“Dear, was it really you and I?
In truth the riddle's ill to read,
So many are the deaths we die
Before we can be dead indeed.”

— William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XV

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 "Dear, was it really you and I? In truth the riddle's ill to read, So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dea…" by William Ernest Henley?

William Ernest Henley photo

William Ernest Henley 29

English poet, critic and editor 1849–1903

Related quotes

“Life is a book, and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read. I would read them together with you, as many as I can, before I die.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: The Infernal Devices, Clockwork Princess (2013), p. 539, spoken by Will
reference to quote from Clockwork Angel
Context: I recall what you said to me once, that words have the power to change us. Your words have changed me, Tess; they have made me a better man than I would have been otherwise. Life is a book, and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read. I would read them together with you, as many as I can, before I die.

“If we say that we have no sin,
We deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us.
Why then belike we must sin,
And so consequently die.
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.”

Christopher Marlowe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Source: Dr. Faustus

“For even if the whole world believed in resurrection, little would change until we began to practice it. We can believe in CPR, but people will remain dead until someone breathes new life into them. And we can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

The Irresistible Revolution (2006)

“There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,' my mother explained shortly before she left me. 'If you can remember me, I will be with you always.”

Isabel Allende book Eva Luna

Source: Eva Luna

“We must live before we can attain to either intelligence or control at all. We must sleep if we are not to find ourselves, at death, helplessly strange to the new conditions. And we must die before we can hope to advance to a broader understanding.”

John William Dunne book An Experiment with Time

Source: An Experiment with Time (1927), p. 111

“How many different deaths I can die?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness

“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Caesar, Act II, scene ii.
Source: Julius Caesar (1599)

“To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious…. There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Dracula, talking to Lucy and Mina at the opera
Dracula (1931)

“You have to die a few times before you can really
live.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Variant: You have to die a few times before you actually live.
Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Related topics