. Dre's dead, he's locked in my basement!“
— Eminem American rapper and actor 1972
"The Real Slim Shady"
2000s, The Marshall Mathers L.P. (2000)
— Dorothy Parker American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist 1893 - 1967
Source: "The Flaw in Paganism" in Death and Taxes (1931)
— Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994
to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video
— Douglas Adams, book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, book Isis Unveiled
Eliphas Levi
Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XIII
„Tolkien's dead. J. K. Rowling said no. Philip Pullman couldn't make it. Hi, I'm Terry Pratchett.“
— Terry Pratchett English author 1948 - 2015
t-shirt worn by Pratchett at conventions https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/stephen-mcginty-sir-terry-pratchett-a-class-act-1-3718745 https://books.google.ca/books?id=n78kYbvUd_8C&pg=PA230&lpg=PA230&dq=%22tolkien%27s+dead%22+pratchett+shirt&source=bl&ots=uosL5-E7O9&sig=rMN8J7liwEBmaE92G4EWLunv2wk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBmL6nr-DbAhUB6YMKHd9XALoQ6AEIoAEwGQ#v=onepage&q=%22tolkien's%20dead%22%20pratchett%20shirt&f=false
Misc
— John Chrysostom important Early Church Father 349 - 407
St. John Chrysostom, Homily 24 on the Epistle to the Romans [PG 60:626-27] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2017/10/contraception-early-church-teaching-william-klimon.html
— Jeffrey Epstein American financier, science and education philanthropist and sex offender 1953 - 2019
— Hamis Kiggundu Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author 1984
Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.104 (July 2018)
„Past is dead
Future is uncertain;
Present is all you have,
So eat, drink and live merry.“
— Albert Einstein German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity 1879 - 1955
„I think if you don't have some obsession in your life, you're dead.“
— Neil Young Canadian singer-songwriter 1945
— D.H. Lawrence English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter 1885 - 1930
Self-Pity (1929)
Source: The Complete Poems
— Thornton Wilder, book The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)
Context: Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
— Derek Prince British missionary 1915 - 2003
— John O'Donohue Irish writer, priest and philosopher 1956 - 2008
Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
„We can't stop living because other people are dead.“
— Richelle Mead, book Frostbite
Source: Frostbite
„In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met.“
— Arthur Rimbaud French Decadent and Symbolist poet 1854 - 1891
„Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.“
— Langston Hughes American writer and social activist 1902 - 1967
Source: The Collected Poems
„The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.“
— Thornton Wilder American playwright and novelist 1897 - 1975
— Rudolf Virchow German doctor, anthropologist, public health activist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician 1821 - 1902
1848 (quoted in Infections and Inequalities by Paul Farmer, page 1.
— Rich Piana American bodybuilder and internet personality 1970 - 2017
„Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.“
— François de La Rochefoucauld French author of maxims and memoirs 1613 - 1680
"Pensées Tirées des Premières Éditions," Réflexions: Ou, Sentences Et Maximes Morales de La Rochefoucauld (1822)
Later Additions to the Maxims
— Babur 1st Mughal Emperor 1483 - 1530
https://archive.org/stream/baburnama017152mbp/baburnama017152mbp_djvu.Txt
— Francis Xavier Navarrese Basque Roman Catholic saint and missionary 1506 - 1552
Neill, S. (2004). A history of Christianity in India: The beginning to AD 1707. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
— Anna Kingsford English physician, activist and feminist 1846 - 1888
Addresses and Essays on Vegetarianism (1912); quoted in Awe for the Tiger, Love for the Lamb by Rod Preece (Routledge, 2002), p. 344 https://books.google.it/books?id=Mf6TAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA344.
„My main objective is to be professional but to kill him.“
— Mike Tyson American boxer 1966
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/1961080.stm
On Lennox Lewis
„My lands are where my dead lie buried.“
— Crazy Horse Oglala Sioux chief 1840 - 1877
As quoted in National Geographic Vol. CX (July-December 1956), p. 487
„Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis. When I was dead broke, man, I couldn't picture this.“
— The Notorious B.I.G. American rapper 1972 - 1997
Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"
— Taras Shevchenko, Testamento
Taras Shevchenko Zapovit, 1845 (Shevchenko's "Testament"), Translated by John Weir, Toronto, 1961; Online at
„Gold is cold, diamonds are dead, a limousine is a car, don't pretend, feel what's real… “
— Charlize Theron film actress and producer, former fashion model 1975
„There is only one dream worth having…to live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead.“
— Arundhati Roy Indian novelist, essayist 1961
From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf.
Speeches
Source: The Cost of Living
„For all the accomplishments of molecular biology, we still can't tell a live cat from a dead cat.“
— Lynn Margulis American evolutionary biologist 1938 - 2011
„As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.“
— George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), Part I: England Your England http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/lionunicorn.html
"The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941)
Source: The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
Context: As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life.
„Nothing says you're sorry like a dead bunny.“
— Patricia Briggs, book River Marked
Source: River Marked
„No sentimentality, comrade… The only good human being is a dead one.“
— George Orwell, book Animal Farm
Variant: The only good human being is a dead one.
Source: Animal Farm
— Groucho Marx American comedian 1890 - 1977
Source: The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
„The poetry of earth is never dead.“
— John Keats English Romantic poet 1795 - 1821
" Sonnet. On the Grasshopper and the Cricket http://www.bartleby.com/126/28.html"
Poems (1817)
— T.S. Eliot, book Tradition and the Individual Talent
Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Source: Selected Essays
„The past is never dead. It's not even past.“
— William Faulkner, book Requiem for a Nun
Act 1, sc. 3; this has sometimes been paraphrased or misquoted as "The past isn't over. It isn't even past."
Source: Requiem for a Nun (1951)
„I know dead. I've been there, done that and got the freakin' T-shirt.“
— P. C. Cast, book Burned
Variant: Im not letting my best freind die. been there done that. i got that freakin tshirt
Source: Burned
„The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.“
— Robert Frost American poet 1874 - 1963
„I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead.“
— Katherine Mansfield New Zealand author 1888 - 1923
„Death is a problem of the living. Dead people have no problems.“
— Norbert Elias German sociologist 1897 - 1990
— Walter Benjamin, book Theses on the Philosophy of History
Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IX
„Honor is dead. But I'll see what I can do.“
— Brandon Sanderson, book Words of Radiance
Source: Words of Radiance
„Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds.“
— Ray Bradbury, book Fahrenheit 451
Source: Fahrenheit 451
„Only the dead are safe; only the dead have seen the end of war.“
— George Santayana 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism 1863 - 1952
Attributed to Plato by General Douglas MacArthur, earliest source found is work of George Santayana who doesn't attribute it to anyone. Plato and his dialogues by Bernard SUZANNE, "Frequently Asked Questions about Plato : Did Plato write "Only the dead have seen the end of war"?" http://plato-dialogues.org/faq/faq008.htm
Source: Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922), "Tipperary"
„The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.“
— William Gibson, book Neuromancer
Source: Neuromancer (1984)
„You’ve got about as much charm as a dead slug.“
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Source: The Hunger Games
„I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.“
— Sylvia Plath, book The Bell Jar
"Mad Girl's Love Song" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/madgirl.html (1953) from Collected Poems (1981)
Variant: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.
Source: The Bell Jar