“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

— Mark Twain , book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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American author and humorist 1835–1910

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Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

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"Ah!" he waved that aside. "The present is just temporary."
‘ I boiled up. "I know," I burst out. ‘It only has to be accepted temporarily — temporarily, but every day afresh. And every day ever more. Temporarily. Until we have lived to the end of our temporary lives, and one fine day we temporarily die.

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and anger that drives the sanest man to flare in outrage—
bitter gall, sweeter than dripping streams of honey,
that swarms in people's chests and blinds like smoke.

“Oooh, Superfly
You're gonna make your fortune by and by.
But if you lose, don't ask no questions why.
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Ah-ha-ha.”

Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999) American singer, songwriter, and record producer

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“T were vain to tell thee all I feel,
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J. Augustine Wade (1796–1845) Irish composer

T were vain to tell, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

“The Tippoo still led the fight. […] Those gaudy stones made him a target for every redcoat and sepoy, yet he insisted on staying in the very front rank where he could pour his rifle fire at the stalled attackers, and his charms worked, for though the bullets flicked close none hit him. He was the Tiger of Mysore, he could not die, only kill.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

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“You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round
With tombstones in their eyes
But the pusher don't care
Ah, if you live or if you die”

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“To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

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“He ordered us to stand fast and save Stalingrad. So we knew then that it was 'do or die.' We could not retreat.”

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“If Jesus Christ was the being which those Mythologists tell us he was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they sometimes use instead of to die, the only real suffering he could have endured, would have been to live. His existence here was a state of exilement or transportation from Heaven, and the way back to his original country was to die. In fine, everything in this strange system is the reverse of what it pretends to be.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

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