“There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.”

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 54

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 "There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and…" by W. Somerset Maugham?
W. Somerset Maugham photo
W. Somerset Maugham 158
British playwright, novelist, short story writer 1874–1965

Related quotes

Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna photo

“There is an immeasurable distance between submission to the cross and acceptance of it.”

Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (1790–1846) British writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 170.

Hans Reichenbach photo

“The quick and the dead are all the same. Everyone's just looking for home.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Variant: End of the day, the quick and the dead are the same. Everyone's just looking for a home.
Source: Lover Reborn

Lev Grossman photo
Heraclitus photo

“And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Fragment 88
Numbered fragments

David Benioff photo
Willa Cather photo
Sarada Devi photo

“The difference between a great soul and an ordinary man is this: the latter weeps while leaving this body, whereas the former laughs. Death seems to him a mere play.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 253]

Related topics