“Separate we come, and separate we go, And this be it known, is all that we know.”
Variant: Separate we come, and separate we go, and this be it known, is all that we know.
Source: Self written obituary in verse, The New York Herald Tribune (1969), cited in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) edited by Larry Chang, p. 664
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Conrad Aiken 70
American novelist and poet 1889–1973Related quotes

“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Statement at the signing of the Declaration of Independence (1776-07-04), quoted as an anecdote in The Works of Benjamin Franklin by Jared Sparks (1840). However, this had earlier been attributed to Richard Penn in Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, Within the Last Sixty Years (1811, p. 116 http://books.google.com/books?id=TwYFAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA116&vq=%22hang+together%22). In 1801, "If we don't hang together, by Heavens we shall hang separately" appears in the English play Life by Frederick Reynolds (Life, Frederick Reynolds, in a collection by Mrs Inchbald, 1811, Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=egsLAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA176 first published in 1801 http://www.lib.muohio.edu/multifacet/record/mu3ugb2568779), and the remark was later attributed to 'An American General' by Reynolds in his 1826 memoir p.358 http://books.google.com/books?id=_MQEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA358&dq=general's. A comparable pun on "hang alone … hang together" appears in Dryden's 1717 The Spanish Fryar Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PgoOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PT19. The pun also appears in an April 14, 1776 letter from Carter Braxton to Landon Carter, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, Vol.1 (1921) http://books.google.com/books?id=7TMSAAAAYAAJ, p.421, as "a true saying of a Wit — We must hang together or separately."
Attributed
Charles Eisenstein, The Longing for Belonging http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-eisenstein/indigeneity-and-belonging_b_8011302.html, Huffington Post, 20 August 2015

Source: An extract from Jeet Thayil's Booker-shortlisted Narcopolis http://www.welovethisbook.com/features/extract-narcopolis, 10 September 2012 The Bookseller Media