“Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.”
Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Pt. III, st. 29
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Context: For four hundred years the human race has not made a step but what has left its plain vestige behind. We enter now upon great centuries. The sixteenth century will be known as the age of painters, the seventeenth will be termed the age of writers, the eighteenth the age of philosophers, the nineteenth the age of apostles and prophets. To satisfy the nineteenth century, it is necessary to be the painter of the sixteenth, the writer of the seventeenth, the philosopher of the eighteenth; and it is also necessary, like Louis Blane, to have the innate and holy love of humanity which constitutes an apostolate, and opens up a prophetic vista into the future. In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, animosity will be dead, royalty will be dead, and dogmas will be dead; but Man will live. For all there will be but one country—that country the whole earth; for all there will be but one hope—that hope the whole heaven.<br><br> Address to the Workman's Congress at Marseille http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo%27s_Address_to_the_Workman%27s_Congress_at_Marseille (1879)
“Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.”
Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Pt. III, st. 29
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
“Let the dead bury the dead? But, the dead can bury no one.”
Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic
2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)
“Whom they fear, they hate. And whom one hates, one hopes to see him dead.”
Quem metuunt oderunt; quem quisque odit, perisse expetit.
Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer
As quoted by Cicero in De Officiis, Book II, Chapter 23
Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 10 “An Age of Miracles” (p. 216)
“There is
One great society alone on earth:
The noble Living and the noble Dead.”
William Wordsworth book The Prelude
Bk. XI, l. 393.
The Prelude (1799-1805)
“The live dead-man is dead as a producer and alive insofar as he consumes”
Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet
139
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
“We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for the dead.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
At A Child's Grave (1882)
Context: The dead do not suffer. And if they live again, their lives will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear. We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all.
We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for the dead.
“The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
24 June 1813
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)
“Honor is for the living. Dead is dead.”
Drew Karpyshyn book Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction
Source: Path of Destruction