
“I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead.”
VIII, 2
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII
“I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead.”
“I am not glad she is dead, but I am not sorry she is gone.”
Source: Orphan Train
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/apr/18/maynooth-college-adjourned-debate-sixth in the House of Commons (18 April 1845) in favour of the Maynooth College Act 1845.
1840s
“Every day I wonder how many things I am dead wrong about. -- True North”
Diary entry for the day he died (15 April 1888); from Ecclesiasticus, xxxviii
Matthew Arnold's Notebooks (1902)
“I shall have more to say when I am dead.”
The Three Taverns (1920), "John Brown".
“After us, the deluge. I care not what happens when I am dead and gone.”
Said while the French financial system was on the verge of collapse, as quoted in Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898) by E. Cobham Brewer. Brewer states that this was sometimes attributed to the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, but that he was probably simply quoting Madame de Pompadour.
Letter to Reverdy Johnson (26 July 1862)
1860s