Quotes about the dead

A collection of quotes on the topic of death, dead, living, likeness.

Best quotes about the dead

„Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming but still…
Iris, blue each spring“

— Ome Shushiki

Source: Japanese Haiku

„Rather be dead then cool“

— Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

Variant: I'd rather be dead than be cool.

„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)

All quotes about the dead

Total 3314 quotes dead, filter:

„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

Love, World, Wedding

„For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.“

— Charles Bukowski American writer 1920 - 1994

"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)
Interviews

Love, Death, God, War

„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/

Hope

„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

Death, Lie

„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

People, Flowers, Gratitude, Deep

„Did you ever stop to notice
All the children dead from war?
Did you ever stop to notice
This crying earth, these weeping shores?“

— Michael Jackson American singer, songwriter and dancer 1958 - 2009

Earth Song
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)

War, Children, Cry

„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)

„He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.“

— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human

Third Notebook: Part Two
Source: No Longer Human

Suicide, Personality

„Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)“

— Dorothy Parker American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist 1893 - 1967

Source: "The Flaw in Paganism" in Death and Taxes (1931)

Love, Lie, Drink, Dance

„The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can't have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I'd rather not be in a cage. I'd rather be dead. And it's real simple. And I think it's not that uncommon.“

— Angelina Jolie American actress, film director, and screenwriter 1975

Love, Truth, Feeling, Thinking

„Truly, I wish I were dead.
She was weeping when she left me,
and said many things to me, and said this:
"How much we have suffered, Sappho.
Truly, I don't want to leave you."“

— Sappho ancient Greek lyric poet -630 - -570 BC

Stanley Lombardo translations, Frag. 11

Suffering

„It’s sad to think what the state of rock and roll will be twenty years from now. It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode. It’s already so rehashed and so plagariazed that it’s barely alive now. It’s disgusting. I mean, kids don’t even really care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life. And at that point I really can’t see music being of any importance to a teenager, really.“

— 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

Music, Thinking, World, Sadness

„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

Music, Soul, Night

„Gordon Way's astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing compared to his astonishment at what happened next.“

— Douglas Adams, book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Way

„There are two kinds of people in the world—only two kinds. Not black or white, rich or poor, but those either dead in sin or dead to sin.“

— Leonard Ravenhill British writer 1907 - 1994

People, World

„The kabalists say that a man is not dead when his body is entombed. Death is never sudden; for, according to Hermes, nothing goes in nature by violent transitions. Everything is gradual, and as it required a long and gradual development to produce the living human being, so time is required to completely withdraw vitality from the carcass. "Death can no more be an absolute end, than birth a real beginning. Birth proves the preexistence of the being, as death proves immortality," says the same French kabalist“

— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, book Isis Unveiled

Eliphas Levi
Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XIII

Death, Birth, Nature, Time

„Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth and justice! I did not come on this voyage for gain, honor or wealth, that is certain; for then the hope of all such things was dead. I came to Your Highnesses with honest purpose and sincere zeal; and I do not lie. I humbly beseech You Highnesses that, if it please God to remove me hence, you will help me to go to Rome and on other pilgrimages.“

— Cristoforo Colombo Explorer, navigator, and colonizer 1451 - 1506

Letter to the Sovereigns (1503)

God, Truth, Lie, Justice

„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

„Night creatures call.
The dead start to walk in their masquerade.
There's no escapin' the jaws of the alien this time (they're open wide).
This is the end of your life.“

— Michael Jackson American singer, songwriter and dancer 1958 - 2009

Thriller
Thriller (1982)

Life, Time, Night

„Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. Do you see that from drunkenness comes fornication, from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you contemn the gift of God, and fight with His laws? What is a curse, do you seek as though it were a blessing? Do you make the anteroom of birth the anteroom of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is given to you for the procreation of offspring to perpetrate killing? That she may always be beautiful and lovable to her lovers, and that she may rake in more money, she does not refuse to do this, heaping fire on your head; and even if the crime is hers, you are the cause. Hence also arise idolatries. To look pretty many of these women use incantations, libations, philtres, potions, and innumerable other things. Yet after such turpitude, after murder, after idolatry, the matter still seems indifferent to many men–even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks, invocations of demons, incantations of the dead, daily wars, ceaseless battles, and unremitting contentions.“

— 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

Money, God, Law, Indifference

„I'm also not dead.“

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

„A mistake to a successful mind is not a dead end, it gives them the determination to bounce back harder, in fact their success can be measured by how high they bounce back when they fail.“

— 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)

Success

„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

Drink, Past, Future

„I think if you don't have some obsession in your life, you're dead.“

— Neil Young Canadian singer-songwriter 1945

Life, Thinking

„Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner…?“

— Francesca Woodman American photographer 1958 - 1981

Girl, Animals

„Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.“

— Ernest Hemingway American author and journalist 1899 - 1961

Life, Way

„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

Life, Thinking, Light

„I never saw a wild thing
Sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.“

— D.H. Lawrence English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter 1885 - 1930

Self-Pity (1929)
Source: The Complete Poems

Bird

„There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.“

— 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.

Love

„Never ask an elf for help; they might decide your better off dead, eh?“

— Christopher Paolini, book Eldest

Source: Eldest

Help

„A faith that does not result in activity of any kind is a dead faith; it is empty, worthless, insincere.“

— Derek Prince British missionary 1915 - 2003

Faith

„We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home.“

— John O'Donohue Irish writer, priest and philosopher 1956 - 2008

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Pain, Home, Loneliness

„Pain was good. If I hurt, it meant I wasn't dead.“

— Kristin Cast, book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Pain, Hurt

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

— Richelle Mead, book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

People

„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

Life, Death, Music

„I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.“

— Paul McCartney English singer-songwriter and composer 1942

Death

„The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.“

— Thornton Wilder American playwright and novelist 1897 - 1975

Gratitude

„Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged.“

— 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.

Life, Lie

„Well, now you can see for yourself that she was delicate", said Davey triumphantly. "She's dead. It killed her. Doesn't that show you? I do wish I could make you Radletts understand that there is no such thing as imaginary illness. Nobody who is quite well could possibly be bothered to do all the things that I, for instance, am obliged to, in order to keep my wretched frame on its feet.“

— Nancy Mitford, book Love in a Cold Climate

Source: Love in a Cold Climate

Understanding

„The only good enemy of the Reich is a dead one. In particular I have to add, when I received an order, I always carried out this order with the executioner, and I am proud of that to this day…. If I had not done this, they would not have gone to the butcher.“

— Adolf Eichmann German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer 1906 - 1962

Argentina Audiotapes (1957)

„I lived in Hollywood and I had all that, the Rolls Royce and the Ferrari and the pad in Beverly Hills. I had the surf board and the Beach Boys and the bishkis and the Neil Diamond and the ramskam and the Jimmy shriffen [ph. ] and the Elvis Presley's best of bestlies and all them guys. The Dean and Martins and the Nancy Sinatras and the cops and sovereigns, "Will you do it to me? I hear you do it good honey" and all that kind of "Will you come up to my house later?" So I went through all that and I seen that was a bigger prison than the one I just got out of and I really didn't care to go back in prison. See, prison doesn't begin and end at the gate. Prison is in the mind. It's locked in one world that's dead and dying, or it's open to a world that's free and alive.“

— Charles Manson American criminal and musician 1934 - 2017

NBC interview (1987)

World, Guy, Boy, Housing

„They say there is a judgement day. I don't think judgement day comes when we are dead. The judgement day is today, the judgement day is now. And it is going to allow you to live a life of hell now; Or to choose your own kingdom, To live Heaven on earth now. Live dangerously until you die.“

— Rich Piana American bodybuilder and internet personality 1970 - 2017

Life, Hell, Thinking

„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

„All these trod the road to Hell, removing from this house of clay to the pit of perdition. The enemy's country was full, as Hell is full, of wounded who had died on the road. The lowest pit was gorged with miscreants who had surrendered their souls to the lord of Hell. In whatever direction one from the army of Islam hastened, he found everywhere a self-willed one dead; whatever march the illustrious camp made in the wake of the fugitives, it found no foot-space without its prostrate foe. All the Hindus slain, abject and mean, By matchlock-stones, like the Elephants' lords, Many hills of their bodies were seen, And from each hill a fount of running blood.“

— Babur 1st Mughal Emperor 1483 - 1530

https://archive.org/stream/baburnama017152mbp/baburnama017152mbp_djvu.Txt

Soul, Hell, Housing, Country

„Almost from the time of Xavier's actual presence on the Coast, the work of legend-building began, and it came to be firmly believed that he possessed miraculous powers, which extended even to the raising of the dead. Xavier never made such extravagant claims for himself.“

— 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.

Time

„No man who aims at making his life an harmonious whole, pure, complete, and harmless to others, can endure to gratify an appetite at the cost of the daily suffering and bloodshed of his inferiors in degree, and of the moral degradation of his own kind. I know not which strikes me most forcibly in the ethics of this question the injustice, the cruelty, or the nastiness of flesh-eating. The injustice is to the butchers, the cruelty is to the animals, the nastiness concerns the consumer. With regard to this last in particular, I greatly wonder what persons of refinement—aye, even of decency—do not feel insulted on being offered, as a matter of course, portions of corpses as food! Such comestibles might possibly be tolerated during sieges, or times of other privation of proper viands in exceptional circumstances, but in the midst of a civilised community able to command a profusion of sound and delicious foods, it ought to be deemed an affront to set dead flesh before a guest.“

— 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.

Life, Food, Feeling, Communication

„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

„Punk Rock (while still sacred to some) is, to me, dead and gone. We just wanted to pay tribute to something that helped us to feel as though we had crawled out of the dung heap of conformity.“

— Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

Incesticide liner notes (1992)

Feeling, Help

„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

Lie

„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"

„When I am dead, bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper's plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears
Into the deep blue sea
The blood of foes… then will I leave
These hills and fertile fields --
I'll leave them all and fly away
To the abode of God,
And then I'll pray…. But until that day
I know nothing of God.

Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.“

— Taras Shevchenko, Testamento

Taras Shevchenko Zapovit, 1845 (Shevchenko's "Testament"), Translated by John Weir, Toronto, 1961; Online at

God, Family, Freedom, Water

„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

Cars, Feeling

„Even those who raised the dead could not save themselves from death either. Death is guaranteed to all, including those who perform miracles.“

— Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

Death

„If I wanted to kill somebody, I'd take this book and beat you to death with it, and I wouldn't feel a thing.“

— Charles Manson American criminal and musician 1934 - 2017

NBC interview (1987)

Death, Books, Feeling

„We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing.“

— George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

Life, Future, Parting

„And once again I believe that nothing that's important really becomes lost. We just delude ourselves, thinking that we own the things, the moments and the others. Still with me are all the dead persons who I loved, all the friends who turned away, all the happy days that faded. I lost nothing but the illusion that everything could be mine forever.“

— Miguel Sousa Tavares Portuguese writer 1952

Love, Thinking, Personality, Happiness

„Just when I thought my day couldnt get any worse, I saw the dead guy next to my locker.“

— P. C. Cast American writer 1960

Guy

„Sometimes dead is better“

— Stephen King, Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

„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

Dreams

„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

Cats

„Suddenly Saracen Rue looked old and tired, and Skulduggery Pleasant came into focus as what he really was – a genius, a killer, a tortured soul, and the only true dead man among them.“

— Derek Landy Irish children's writer 1974

Source: Last Stand of Dead Men

Soul

„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.

Flying

„Nothing says you're sorry like a dead bunny.“

— Patricia Briggs, book River Marked

Source: River Marked

„Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street… Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.“

— Wassily Kandinsky Russian painter 1866 - 1944

Secret, Soul, Star, Flowers

„I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.“

— John Fowles, book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Love, Heart

„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

„I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.“

— Groucho Marx American comedian 1890 - 1977

Source: The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

Happiness, Inspirational, Happy

„It is easy enough to be pleasant,
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is one who will smile,
When everything goes dead wrong.“

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox American author and poet 1850 - 1919

Life, Smile, For Men

„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)

„Call no man happy until he is dead.“

— Solón Athenian legislator -638 - -558 BC

Happiness

„Some one said: "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.“

— 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)

Past, Deep

„He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable“

— George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

World, Past, Future, Sea

„Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.“

— Jean-Luc Godard French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic 1930

People

„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

People

„Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real.“

— Al Gore 45th Vice President of the United States 1948

Truth

„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

„A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.“

— Vladimir Nabokov, book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Star

„It's amazing that a man who is dead can talk to people through these pages. As long as this books survives, his ideas live.“

— Christopher Paolini, book Eragon

Source: Eragon

People, Books, Idea

„Death is a problem of the living. Dead people have no problems.“

— Norbert Elias German sociologist 1897 - 1990

Death, People, Problem

„Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.“

— Stephen King American author 1947

Books, Personality

„A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.“

— Walter Benjamin, book Theses on the Philosophy of History

Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IX

Angels, History, Past, Future

„But you don't belong here! You're dead!" I sobbed against his chest.
"Zo, babe, this is the Otherworld. It's not me who doesn't belong here-it's you.“

— P. C. Cast, book Tempted

Source: Tempted

„If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.“

— Malcolm Muggeridge English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist 1903 - 1990

God, Pleasure

„Of course I want to kill you," said Skulduggery. "I want to kill most people. But then where would I be? In a field of dead people with no one to talk to.“

— Derek Landy Irish children's writer 1974

Source: Kingdom of the Wicked

People

„Honor is dead. But I'll see what I can do.“

— Brandon Sanderson, book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

„Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.“

— Stephen King American author 1947

Life, Books, Perfection

„Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds.“

— Ray Bradbury, book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

„The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another's heart.“

— Marcus Tullius Cicero Roman philosopher and statesman -106 - -43 BC

Love, Life, People, Memory

„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"

War, Wise

„The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.“

— William Gibson, book Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer (1984)

Color

„unbeingdead isn't beingalive“

— E.E. Cummings American poet 1894 - 1962

31
73 poems (1963)

„You’ve got about as much charm as a dead slug.“

— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

„Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?
Who's sorry for a gnat… or a girl?“

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning English poet, author 1806 - 1861

Source: A Little Book Of Love Poems

Life, Girl

„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

World

„Well, she's not responding to my advances," he observed more brightly than he felt, "so she must be dead."
"Or she's a woman of good taste and sense.“

— Cassandra Clare, book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Sense

„Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible.“

— George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984