Quotes about die
page 17

Khaled Mashal photo
William James photo

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1940) Austrian physician and psychologist

Cited by a character in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) as a statement of Stekel, this has often been attributed to Salinger, and may actually be a paraphrase by him of a statement of the German writer Otto Ludwig (1813-1865) which Stekel himself quotes in his writings:
Das Höchste, wozu er sich erheben konnte, war, für etwas rühmlich zu sterben; jetzt erhebt er sich zu dem Größern, für etwas ruhmlos zu leben.
The highest he could raise himself to was to die gloriously for something; now he rises to something greater: to live humbly for something.
Gedanken Otto Ludwigs : Aus seinem Nachlaß ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Cordelia Ludwig (1903) p. 10 http://archive.org/stream/gedankenottolud00ludwgoog#page/n39/mode/2up; this is quoted by Stekel in "Die Ausgänge der psychoanalytischen Kuren" in Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse : Medizinische Monatsschrift für Seelenkunde (1913), p. 188 http://archive.org/stream/ZB_III_1913_4_5_k#page/n19/mode/2up, and in Das liebe Ich : Grundriss einer neuen Diätetik der Seele (1913), page 38 http://books.google.de/books?id=PgFAAAAAIAAJ&q=r%C3%BChmlich.
Misattributed

Ben Jonson photo

“Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbor give
To more virtue than doth live.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

CXXIV, Epitaph on Elizabeth, Lady H—, lines 3-6
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Tanith Lee photo
Sam Donaldson photo

“What do you mean, 'you don't need to buy it'? You don't need to do anything, except pay taxes and die.”

Sam Donaldson (1934) American journalist

As quoted in "Respek" http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=m1_FAsefZ6o (18 July 2004), Da Ali G Show.
2000s

Thomas More photo

“I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Words on the scaffold, attributed in The Essentials of Freedom : The Idea and Practice of Ordered Liberty in the Twentieth Century as explored at Kenyon College (1960) by Paul Gray Hoffman, p. 43
First reported in indirect speech in the Paris Newsletter (1535): « Apres les exhorta, et supplia tres instamment qu'ils priassent Dieu pour le Roy, affin qu'il luy voulsist donner bon conseil, protestant qu'il mouroit son bon serviteur et de Dieu premierement. » ("Afterward he exhorted them, and besought them very earnestly to pray to God for the King, that He should give him good counsel, protesting that he died his good servant, and God's first.")

Rick Santorum photo
Radhanath Swami photo

“Lying down to sleep on the earthen riverbank, I thought, Vrindavan is attracting my heart like no other place. What is happening to me? Please reveal Your divine will. With this prayer, I drifted off to sleep.
Before dawn, I awoke to the ringing of temple bells, signaling that it was time to begin my journey to Hardwar. But my body lay there like a corpse. Gasping in pain, I couldn’t move. A blazing fever consumed me from within, and under the spell of unbearable nausea, my stomach churned. Like a hostage, I lay on that riverbank. As the sun rose, celebrating a new day, I felt my life force sinking. Death that morning would have been a welcome relief. Hours passed.
At noon, I still lay there. This fever will surely kill me, I thought.
Just when I felt it couldn’t get any worse, I saw in the overcast sky something that chilled my heart. Vultures circled above, their keen sights focused on me. It seemed the fever was cooking me for their lunch, and they were just waiting until I was well done. They hovered lower and lower. One swooped to the ground, a huge black and white bird with a long, curving neck and sloping beak. It stared, sizing up my condition, then jabbed its pointed beak into my ribcage. My body recoiled, my mind screamed, and my eyes stared back at my assailant, seeking pity. The vulture flapped its gigantic wings and rejoined its fellow predators circling above. On the damp soil, I gazed up at the birds as they soared in impatient circles. Suddenly, my vision blurred and I momentarily blacked out. When I came to, I felt I was burning alive from inside out. Perspiring, trembling, and gagging, I gave up all hope.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. A local farmer herding his cows noticed me and took pity. Pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, he looked skyward toward the vultures and, understanding my predicament, lifted me onto a bullock cart. As we jostled along the muddy paths, the vultures followed overhead. The farmer entrusted me to a charitable hospital where the attendants placed me in the free ward. Eight beds lined each side of the room. The impoverished and sadhu patients alike occupied all sixteen beds. For hours, I lay unattended in a bed near the entrance. Finally that evening the doctor came and, after performing a series of tests, concluded that I was suffering from severe typhoid fever and dehydration. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You will likely die, but we will try to save your life.””

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

Republished on The Journey Home website.
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“Die before you Die. There is no chance after.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956)

Jagadish Chandra Bose photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Sara Bareilles photo

“I would die to make you mine
Bleed me dry almost every time
But I don't mind, no I don't mind it
I would come back 1000 times”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"1000 Times"
Lyrics, The Blessed Unrest (2013)

Tony Blair photo

“Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

European Parliament debates http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20050623+ITEM-004+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN&query=INTERV&detail=4-010
Speech to the European Parliament outlining the priorities of the British Presidency, 23 June 2005.
2000s

Ted Bundy photo

“I don't want to die. I'm not going to kid you. I'll kid you not. I deserve certainly the most extreme punishment society has…I think society deserves to be protected from me and others like me.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

1989 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYL1PTrtXo with James Dobson

Chris Cornell photo
Franz Marc photo
Johann de Kalb photo

“Oh, no! It is impossible. War is a kind of game, and has its fixed rules, whereby, when we are well acquainted with them, we can pretty correctly tell how the trial will go. Tomorrow it seems, the die is to be cast, and, in my judgement, without the least chance on our side. The militia will, I suppose as usual, play the back game. That is, get out of battle as fast as their legs will carry them. But that, you know, won't do for me. I am an old soldier, and cannot run, and I believe I have some brave fellows that will stand by me to the last. So, when you hear of our battle, you will probably hear that your old friend, De Kalb, is at rest.”

Johann de Kalb (1721–1780) American general

In August 1780, as quoted in "Death of Baron De Kalb" https://books.google.com/books?id=k2QAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=%22I+thank+you+sir+for+your+generous+sympathy,+but+I+die+the+death+I+always+prayed+for:+the+death+of+a+soldier+fighting+for+the+rights+of+man%22&source=bl&ots=-93hJzoCYU&sig=tAag8ObQI-ZjiII56viczov02wM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VlYVVcuJI4KmNsazgYgL&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22I%20thank%20you%20sir%20for%20your%20generous%20sympathy%2C%20but%20I%20die%20the%20death%20I%20always%20prayed%20for%3A%20the%20death%20of%20a%20soldier%20fighting%20for%20the%20rights%20of%20man%22&f=false (1849), by Benjamin Franklin Ells, The Western Miscellany, Volume 1, p. 233.
1780s

Johann Gottfried Herder photo

“If I build a castle of love [i. e., mystical knowledge]
for the suffering people, they kill me!
If I don’t build I die!”

Jahonotin Uvaysiy (1781–1845) Uzbekistani poet

(Uvaysiy 1980:58) Quoted in Female Celebrations in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan: The Power of Cosmology in Musical Rites http://raziasultanova.co.uk/YTM%2008-Sultanova-FINAL.pdf by Razia Sultanova, in The 2008 Yearbook For Traditional Music, Volume 40, page 14

William Wordsworth photo
A.E. Housman photo
Pierce Brown photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“He deserved to die except that nothing deserves death.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Treason (1988)

Rudyard Kipling photo
Robert Burton photo

“A mere madness, to live like a wretch and die rich.”

Section 2, member 3, subsection 12, Covetousness, a Cause.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

Alain photo
Homér photo

“Alike the idlers and the active die.”

IX. 320 (tr. Lord Derby).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Cyrano de Bergerac photo
David Weber photo

“Oh, Christ! We're all gonna die. You seen the kinds'a casualty lists she comes up with?”

David Weber (1952) author

"Honorverse", Honor Among Enemies (1996)

St. George Tucker photo
Joan Rivers photo

“I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

On her plastic surgeries, quoted in The New York Times, 2008 (republished in The New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/joan-rivers-top-10-jokes-celebs-plastic-surgery-article-1.1928398#ixzz3CWeoRaTP

Huey P. Newton photo

“To die for the racists is lighter than a feather, but to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

To Die for the People (1972), paraphrasing Mao Zedong's "Serve the People"

Franz Marc photo
W. H. Auden photo
Alfred Noyes photo
Homér photo

“The day will come when sacred Troy must die,
Priam must die and all his people with him,
Priam who hurls the strong ash spear!”

IV. 164–165 (tr. Robert Fagles); spoken by Agamemnon.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Anthony Burgess photo
Richard Francis Burton photo

“Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the self, forget the "I,"
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die:”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Albert Camus photo

“Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

"The Sea Close By" in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)

Lucy Aharish photo

“One of the topics [on the show last week] was the murder of women in the Arab sector, what is referred to, unfortunately, […] as 'honor killing' and has nothing to do with [anything worthy of] honor. The guest in the studio was a woman who had 20 years of experience working for the sake of those same women who die for no good reason, a woman whose everyday job was a holy work for the sake of thousands of Arab women who need a voice that will shout out and cry out their cries. After she had accused the government and the police and everyone of incompetence, I asked her, in a somewhat aggressive manner, as it were, '[…] Where are we in all of this? Where are we Arab women to teach and discipline our sons that a man has no right over a woman? […]' During the commercial break, she got up and told me that I had to learn how to talk to Arabs because the tone that I adopted and the things that I said were said to gain approval from Jews. So I've come to tell you today that I haven't come for approval from you; that I haven't come for approval from anyone; and this is the message that I want you to digest very, very well. In my life I have been accused of many things: that I am the fifth column; that an Arab will always stay an Arab, no matter how liberal he may look; that I bring shame on my family for being in a relationship with a person outside my religion. I've received threats after asking Palestinian residents live on the show why they don't go out against Hamas men, who use them and bring them to their slaughter; I've been attacked on Yom ha-Shoah and Yom ha-Zikaron that the managers at Arutz 2 dared to put an Arab on a show such as that as the host on a day such as that; I've been told that I make Arab women stray off the path of proper behavior; and that I've forgotten where I come from being an 'Ashkenazified', 'Judaized' Arab. So they blamed and they talked—as if that, in itself, made them right.”

Lucy Aharish (1981) Arab-Israeli journalist

Source: Lucy Aharish's campus speech http://www.onlife.co.il/%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94/%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%99%D7%92%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A8/85312/%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%91%D7%90%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%90-%D7%97%D7%9F-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A3-%D7%90%D7%97%D7%93 at "מנהיגות היום את המחר". Onlife. 9 November 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2015. Video available.

Mahatma Gandhi photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Voiceless; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Simon Armitage photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Noel Gallagher photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“With us [in office], there will be no such human rights politicking. These bandits will die, because we will not send resources from the government to them. Instead of peace, these NGOs do a disservice to our Brazil.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

At an event in Araçatuba on 23 August 2018. Bolsonaro diz que se eleito 'bandidagem vai morrer' porque União não repassará recursos para direitos humanos https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-jose-do-rio-preto-aracatuba/noticia/2018/08/23/bolsonaro-diz-que-bandidagem-vai-morrer-em-seu-governo-porque-uniao-nao-repassara-recursos-para-direitos-humanos.ghtml. G1 (23 August 2018).

Thanissaro Bhikkhu photo
John Muir photo
George Gordon Byron photo

“I die — but first I have possessed,
And come what may, I have been blessed.”

Source: The Giaour (1813), Line 1114.

Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.”

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter I.

Geert Wilders photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“O suffering, sad humanity!
O ye afflicted ones, who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, yet afraid to die,
Patient, though sorely tried!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Goblet of Life, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Bill Clinton photo
John Milton photo
Billy Joel photo
William Wordsworth photo

“We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

It Is Not to Be Thought Of, l. 11 (1807).

Joseph Heller photo
Lee Evans photo
Courtney Love photo

“I don't know why I ever succumbed to any of it… [but] I liked the rush of going under. It's such a high—it's like dying. I die, but then I come out prettier.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On what attracted her to undergo plastic surgery, The Inner Circle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVK-5gmv5hw (27 October 2011)
2006–2013

Iain Banks photo
John Maynard Smith photo
Oswald Spengler photo
Gene Wolfe photo

“He was proud, like all lonely men. Lonely men must be proud or die.”

"The Arimaspin Legacy" (1987), first appeared as a Winter Solstice chapbook from Cheap Street, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains (2005)
Fiction

Ben Croshaw photo

“You know what's so great about junk food? Fat people who eat too much die young from cholesterol poisoning! It's a problem that solves itself!”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

My Tribute to the U.S.
Fully Ramblomatic, Essays

Anni-Frid Lyngstad photo

“Absolutely. That will never die. It will not die with me, then!”

Anni-Frid Lyngstad (1945) Swedish female singer

When asked if she is still 'in love with Zermatt and music' as quoted in an appearance on Glanz & Gloria, Swiss SRF, 7 April 2017 https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/glanz--gloria/video/anni-frid-lyngstad?id=f8a70622-44e8-4ae1-8b25-b63acf09a672&station=69e8ac16-4327-4af4-b873-fd5cd6e895a7

Cass Elliot photo
Simon Munnery photo

“Why do men die before their wives? Could it be because they want to?”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), Episode One

Chuck Palahniuk photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Neal Stephenson photo

“I have a phobia of anything that doesn't die in the microwave after five seconds.”

Shannon Hoon (1967–1995) singer-songwriter

MuchMusic interview (1995)

N. K. Jemisin photo

“So, there was a girl.
What I’ve guessed, and what the history books imply, is that she was unlucky enough to have been sired by a cruel man. He beat both wife and daughter and abused them in other ways. Bright Itempas is called, among other things, the god of justice. Perhaps that was why He responded when she came into His temple, her heart full of unchildlike rage.
“I want him to die,” she said (or so I imagine). “Please Great Lord, make him die.”
You know the truth now about Itempas. He is a god of warmth and light, which we think of as pleasant, gentle things. I once thought of Him that way, too. But warmth uncooled burns; light undimmed can hurt even my blind eyes. I should have realized. We should all have realized. He was never what we wanted Him to be.
So when the girl begged the Bright Lord to murder her father, He said, “Kill him yourself.” And He gifted her with a knife perfectly suited to her small, weak child’s hands.
She took the knife home and used it that very night. The next day, she came back to the Bright Lord, her hands and soul stained red, happy for the first time in her short life. “I will love you forever,” she declared. And He, for a rare once, found Himself impressed by mortal will.
Or so I imagine.
The child was mad, of course. Later events proved this. But it makes sense to me that this madness, not mere religious devotion, would appeal most to the Bright Lord. Her love was unconditional, her purpose undiluted by such paltry considerations as conscience or doubt. It seems like Him, I think, to value that kind of purity of purpose—even though, like warmth and light, too much love is never a good thing.”

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 11 “Possession” (watercolor) (pp. 202-203)

“But it is not time for me to die; I have not yet finished my life's work.”

Jan Burgers (1895–1981) Dutch physicist

Source: a little time before his death, as quoted by A. J. Q. Alkemade, in [Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland, 1982, http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn5/burgers]

Jerome K. Jerome photo
Camille Paglia photo
Shelly Kagan photo
Giuseppe Garibaldi photo

“Here we either make Italy, or we die.”

Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) Italian general and politician

Qui si fa l'Italia o si muore.
To his lieutenant Nino Bixio at the Battle of Calatafimi, 15 May 1860. Quoted in Giuseppe Cesare Abba, Storia dei Mille, ch. Dopo la vittoria.

Alex Salmond photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“There is that glorious Epicurean paradox uttered by my friend the Historian, in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries." To this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris."”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Holmes attributed the remark "Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris" to "one of the wittiest of men". Later writers have attributed the saying to friend and fellow Saturday Club member Thomas Gold Appleton. In 1859, Ralph Waldo Emerson, also a member of that club, recorded in one of his journals, "T. Appleton says, that he thinks all Bostonians, when they die, if they are good, go to Paris." Emerson in His Journals, ed. Joel Porte (1982), p. 486. Neither sentence has been found in the published writings of Appleton, but the remark may have been made in the presence of Holmes and Emerson. Oscar Wilde used the Holmes version in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), p. 75 (Complete Works, vol. 4, 1923), and A Woman of No Importance (1893), p. 180 (Complete Works, vol. 7, 1923).
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Samuel Rutherford photo
Cornstalk photo

“My son, the Great Spirit has seen fit that we should die together; and has sent you here. It is his will. Let us submit. It is best…”

Cornstalk (1720–1777) Native American in the American Revolution

To his son Elinipsico as a mob approached them in Point Pleasant (10 November 1777), as quoted in "Cornstalk, the Shawanee Chief" by Rev. William Henry Foote, in The Southern Literary Messenger Vol. 16, Issue 9, (September 1850) pp. 533-540 http://victorian.fortunecity.com/rothko/420/aniyuntikwalaski/cornstalk.html

Edouard Manet photo

“I beg you, if I die, don't let me go piecemeal into the public collections, my work would not be fairly judged. I want to get in complete or not at all... Please, please, promise me one thing, never let my things go into a museum piecemeal.”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

remark to his friend Antonin Proust; as cited in: Manet by Himself, p. 304; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe; Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 241
Antonin Proust had recently become minister of Arts in France
1876 - 1883

John Donne photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Warren Farrell photo
Andy Goldsworthy photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Conor Oberst photo

“There is no Hell when you die
so don't look so worried”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Light Pollution
Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (2005)