“Sometimes societies die and putrefy long before they are pronounced dead, and sometimes men die of corruption long before they have taken to their deathbeds.”

— Pierre Stephen Robert Payne

The Corruptions Of the Physical Body, p. 5
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Sometimes societies die and putrefy long before they are pronounced dead, and sometimes men die of corruption long befo…" by Pierre Stephen Robert Payne?

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne 28

British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer 1911–1983

Related quotes

“As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

“In Vienna you first 've to die, before they celebrate you. But then you're living long.”

Helmut Qualtinger (1928–1986) Austrian actor

“Men sometimes die much earlier than they are burried.”

Romain Gary book Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable

Source: Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable

“We are born in ignorance, we die in ignorance, but maybe sometimes we learn something important and pass it along to others before we die. Or we write it down in a little book.”

Greg Bear book Hull Zero Three

Hull Zero Three (2010)

“No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it's not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Notes on the Next War (1935)
Context: Hit in the head you will die quickly and cleanly even sweetly and fittingly except for the white blinding flash that never stops, unless perhaps it is only the frontal bone or your optic nerve that is smashed, or your jaw carried away, or your nose and cheek bones gone so you can still think but you have no face to talk with. But if you are not hit in the head you will be hit in the chest, and choke in it, or in the lower belly, and feel it all slip and slide loosely as you open, to spill out when you try to get up, it's not supposed to be so painful but they always scream with it, it's the idea I suppose, or have the flash, the slamming clang of high explosive on a hard road and find your legs are gone above the knee, or maybe just a foot gone and watch the white bone sticking through your puttee, or watch them take a boot off with your foot a mush inside it, or feel an arm flop and learn how a bone feels grating, or you will burn, choke and vomit, or be blown to hell a dozen ways, without sweetness or fittingness: but none of this means anything. No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it's not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.