Quotes about the dead

„Things are not going well for me. My chef at the Charité strongly disapproves of women students and took this means of showing it. About a hundred men (no women except myself) went round the wards today, and when we were all assembled before him to have our names written down, he called and named all the students except me, and then closed the book. I stood forward upon this, and said quietly, "Et moi aussi, monsieur." [And me, Sir. ] He turned on me sharply, and cried, "Vous, vous n'êtes ni homme ni femme; je ne veux pas inscrire vôtre nom."“

—  Anna Kingsford English physician, activist and feminist 1846 - 1888

[You, you are neither man nor woman; I don't want to write your name.] I stood silent in the midst of a dead silence.
Written to her husband in 1874; quoted in The Scalpel and the Butterfly by Deborah Rudacille (University of California Press, 2000), p. 35 https://books.google.it/books?id=BabamiCYEdUC&pg=PA35.

„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

„We have given of our best to build up the Empire. We recall the names of Wellington, of Roberts, of White of Ladysmith, and we think of Coghill of Isandula, around whose body when it was found dead the flag of the British race, the old Union Jack, was found. All these were men of loyalist Ireland and mainly of Ulster. And now, forsooth, this great England, the great country that boasts of liberty, of adherence to principle, and of never deserting its friends, is to sacrifice the loyalists to the necessity of maintaining this heaven-sent Government in power.“

—  Edward Carson, Baron Carson Irish politician, barrister and judge 1854 - 1935

Speech in Eastbourne (25 November 1911), quoted in The Times (27 November 1911), p. 7

„Erik is not truly dead. He lives on within the souls of those who choose to listen to the music of the night.“

—  Gaston Leroux, book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

„But here's first what I see for Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). You're going to have people raised from the dead watching this network. You're going to have people raised from the dead watching TBN. Programs -- just plain programs -- programs that haven't done much when it comes to supernatural manifestations -- teaching programs!“

—  Benny Hinn American-Canadian evangelist 1952

[The Underground Christian Network, "Benny Hinn and Beyond: Word Faith movements hidden agenda: The Joker, The Guru and the Jack of Spades" http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=420067844, CD Edition 1 of 2, SermonAudio.com, 2006-04-21] Source attributes audio clip of this statement to an October 19, 1999 broadcast of "Praise The Lord", Trinity Broadcasting Network.

„One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is.“

—  P.G. Wodehouse, book Very Good, Jeeves

Very Good, Jeeves (1930)

„We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the dead, the wedding more than love and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in the container culture, which despises the content.“

—  Eduardo Galeano Uruguayan writer 1940 - 2015

„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"

„Call no man happy until he is dead.“

—  Solón Athenian legislator -638 - -558 BC

„The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.“

—  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/

„One of my chief "crimes" then, was to have wanted Iran to move from the oil age into the atomic age before it was too late. Must I blush for that? The peaceful use of nuclear energy did not create problems for radiation and contamination for us since we have vast stretches of desert…
I was accused of having adopted the plans for nuclear power stations among others for reasons of "personal ambition". Was it not obvious that I would be dead before most of these plans had been carried out? Why speak of personal ambition then? It was rather a question of forseeing Iran's needs. My "personal" ambitions are known to all men of good faith - to preserve national unity, to make the Iranian people as happy as possible and to prepare a more peaceful future.“

—  Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Shah of Iran 1919 - 1980

Page 68
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On oil and nuclear energy

„I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.
There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison.Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe.“

—  Richard Feynman American theoretical physicist 1918 - 1988

The Value of Science (1955)

„Unless you live in Christ, you are dead to God.“

—  Rowland Hill (preacher) British preacher 1744 - 1833

P. 90.

„I'm also not dead.“

—  Jeffrey Epstein American financier, science and education philanthropist and sex offender 1953 - 2019

„With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand… hopeless from the start.“

—  Sylvia Plath American poet, novelist and short story writer 1932 - 1963

1950-07-08

„To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.“

—  Sylvia Plath, book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 20

„Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.“

—  Marcus Aurelius, book Meditations

Source: Meditations

„A planned life is a dead life.“

—  Lauren Bacall American actress, model 1924 - 2014

Private Screenings interview (2005)

„We can't stop living because other people are dead.“

—  Richelle Mead, book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite