Quotes about the dead (3313 quotes, page 29)

“I don't think anybody should write his autobiography until after he's dead.”

Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) American film producer (1879-1974).

Quoted in Arthur Marx, Goldwyn: The Man Behind the Myth (1976), prologue

Thinking , Funny

“Chemistry is the science of matter and the changes it can undergo. The world of chemistry therefore embraces everything material around us—the stones we stand on, the food we eat, the flesh we are made of, and the silicon we build into computers. There is nothing material beyond the reach of chemistry, be it living or dead, vegetable or mineral, on Earth or in a distant star.”

Peter Atkins (1940) British chemist

Peter Atkins and Loretta Jones, Chemical Principles: The Quest for Insight, 4th ed. (2008)

World , Food , Star , Distant

“You don't have any civil liberties if you're dead.”

Pat Roberts (1936) American politician

[CNN, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0603/26/le.01.html, 2006-03-26, CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, 2006-08-22]

“Make an eternal spring;
Give life to this dark world which lieth dead.
Spread forth thy golden hair
In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore
With diadem of pearl thy temples fair.”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

"Phoebus Arise".
Poems (1616)

Life , World , Spring

“I have pledged loyalty to the Constitution of India…it is the constitution of a new state, enacted by independent citizens for the first time in the history of the country. Ours is a young and new state, though it represents an ancient community that has sought to attain eternal, constant values over the centuries with the help and cooperation of other communities and its own unique style… Our past is neither static nor dead. Rather, it is a living and dynamic entity. It has its bearings upon our present and helps us in constructing our future…I perceive it clearly that education should play an important role in the renewing our past. I firmly adhere to the truth that education is the real means for realizing national objectives. The essential features of a nation are determined by its educational plans”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

In his a first address on 13 May 1967 as as President of India delivered in the central hall of the Parliament, in: p. 337.
Quest for Truth (1999)

Truth , Education , History , Communication

“"Why do they call them vaulters?" "Vaulters?" "Voltigeur, Sharpe. French for vaulter." "God knows, sir." "Because the jump like fleas, sir, when you shoot at them. But don't worry yourself about that one, sir. He's a good voltigeur, that one. He's dead."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Colonel Claud Runciman, Captain Richard Sharpe, and Sergeant Patrick Harper, p. 331
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Battle (1995)

God

“Here you stand, after conquering mighty nations and subduing the world. I therefore think it foolish for me to goad you with words, as though you were men who had not been proved in action. Let a new leader or an untried army resort to that. It is not right for me to say anything common, nor ought you to listen. For what is war but your usual custom? Or what is sweeter for a brave man than to seek revenge with his own hand? It is a right of nature to glut the soul with vengeance. Let us then attack the foe eagerly; for they are ever the bolder who make the attack. Despise this union of discordant races! To defend oneself by alliance is proof of cowardice. See, even before our attack they are smitten with terror. They seek the heights, they seize the hills and, repenting too late, clamor for protection against battle in the open fields. You know how slight a matter the Roman attack is. While they are still gathering in order and forming in one line with locked shields, they are checked, I will not say by the first wound, but even by the dust of battle. Then on to the fray with stout hearts, as is your wont. Despise their battle line. Attack the Alani, smite the Visigoths! Seek swift victory in that spot where the battle rages. For when the sinews are cut the limbs soon relax, nor can a body stand when you have taken away the bones. Let your courage rise and your own fury burst forth! Now show your cunning, Huns, now your deeds of arms! Let the wounded exact in return the death of his foe; let the unwounded revel in slaughter of the enemy. No spear shall harm those who are sure to live; and those who are sure to die Fate overtakes even in peace. And finally, why should Fortune have made the Huns victorious over so many nations, unless it were to prepare them for the joy of this conflict. Who was it revealed to our sires the path through the Maeotian swamp, for so many ages a closed secret? Who, moreover, made armed men yield to you, when you were as yet unarmed? Even a mass of federated nations could not endure the sight of the Huns. I am not deceived in the issue;--here is the field so many victories have promised us. I shall hurl the first spear at the foe. If any can stand at rest while Attila fights, he is a dead man.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

As quoted by Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths http://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html#attila, translated by Charles C. Mierow

Death , Men , Fate , War

“I don't feel I'm old. I just feel I'm me. And I've always been a happy person. I love the human race. I love my work. I love the world—I've been around it four times, you know. And I'm a believing person. I believe in God, even though I can't see him. You can't see the air in this room, right? But take it away and you're dead. And I believe there's something for us after we die. The world isn't wasteful. It keeps going on and I think we do too.”

Lillian Gish (1893–1993) American actress

As quoted in Lillian Gish : Her Legend, Her Life (2002) by Charles Affron, p. 353

Love , God , World , Feeling

“He hadn’t been religious. He’d believed that death was it. When you died you were dead, like a squished bug or drowned rat, and your immortality was in the minds of those you left behind.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 11 (p. 264)

Death

“Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" Felix Randal http://www.bartleby.com/122/29.html", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Time

“It is my opinion, that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time I assert the authority of this kingdom over the colonies to be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of Government and legislation whatsoever. The colonists are the subjects of this kingdom, equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen… The Americans are the sons, not the bastards, of England. Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power… When, therefore, in this House we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own. But in an American tax, what do we do? We, your Majesty's Commons for Great Britain, give and grant to your Majesty,— what? Our own property?— No! We give and grant to your Majesty, the property of your Majesty's Commons of America… The distinction between legislation and taxation is essentially necessary to liberty… There is an idea in some, that the colonies are virtually represented in this House… Is he represented by any knight of the shire, in any county in this kingdom?… Or will you tell him that he is represented by any representative of a borough?— a borough which perhaps its own representatives never saw.— This is what is called the rotten part of the constitution. It cannot continue a century. If it does not drop, it must be amputated… I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to let themselves be made slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest… The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know when were they made slaves?”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons on the Stamp Act (14 January 1766), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. 71-6.

People , Feeling , Idea , Nature

“[Annabelle] "…health care is an expanding field, as the world fills up with people that would have been dead a hundred years ago. Everybody winds up needing care, pretty much."”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

People , Health , World

“Next we have Obama's murderous use of America's military young for his and his party’s partisan political purposes. He kept U. S. soldiers in Iraq, a war which should never have been started, long after he had announced the war was un-winnable but just long enough to pile up heaps of dead and maimed American youngsters in order to make their withdrawal timely and useful for electoral purposes. Now we see Obama and his team keeping U. S. troops in Afghanistan long after he decided to surrender to the Islamists in that that war, and thereby knowingly enhance the strength, lethality, self-confidence, and ambitions of America’s most dangerous enemies by returning to them their key safe haven. Our troops are the cream of America's young and they ought not to be used by any president as if he was their owner. Obama, however, seems to regard them, as he does the unborn, as chattel to be disposed of as he and his advisers see fit to advance Democratic Party political prospects. Finally, we have Obama and his advisers seeking to financially enslave this generation of young Americans, and each generation that follows it, in order to pay for his health care program. Obama and his lieutenants are starting slow in this area, but the evidence of coming coercion, beyond the mandatory fine young people pay if they prove not to be servile, can be seen in West Virginia, where university students reportedly will not be allowed to matriculate unless they enroll in Obama Care This amounts to a 4-year term of indentured service for the privilege of paying extortionate tuition for a mediocre education offered by anti-American ideologues of Obama’s stripe. And make no mistake, these young people are not being threatened and ultimately coerced to forfeit their salary, savings, and future for the elderly and sick. They are being used to fund health care for the core groups, dare I say 'plantations', of the Democratic Party.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention.
2010s

War , People , Health , Education

“This was the past and it was the dead past; there were only corpses in it—and perhaps not even corpses, but the shadows of those corpses. For the dead trees and the fence posts and the bridges and the buildings on the hill all would classify as shadows. There was no life here; the life was up ahead. Life must occupy but a single point in time, and as time moved forward, life moved with it. And so was gone, thought Blaine, any dream that Man might have ever held of visiting the past and living in the action and the thought and the viewpoint of men who’d long been dust. For the living past did not exist, nor did the human past except in the records of the past. The present was the only valid point for life—life kept moving on, keeping pace with the present, and once it had passed, all traces of it or its existences were carefully erased.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 11 (p. 87)

Life , Men , Dreams , Tree

“We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.”

Davy Crockett (1786–1836) American politician

Speech in the US House of Representatives on April 2, 1828, as quoted in The Life of Colonel David Crockett (1884) by Edward Sylvester Ellis and in the January 1867 issue of Harper's magazine ("Davy Crockett's Electioneering Tours"), p. 606-611. Known as the "Not Yours to Give" speech. Though it may have expressed his attitudes on the issue, there has been dispute as to the authenticity of this speech as there is no known record of it prior to this 1884 work.

Parting

“Creating planets didn't seem to be much of a problem for God. Neither was raising the dead. Nothing is too difficult for God to handle, but we won't see much proof of this until we actually ask him to handle it.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God , Problem

“There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 54

Thinking

“There is no doubt that Goya thought that one of the drugs chiefly responsible for the sleep of reason was the Church, and he had the lowest possible opinion of ecclesiastical institutions. However, this did not prevent him from painting religious pictures, completely sincerely because, like all Latin people, however little he believed in Christianity, he felt himself to be within the structure of the Catholic Church. One of his finest works was the decoration of a church near Madrid called S. Antonio de la Florida. He used the kind of device that would have appealed to Tiepolo. He painted a balcony round the drum of a cupola, and behind it he put a crowd of loiterers who are supposed to be watching the saint raise a man from the dead. Very few of them are interested in this unusual event. They are interested in each other or themselves, and show very well the curious tension between the individual and the collective, which is the essence of a crowd.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 3: Goya

People , Sleep , Painting , Sincerity

“That was the year the British decided to get out and sell everything. So I immediately held an election. I knew the people will be dead scared. And I won my bet big-time.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

On winning 88% of the votes in 1968 (actual share was 84.43%), The Straits Times, March 7, 2007
2000s

People , Time

“This is very pretty,” said Elizalde…
“It’s morbid,” snapped Sullivan. “Burying a bunch of dead bodies, and putting a fancy marker over each one so the survivors will know where to go and cry. What if the markers got rearranged? You’d be weeping over some stranger. Not some stranger, even, some cast-off dead body of a stranger, like a pile of fingernail clippings or old shoes, or the dust from inside an electric razor. What’s the difference between coming out here to think about dead Uncle Irving, and thinking about him in your own living room? Okay, here you can sit on the grass and be only six feet above his inert old body. Would it be better if you could dig a hole, and sit only one foot above it?” He was shaking. “Everybody should be cremated, and the ashes should be tossed in the sea with no fanfare at all.”
“It’s a sign of respect,” said Elizalde angrily. “And it’s a real, tangible link. Think of the Shroud of Turin! Where would we be if they had cremated Jesus?”

Tim Powers book Expiration Date

“I don’t know—we’d have the Ashtray of Turin.”
Source: Expiration Date (1995), Chapter 40 (p. 308; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Shoe , Thinking , Grass , Cry

“Not all lawyers are annoying. Some are dead.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, The Emperor and the Maula (2007), p. 476

“My healthiest transformation was going vegan. … I don’t think words can describe seeing an animal tortured like [in factory farms]. It’s unethical, and it’s something I want to fight against. You are what you eat, and I’d rather be a fruit than a dead, rotting carcass.”

Jenna Talackova (1988) Canadian model

Interview with PETA; as quoted in "Jenna Talackova’s health transformation" https://www.dailyxtra.com/jenna-talackovas-health-transformation-57550, Daily Xtra (24 January 2014).

Thinking , Animals , Fight

“In 1680 the Pueblo Indians, led by a prophet named Popé who had been living in Taos, expelled the Spaniards... The god of the Spaniards was declared dead, and the religious ways came out into the open again. …But when Popé attempted to become the unchallenged leader of all the Pueblo Indians, the movement collapsed. …The Pueblo confederation soon broke apart and the people warred among themselves. In 1692 the Spaniards marched back to victory.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

God , War , People , Way

“I am speaking in dead earnest, before God. God's own truth. It has the violence of robbery, the blood and cruelty of piracy. It has the offensive and brutal lusts of polygamy, all combined and concentrated in itself, with aggravations that neither one of these crimes ever knew or dreamed of.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA192 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 193
1860s, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (April 1860)

God , Truth , Dreams

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
…
One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
…
First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.
…
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
…
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
…
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
…
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
…
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
…
Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
…
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
…
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.
…
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
…
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.
…
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
…
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
…
From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.
…
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.
…
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
…
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

Love , Life , War , Lie

“[about his daughters and nieces having developed a natural curiosity about boys]
When I get in the shower, there is nobody else in the bathroom. Now, when I get out of the shower, there's five little girls just loitering. I finally confronted them. I said "Why are all five of you in the bathroom?" And my youngest one, who's really funny, she said "We're trying to see a hoo-hoo!" I said "Well, I'm gonna tell the five of you all you need to know about hoo-hoos. Hoo-hoos are extremely poisonous." And without missing a beat, she said "They are not, or the dog would be dead!"”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

I hate a smart child.
Have Your Loved Ones Spayed and Neutered (2004)

Hate , Dogs , Girl , Boy

“I’d rather be dead than so suspicious I can’t trust anybody.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 26 (p. 525)

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 15: The Slimy Mallows (p. 122-123)

Death , Truth , Hope , Way

“Next morning the sun revealed a horrid spectacle on the vast plain south of PAnipat. On the actual field of the combat thirty-one distinct heaps of the slain were counted, the number of bodies in each ranging from 500 upwards to 1000 and in four up to 1500 a rough total of 28,000. In addition to these, the ditch round the Maratha camp was full of dead bodies, partly the victims of disease and famine during the long siege and partly wounded men who had crawled out of the fighting to die there. West and south of PAnipat city, the jungle and the road in the line of MarAtha retreat were littered with the remains of those who had fallen unresisting in the relentless DurrAni pursuit or from hunger and exhaustion. Their number - probably three-fourths non-combatants and one-fourth soldiers - could not have been far short of the vast total of those slain in the battlefield. 'The hundreds who lay down wounded, perished from the severity of the cold.'….
'After the havoc of combat followed massacre in cold blood. Several hundreds of MarAthas had hidden themselves in the hostile city of PAnipat through folly or helplessness; and these were hunted out next day and put to the sword. According to one plausible account, the sons of Abdus Samad Khan and Mian Qutb received the DurrAni king's permission to avenge their father's death by an indiscriminate massacre of the MarAthas for one day, and in this way nearly nine thousand men perished; these were evidently non-combatants. The eyewitness Kashiraj Pandit thus describes the scene: 'Every Durrani soldier brought away a hundred or two of prisoners and slew them in the outskirts of their camp, crying out, When I started from our country, my mother, father, sister and wife told me to slay so may kafirs for their sake after we had gained the victory in this holy war, so that the religious merit of this act [of infidel slaying] might accrue to them. In this way, thousands of soldiers and other persons were massacred. In the Shah's camp, except the quarters of himself and his nobles, every tent had a heap of severed heads before it. One may say that it was verily doomsday for the MarAtha people.'….
The booty captured within the entrenchment was beyond calculation and the regiments of Khans [i. e. 8000 troopers of AbdAli clansmen] did not, as far as possible, allow other troops like the IrAnis and the TurAnis to share in the plunder; they took possession of everything themselves, but sold to the Indian soldiers handsome Brahman women for one tuman and good horses for two tumans each.' The Deccani prisoners, male and female reduced to slavery by the victorious army numbered 22,000, many of them being the sons and other relatives of the sardArs or middle class men. Among them 'rose-limbed slave girls' are mentioned.' Besides these 22,000 unhappy captives, some four hundred officers and 6000 men fled for refuge to ShujA-ud-daulah's camp, and were sent back to the Deccan with monetary help by that nawab, at the request of his Hindu officers. The total loss of the MarAthas after the battle is put at 50,000 horses, captured either by the AfghAn army or the villagers along the route of flight, two hundred thousand draught cattle, some thousands of camels, five hundred elephants, besides cash and jewellery. 'Every trooper of the Shah brought away ten, and sometimes twenty camels laden with money. The captured horses were beyond count but none of them was of value; they came like droves of sheep in their thousands.”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.210-11

Death , Women , Men , Money

“Altogether, a more miserable trio than we were that evening it would have been difficult to discover; and our only comfort lay in the reflection that we were exceedingly fortunate to be there to feel miserable, instead of being stretched dead upon the plain, as so many thousands of brave men were that night, who had risen well and strong in the morning.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 15, "Good Falls Sick"

Men , Feeling , Strong , Night

“God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don’t feel so well myself.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

As quoted in Jewish American Literature : A Norton Anthology (2000) by Jules Chametzky, "Jewish Humor", p. 318

God , Feeling , Funny

“Ray Black was in prison, so we weren't able to talk to him. I did some research on the internet and found out that he was in prison because he murdered two children after he raped them. There were also pictures of the dead children, and even though I knew it would only hurt me to look at them, I did. I printed them out and put them in *Stuff That Happened To Me*, right after the picture of Jean-Pierre Haigneré, the french astronaut who had to be carried from his spacecraft after returning form the MIR spacestation, because gravity isn't only what makes us fall, it's what makes our muscles strong.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

Children , Strong , Hurt

“God.. crack. Only in America would a guy invent crack. Only in America would there be a guy that cocaine wasn't good enough for. You know? One guy walking around New York City back in 1985 going, "You know, that cocaine's pretty good, but I want something that makes my heart explode as soon as I smoke it, ok? I want to take one suck off that crack pipe and go *snort* *splat* Now I'm happy! I'm dead, the ultimate high!"”

Denis Leary (1957) American actor and comedian

Standup routines, No Cure for Cancer (1993)

God , Guy , Heart , Happiness

“It's not easy to kill a man and walk away from it. Every time you kill, a little piece of you dies. Kill often enough, and though you still may talk and eat and breathe, you're a walking dead man your ownself.”

Ralph Compton (1934–1998) American writer

Buck Fletcher in Showdown at Two-Bit Creek; Cited in: Joseph A. West (2004) Ralph Compton, Showdown at Two-Bit Creek, p. 103

Time

“If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would have this legalese up front:
The content of this book is distributed on an 'as is' basis, without warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation, usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index (if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns, is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis, even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art, literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance. References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person, corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn't good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive license to read the material contained herein. You may not read it aloud to any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first published in 2004, and is distributed 'as is', without warranty as to quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness of jibe.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

"If Books Were Sold as Software" http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=20040818#11200, NewsScan.com (18 August 2004)
If Books Were Sold as Software (2004)

Death , People , Books , Art

“Leather shoes and fried chicken and dead soldiers are only a tragedy if you waste their gift sitting in front of the television. Or stuck in traffic. Or stranded at some airport.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Haunted (2005)

Shoe

“When we look at the age in which we live—no matter what age it happens to be—it is hard for us not to be depressed by it. The taste of the age is, always, a bitter one. “What kind of a time is this when one must envy the dead and buried!” said Goethe about his age; yet Matthew Arnold would have traded his own time for Goethe’s almost as willingly as he would have traded his own self for Goethe’s. How often, after a long day witnessing elementary education, School Inspector Arnold came home, sank into what I hope was a Morris chair, looked ’round him at the Age of Victoria, that Indian Summer of the Western World, and gave way to a wistful, exacting, articulate despair!
Do people feel this way because our time is worse than Arnold’s, and Arnold’s than Goethe’s, and so on back to Paradise? Or because forbidden fruits—the fruits forbidden to us by time—are always the sweetest? Or because we can never compare our own age with an earlier age, but only with books about that age?
We say that somebody doesn’t know what he is missing; Arnold, pretty plainly, didn’t know what he was having. The people who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. Maybe we too are living in a Golden or, anyway, Gold-Plated Age, and the people of the future will look back at us and say ruefully: “We never had it so good.” And yet the thought that they will say this isn’t as reassuring as it might be. We can see that Goethe’s and Arnold’s ages weren’t as bad as Goethe and Arnold thought them: after all, they produced Goethe and Arnold. In the same way, our times may not be as bad as we think them: after all, they have produced us. Yet this too is a thought that isn’t as reassuring as it might be.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”. pp. 16–17; opening
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

People , Books , Age , World

“Would you love me for my money?
Would you love me for my head?
Would you love me through the winter?
Would you love me 'til I'm dead?
Oh, if you would and you could,
Come blow your horn on high.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Northern Sky
Song lyrics, Bryter Later (1970)

Love , Money , Winter

“I don't remember a thing
There's fresh in my mind
I've got a weakness bump on my head
When a rock hits me harder, I'm dead”

Maia Mitchell (1993) Australian actress

My Memory Has Changed

“Just as the mother influence is formative with a man's anima, the father has a determining influence on the animus of a daughter. The father imbues his daughter's mind with the specific coloring conferred by those indisputable views mentioned above, which in reality are so often missing in the daughter. For this reason the animus is also sometimes represented as a demon of death. A gypsy tale, for example, tells of a woman living alone who takes in an unknown handsome wanderer and lives with him in spite of the fact that a fearful dream has warned her that he is the king of the dead. Again and again she presses him to say who he is. At first he refuses to tell her, because he knows that she will then die, but she persists in her demand. Then suddenly he tells her he is death. The young woman is so frightened that she dies. Looked at from the point of view of mythology, the unknown wanderer here is clearly a pagan father and god figure, who manifests as the leader of the dead (like Hades, who carried off Persephone). He embodies a form of the animus that lures a woman away from all human relationships and especially holds her back from love with a real man. A dreamy web of thoughts, remote from life and full of wishes and judgments about how things "ought to be," prevents all contact with life. The animus appears in many myths, not only as death, but also as a bandit and murderer, for example, as the knight Bluebeard, who murdered all his wives.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Source: Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Animus, a Woman's Inner Man, p. 319 - 320

Love , Life , Death , God

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

What Is Religion? (1899) is Ingersoll's last public address, delivered before the American Free Religious association, Boston, June 2, 1899. Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Dresden Memorial Edition Volume IV, pages 477-508, edited by Cliff Walker. http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/ingwhatrel.htm

Life , God , World , Fear

“Fighting continued on a token basis, and the dead did not complain.”

Robert A. Heinlein book I Will Fear No Evil

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 12, p. 171

Fight

““Could you punish a heretic?”
“Madam, I do not know what a heretic really is. The word is made much of, these days. It seems to describe anyone you wish dead.””

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 27)

“It almost feels like a zombie at this point; it's the walking dead. It's such an abrupt end to what was E3, which had been this huge escalating arms race…. Right now we're in this kind of dicey, do we have an event, what event is it, which one do we go to? I think we're in an uncomfortable transition zone when really the real E3 died a couple of years ago.”

Will Wright (1960) American video game designer and entrepreneur

Will Wright describing the new restructure of the E3 Video Game trade show.
Source: kotaku.com http://kotaku.com/5043348/will-wright-says-e3-is-the-walking-dead

Feeling , Thinking

“A toast to the dead, for children with cancer and AIDS; a cure exists, and you probably could have been saved.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

"A Toast to the Dead"
, 2011

Children

“Young girls passed me with romance still in their eyes, and others, a little older, with the romance dead.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

The scene is a society ball in London.
Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. V, p. 145.

Girl

“If somebody invented a magic bullet tomorrow that would somehow eliminate racial IQ disparities among all babies born from now on, measurable (though diminishing) gaps in the total population would still exist until everybody alive today is dead in the 22nd century.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Crimethink and Thinking Ability http://takimag.com/article/crimethink_and_thinking_ability/print#ixzz4A9b8oqAe, Taki's Magazine, January 30, 2012

Baby

“Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Nelly Dean (Ch. XIII).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

“The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

The Poet and the World (1996)

Pain , People , World , Feeling

“But History was against me. History is right, objectively speaking. I'm just a historical dead end. I hope at least that my fate will serve as an example to you all and to posterity.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

Candor from Macbett (1972)

Fate , Hope , History

“The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal — every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open — this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Rural Funerals".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

Solitude , Affliction , Forgetting

“Enterprises of the highest importance to our moral and material well-being unite us and offer ample employment of our best powers. Let all our people, leaving behind them the battlefields of dead issues, move forward and in their strength of liberty and the restored Union win the grander victories of peace.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Inaugural address (1881)

People , Peace , Victory

“The conquest of Riga is of the greatest importance not only from the military, but also form the political point of view… Our military situation was never more glorious than it is at present. Meanwhile, there is also the U-boat war, which is taking its course. The destruction of enemy tonnage that was expected of it on the basis of official predictions, has not only been achieved, but partly exceeded by more than half…Time is working for us. Britain to-day is fighting the war with a watch in her hand, and it is in this that I see the fundamentally decisive effect of the U-boat weapon for us and the approach of peace…If we are to achieve anything through compromise and understanding, then the Government must not be forced to make any statements renouncing something from the outset. For this reason the tactics by which it has been and is still being tried to make the Government declare its disinterestedness in Belgium, are wrong. Even those who share the attitude of Herr Scheidemann ought to fight for the last stone in Belgium, in order to exploit to the utmost that which possession has made into a dead pledge…However, the fact that we are going to have peace—and, we hope, soon—will in my conviction be due, apart from our military achievements, to the effects of unrestricted U-boat warfare, of which I have repeatedly said before the Main Committee that while I reject the formula that it will force Britain to her knees, I believe as firmly in the formula that it will force Britain to the conference table.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (October 1917), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 121
1910s

War , Peace , Hope , Understanding

“O Heaven! Today I am sick and tired
Of the colors and forms of this world! …
I close my eyes to disregard the present,
Gradually shifting into the past upon my eyelids.
I close my eyes to let the dark shadows arise boundlessly,
Immense as in the deep of night,
To let my soul grow dark with the artificial,
In the world of the dead so long awaited.
Let the shades of ghosts and demons one by one appear.
Let their cries, their shouts of epilogue, reverberate in my ear.
Let me roll about, my soul intoxicated with illusion,
To put out of mind for a few minutes the scenes of this world!
Let my soul soar rapidly over great distances
In the dark night shadows of my eyelids,
And proudly assert: Here is a world
Created in a moment of grief.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"Creation", as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, p. 89, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, p. 164

World , Color , Soul , Appearance

“The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today…The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow.”

George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876–1962) Historian

"Autobiography of an Historian", An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Women , Men , History , Thinking

“We meet people every day whose bodies are evidently those of men and women long dead, but whose appearance we know through their portraits.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Women , Men , People , Appearance

“There is no need at present to produce new definitions of anarchism — it would be hard to improve on those long since devised by various eminent dead foreigners. Nor need we linger over the familiar hyphenated anarchisms, communist- and individualist- and so forth; the textbooks cover all that. More to the point is why we are no closer to anarchy today than were Godwin and Proudhon and Kropotkin and Goldman in their times.”

Bob Black (1951) American anarchist

Anarchism And Other Impediments To Anarchy (1985)

Time

“I'm just interested in finding out what the hell goes. I mean do you have to be a goddam bohemian type, or dead, for Chrissake, to be a real poet? What do you want — some bastard with wavy hair?”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Source: Franny and Zooey (1961), Franny (1955), p. 19

Hell

“How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere philosophy.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 48
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

Faith , Question

“Tis this which makes
The best assurance of our promised heaven:
This triumph intellect has over death—
Our words yet live on others' lips; our thoughts
Actuate others. Can that man be dead
Whose spiritual influence is upon his kind?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Death

“Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Children, st. 9 (1858).

“I had been gone a fortnight when the telegram was put into my hands. I had got a letter from my sister, a few hours before, saying that all was well at home. The telegram said in five words that she had died suddenly the previous night. There was no mention of my mother, and I was three days' journey from home.
The news I got on reaching London was this: my mother did not understand that her daughter was dead, and they were waiting for me to tell her.”

J. M. Barrie book Margaret Ogilvy

Source: Margaret Ogilvy (1897), Ch. 10

Home , Understanding , Sister , Waiting

“The living, he thought, should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. But the dead—he glanced at Bruce, the empty shape beside him — should, if possible, serve the purposes of the living.
That, he reasoned, is the law of life.
And the dead, if they could feel, might feel better doing so.
The dead, Mike thought, who can still see, even if they can't understand: they are our camera.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 15 (p. 266)

Life , Law , Feeling , Understanding

“My days among the Dead are past;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

My Days Among the Dead Are Past http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1957.html, st. 1 (1818).

Past

“We have such difficulty understanding this renunciation today because the relationship to marriage and children has clearly shifted. To have to die without children was once synonymous with a useless life: The echoes of my own life die away, and I am completely dead. If I have children, then I continue to live in them; it's a sort of immortality through posterity. …”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

1990s

Life , Marriage , Children , Understanding

“In the choice of a position, we must pay some regard to the enemy's collected force, and to our divided condition, in which the army must of necessity be cantoned. The enemy now appear to be putting their troops into winter-quarters; but it cannot be supposed they will remain inactive all winter, if we, by the manner of cantoning the army, open to them an opportunity of insulting us to advantage. The mischievous consequences of having our quarters beat up, in the dead of winter, cannot readily be foreseen. That it would be their duty and interest to lay hold of such an opportunity, nobody can deny; and that the character of the General, and many national circumstances, lead to the supposition, must be agreed to. It is necessary, therefore, to take a position which will secure us from a surprise, and have as much force together as possible, to free us from insult. The place where, and the force necessary, to these ends, are the two capital points to decide upon.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Appearance , Winter

“Our technological revolution is quickly making degrees irrelevant for many of even the top jobs. Bill Gates didn’t graduate from college. Tumblr founder David Karp dropped out of high school. So did blip. tv founder Mike Hudack. Dropping out of the standard school curriculum is not a dead end if it leads you toward a trade where you can earn a living and be proud of your achievements.”

John Carney

" What Obama Should Have Told The Kids Today http://www.businessinsider.com/john-carney-what-obama-should-have-told-the-kids-today-2009-9," The Business Insider magazine, 8 September 2009.

School

“No signs of life are here: the very prayers
Inscribed around are in a language dead.”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-jewish-synagogue-at-newport/

Life

“Amir Khusrau mentions some of the powers “of sorcery and enchantment possessed by the inhabitants of India. First of all they can bring a dead man to life. If a man has been bitten by a snake and is rendered speechless, they can resuscitate him even after six months.””

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

Amir Khusrau, Nuh Sipehr, Elliot and Dowson, III, p.563. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1
Nuh Siphir

Life

“I'd received death threats over the phone. Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a 'good guy.”

Hugh Thompson, Jr. (1943–2006) United States helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War

In a 2004 interview with 60 minutes. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/national/07thompson.html
Attributed

Death , Guy , Animals

“Gandhi is dead, yet his mind pervades the earth. The thought of a gnani pervades humanity and works ceaselessly for good. Being anonymous, coming from within, it is more powerful and compelling. That is how the world improves-the inner aiding and blessing the outer. When gnani dies, he is no more, in the same sense in which a river is no more when it merges in the sea; the name, the shape, are no more, but the water remains and becomes one with the ocean. When a gnani joins the universal mind, all his goodness and wisdom become the heritage of humanity and uplift every human being.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Universal mind
Source: "I am That." P.89.

Wisdom , World , Sense , Universe

“The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for [Eutimio], so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a.32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal [lobe]. He gasped for a little while and was dead. Upon proceeding to remove his belongings I couldn't get off the watch tied by a chain to his belt, and then he told me in a steady voice farther away than fear: "Yank it off, boy, what does it matter."”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

I did so and his possessions were now mine.

Diary entry from Sierra Maestra on the execution of Eutimio Guerra as an anti-revolutionary spy (January 1957), quoted in Che Guevara : A Revolutionary Life (1997) by Jon Lee Anderson

People , Fear , Boy , Problem

“Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not. He may be a blot, radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society; or he may be a blessing, spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world: but a blank he cannot be. There are no moral blanks; there are no neutral characters. We are either the sower that sows and corrupts, or the light that splendidly illuminates, and the salt that silently operates; but being dead or alive, every man speaks.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

actually a quote from Voices of the Dead by John Cumming (1854) (p.8: The Speaking Dead)
Misattributed

World , Light , Evil

“Lo — a black line of birds in wavering thread
Bore him the greetings of the deathless dead!”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

The Cranes of Ibicus http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-cranes-of-ibicus/

Bird

“Don't buy one of those baby intercoms. Babies pretend to be dead. They're bastards, and they do it on purpose.”

Billy Connolly (1942) British comedian

Billy Connolly by Nigel Huddleston, published June 2004.
Book Sources

Baby

“Weep not for the dead with a fruitless recalling,
Their soul on the wings of the morning hath fled;
Mourn rather for those whom yet life is enthralling,
Ah! weep for the living—weep not for the dead.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

All from The Vow of the Peacock - Second Canto
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Life , Soul

“Once man was tossed about helplessly and incessantly by the wind that blew through him—now the toughest of all plants is more sensitive, more easily moved than he. In other words, death is better than life, nothing is better than anything. Nor is this a silly adolescent pessimism peculiar to Housman, as so many critics assure you. It is better to be dead than alive, best of all never to have been born—said a poet approvingly advertised as seeing life steadily and seeing it whole; and if I began an anthology of such quotations there it would take me a long time to finish. The attitude is obviously inadequate and just as obviously important.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Texts from Housman”, p. 27
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Life , Death , Time

“I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot, i. e., loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better), you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter (12 January 1936); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Life , Hurt

“If you do not speak up when it matters, when would it matter that you speak? The opposite of courage is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”

Jim Hightower (1943) Texas author and liberal political activist

[A celebration of agitation, Arizona Daily Star, 2002-07-26]

Courage , Fish

“Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Earth, Act I, l. 191
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Men

“The years seemed to stretch before her like the land: spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning; the same pulling at the chain — until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released.”

Willa Cather book O Pioneers!

Part IV, Ch. 5
O Pioneers! (1913)

Spring , Autumn , Tree , Winter

“We sometimes feel that we have been really understood, but it was always long ago, by someone now dead.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Feeling

“To be without music was, for the ancient Greeks, to be already dead… Ancient Greece was a culture of song.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch. III The Poet: How to Party

Music

“I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

In a letter of Gustave Courbet (1869); in Letters of Gustave Courbet, 1992, University of Chicago Press, transl. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu, ISBN 0226116530
1860s

Life , School , Freedom

“… after you're dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what's going to be your best memory of Earth? … What moment for you defines what it's like to be alive on this planet?”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

Generation X (1991)

Memory

“In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

"Foreword" to Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (2000) by Frank Visser

Life , Books , Reality

“Whether God is dead or not hardly matters, for we would use him no differently anyway.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

God

“Oh! hush these suspicions," Fair Imogine said,
"Offensive to Love and to me!
For if ye be living, or if ye be dead,
I swear by the Virgin, that none in your stead
Shall Husband of Imogine be.”

Matthew Lewis (writer) book The Monk

Page 313; "Alonzo the Brave, and Fair Imogine", line 11.
The Monk (1796)

Love

“Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Borders of Infinity (1989)

Revenge , Past , Future

“[Translated]: It is only the dead who do not return.”

Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (1755–1841) French politician, freemason, journalist, and one of the most notorious members of the National Convention …

II n'ya que les morts qui ne reviennent pas.
Speech, 1794, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

““Pop, do we have heaven?” he’d asked on the day he discovered the (dead) cat. “You want to know a Jew’s idea of heaven?” his father had replied, looking up from his Maimonides. “It’s an endless succession of long winter nights on which we get paid a fair wage to sit in a warm room and read all the books ever written… Not just the famous ones, no, every book, the stuff nobody gets around to reading, forgotten plays, novels by people you never heard of. However, I profoundly doubt such a place exists.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 1 (p. 13)

People , Books , Cats , Idea

“The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. [1]

Love , Friendship , Pleasure , Intelligence

“If we hadn’t taken down Saddam, Gaddafi would not have surrendered his materials. Now Gaddafi’s gone, dead, [and] ISIS plays a significant role today in Libya, [and] they would have inherited that material,” Cheney said. “So that whole area of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and so forth, everybody wants to say, ‘Well, there wasn’t any WMD in Iraq,’ but that’s a small, small way to look at the problem.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

At the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall Lecture Series in Sarasota https://www.sarasotamagazine.com/articles/2017/1/23/dick-cheney-sarasota (January 2017)
2010s, 2017

Way , Problem

“There is virtually no funding to study the validity of the more muted complaints of men: to study when a false accusation is being used as a weapon to keep the children from dad; or when the child is being bad-mouthed by the other parent; or when access to the child is being prevented; or when statistics about deadbeat dads are including men who are dead, unemployed, or denied their children; or when men are victims of domestic violence.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 241.

Men , Children , Parent , Study

“As that great captain, Ziska, would have a drum made of his skin when he was dead, because he thought the very noise of it would put his enemies to flight.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader

“[Charity] conceals a stupid cruelty, because it is not courageous enough to face unpleasant facts. Aside from the question of the unfitness of many women to become mothers, aside from the very definite deterioration in the human stock that such programs would inevitably hasten, we may question its value even to the normal though unfortunate mother. For it is never the intention of such philanthropy to give the poor over-burdened and often undernourished mother of the slum the opportunity to make the choice herself, to decide whether she wishes time after time to bring children into the world. It merely says 'Increase and multiply: We are prepared to help you do this.' Whereas the great majority of mothers realize the grave responsibility they face in keeping alive and rearing the children they have already brought into the world, the maternity center would teach them how to have more. The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth. … Such philanthropy, as Dean Inge has so unanswerably pointed out, is kind only to be cruel, and unwittingly promotes precisely the results most deprecated. It encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 5, "The Cruelty of Charity"

Women , Children , Stupidity , World

“The great god Pan is dead.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Why the Oracles cease to give Answers
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

God

“Treaties against naturalization, like all other treaties, are limited by circumstances. As to the superstitious attachment of the Chinese to China, that, like all other superstitions, will dissolve in the light and heat of truth and experience. The Chinaman may be a bigot, but it does not follow that he will continue to be one tomorrow. He is a man, and will be very likely to act like a man. He will not be long in finding out that a country that is good enough to live in is good enough to die in, and that a soil that was good enough to hold his body while alive, will be good enough to hold his bones when he is dead. Those who doubt a large immigration should remember that the past furnishes no criterion as a basis of calculation. We live under new and improved conditions of migration, and these conditions are constantly improving.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Truth , Nature , Light , Past

“I am here led to relate that at the city of Banaras a temple had been erected by Rajah Maun Singh, which cost him the sum of nearly thirty-six laks of five methkally ashrefies. The principle idol in this temple had on its head a tiara or cap, enriched with jewels to the amount of three laks ashrefies. He had placed in this temple moreover, as the associates and ministering servants of the principal idol, four other images of solid gold, each crowned with a tiara, in the like manner enriched with precious stones. It was the belief of these Jehennemites that a dead Hindu, provided when alive he had been a worshipper, when laid before this idol would be restored to life. As I could not possibly give credit to such a pretence, I employed a confidential person to ascertain the truth; and, as I justly supposed, the whole was detected to be an impudent imposture. Of this discovery I availed myself, and I made it my plea for throwing down the temple which was the scene of this imposture and on the spot, with the very same materials, I erected the great mosque, because the very name of Islam was proscribed at Banaras, and with God's blessing it is my design, if I live, to fill it full with true believers.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) , Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, translated into English by Major David Price, Calcutta, 1906. pp. 24-25.

http://persian.packhum.org/persian/pf?file=11001040&ct=7, "Decisions Involving Urban Planning and Religious Institutions" Different translation: I made it my plea for throwing down the temple which was the scene of this imposture; and on the spot, with the very same materials, I erected the great mosque, because the very name of Islam was proscribed at Banaras, and with God’s blessing it is my design, if I live, to fill it full with true believers.

Personality , God , Truth , Life

“She didn't seem dead. There was only a swelling of the lips, as if she were angry. The strange thing was her idea of renting a painter's studio, having an armchiar, no less, drawn up s she could die in front of the window that looked toward Superga. A cat had given her away–it was in the room with her, and the next day, miaowing and scratching the door, it had made them open.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Ending words
Among women only (1949)

Cats , Idea

Quotes about the dead page 29

Quotes about the dead
page 29