
“It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.”
Source: Thunderball
XII. 351–352 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
βούλομ' ἅπαξ πρὸς κῦμα χανὼν ἀπὸ θυμὸν ὀλέσσαι ἢ δηθὰ στρεύγεσθαι ἐὼν ἐν νήσῳ ἐρήμῃ.
“It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.”
Source: Thunderball
Opining on Twitter, as quoted in * 2020-03-09
J.D. Simkins
Military Times
Congressman, a former dentist, says he’d ‘rather die gloriously in battle than from’ coronavirus.
Source: https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2020/03/09/congressman-a-former-dentist-says-hed-rather-die-gloriously-in-battle-than-from-coronavirus/
“They that die by famine die by inches.”
Psalm 59.
Commentaries
To Die for the People (1972), paraphrasing Mao Zedong's "Serve the People"
“For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.”
Pt. III, st. 22
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Source: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Poems
“Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.”
Electra, 1007.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”
"Ingeborg's Lament".
Fridthjof's Saga (1820-1825)