Henry Miller quote: “I am glad to be a maggot in the corpse which is the world.”

“Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?—how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Source: Recipe for Salad, p. 383
Source: A memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith

“The world was my home and I was glad to be in it.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

“People always died in the most hidden places. They'd bleed to death, I guess. By the time their bodies were brought in, they're bloated, and they'd dig out the identification tags on some corpse's chest, maggots all over the place. And those aren't scenes which you want to report to your people back home. I mean, everybody would think it was their own son. I didn't have his name.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

All Things Considered, NPR, Washington, D.C.: February 6, 2003, transcript available at ProQuest: from Research Library Core. (Document ID: 351141181); excerpted from a 1994 concerning what LeSueur saw on D-Day at Normandy.

“Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then — as I am listening now.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley To a Skylark

St. 21
To a Skylark (1821)

“I am feeble, pale and weary,
And my wings are nearly furled;
I have caused a scene so dreary,
I am glad to quit the world!
With bitterness I'm thinking
On the evil I have done,
And to my caverns sinking
From the coming of the sun.”

Hannah Flagg Gould (1788–1865) American writer

"The Dying Storm" in Poems (published 1835), p. 59.

“At sunset, on the river ban, Krishna Loved her for the last time and left... That night in her husband's arms, Radha felt So dead that he asked, What is wrong, Do you mind my kisses, love? And she said, Not not at all, but thought, What is It to the corpse if the maggots nip?”

Kamala Surayya (1934–2009) Indian author

Kamala Suraiyya Das (The Descendants)

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

“I look on all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Journal (11 June 1739)
General sources

“I look on all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Journal (11 June 1739)
1730s

“If I'm garbage you're a bunch of maggots”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

Roman's Revenge

“I am glad to be a maggot in the corpse which is the world.”

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