Quotes about die
page 21

“A doctor in rural South Africa describes his frustration. He says, "We have no medicines. Many hospitals tell people, you've got AIDS, we can't help you. Go home and die." In an age of miraculous medicines, no person should have to hear those words.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

State of the Union (28 January 2003) http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/texts/bush012003.html 2000s, 2003

People, Age, Home, Help

“If you have to help a person die, say nothing. Let the police do their own sleuthing.”

Derek Humphry book Final Exit

"Beware of the Law", p. 18
Final Exit

Help, Personality

“I plan on not dying, but if I have to, I want to die in Liverpool.”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Spin magazine (2008)

“If you are prepared to die, you are prepared to live.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On the death of John Evans Atta-Mills - "Prophet TB Joshua Opens Up On Atta-Mills' Death" https://www.naij.com/4448.html Naij (August 1 2012)

“It was like a quilt, a handmade, patterned quilt laid out for this man to take his final steps across and then lie down and die on: a quilted deathbed. It struck me that the world, or chance, or maybe death itself if you can speak of such a thing, must have loved this man in some way to prepare for him such a richly textured fabric to gather and wrap him up in.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 12.

Love, Death, Lie, World

“Through the vote, you'll change nothing in this country. Nothing, absolutely nothing. We'll only get change, unfortunately, when we go into a civil war here someday and do a work the military regime didn't do, killing as much as thirty thousand people, starting with FHC. It's all right if some innocent people die. Innocent people die in many wars.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Referring to the then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) at the program Câmera Aberta at Band on 23 May 1999. O dia que Bolsonaro quis matar FHC, sonegar impostos e declarar guerra civil http://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/politica/republica/o-dia-que-bolsonaro-quis-matar-fhc-sonegar-impostos-e-declarar-guerra-civil-8mtm0u0so6pk88kqnqo0n1l69. Gazeta do Povo (10 October 2017).

War, People, Change, Country

“Man is a complex being who makes deserts bloom and lakes die.”

Gladys Bronwyn Stern (1890–1973) British writer

Quoted in Women Know Everything!: 3,241 Quips, Quotes, and Brilliant Remarks By Karen Weekes, p. 305

“Forget 'redeeming social value,' dirty pictures are fun. When I die I want my ashes sprinkled over a nudist camp.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

The Venus Belt, 1980.

Forgetting

“I'm bent on proving that you can make living as musician and not die young and crazy like Mozart.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale - Quotes, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/index.html,

“He was going to die, and who knows that it could be in that same night? What crime had he committed in his entire life? None. He has carried all his life with the mirage of studying his nation, loving it, intending to contribute to its happiness and prosperity. He has spent all his adolescence in this project, and all his virility too. And now, in his elder ages, how did life return him this favor? Killing him!”

Lima Barreto book Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma

Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma (1915)

Love, Life, Happiness, Age

“Indeed I am ill-starred, for even if he dies I have no hope of happiness; with Jason dead, I should taste real misery. Away with modesty, farewell to my good name! Saved from all harm by me, let him go where he pleases, and let me die. On the very day of his success I could hang myself from a rafter or take a deadly poison. Yet even so my death would never save me from their wicked tongues. My fate would be the talk of every city in the world; and here the Colchian women would bandy my name about and drag it in mud – the girl who fancied a foreigner enough to die for him, disgraced her parents and her home, went off her head for love. What infamy would not be mine? Ah, how I grieve now for the folly of my passion! Better to die here in my room this very night, passing from life unnoticed, unreproached, than to carry through this horrible, this despicable scheme.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 783–801

Love, Life, Death, Women

“When we soar up above ourselves, And become, in our upward striving towards God, So simple, that the naked Love in the Heights can lay hold on us, There where Love cherishes Love, above all activity and all virtue (That is to say, in our Origin, wherefrom we are spiritually born)— Then we cease, and we and all that is our own die into God. And in this death we become hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves a new life, And that is Eternal Life. And of these Sons, St. Paul says: ‘Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ In our approach to God we must bear with us ourselves and all that we do, As a perpetual sacrifice to God; And in the Presence of God we must leave ourselves and all our works, And, dying in love, soar up above all created things into the Superessential Kingdom of God.
And of this the Spirit of God speaks in the Book of Hidden Things, saying: ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

From Evelyn Underhill Ruysbroeck (1915), p171
The Sparkling Stone (c. 1340)

Love, Life, Death, God

“Desire, abide, suffer and die unknown for all time; this is true sanctity!”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

Suffering, Time

“She don’t set no store to see a king. Her pa a king back in Africa, and they shoot him dead. Them Portuguese slavers show her what it mean to be a king—it mean you die quick like everybody, and spill blood red like everybody, and cry out loud in pain and scared—oh, fine to be a king, and fine to see one. Do them White folk believe this lie?”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 2.

Pain, Lie, Cry, Dead

“The work we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1830s, Boswell's Life of Johnson (1832)

Courage

“Behold over and over again I would briefly set out the words of my confession. I testify in truthfulness and gladness of heart before God and his holy angels that I never had any reason, except the Gospel and his promises, ever to have returned to that nation from which I had previously escaped with difficulty.
But I entreat those who believe in and fear God, whoever deigns to examine or receive this document composed by the obviously unlearned sinner Patrick in Ireland, that nobody shall ever ascribe to my ignorance any trivial thing that I achieved or may have expounded that was pleasing to God, but accept and truly believe that it would have been the gift of God. And this is my confession before I die.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

God, Truth, Fear, Angels

“First our pleasures die — and then
Our hopes, and then our fears — and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust — and we die too.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Death (Shelley, 2)

Death (1820), st. 3

Pleasure, Fear, Hope, Dead

“I know what they think they seek. But I know it to be a lie. Listen to me, Arren. You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose…. That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the light of sunrise and sunset, to buy safety for yourself—safety forever? That is what they seek to do on Wathort and Lorbanery and elsewhere. That is the message that those who know how to hear have heard: By denying life you may deny death and live forever!—And this message I do not hear, Arren, for I will not hear it. I will not take the counsel of despair.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 8, "The Children of the Open Sea" (Ged)

Life, Death, Lie, Thinking

“Are you making war upon us, because you anticipate that we will not endure such indignity, but that we will fight on behalf of our laws, and die in defence of our national customs? For you cannot possibly have been ignorant of what was likely to result from your attempt to introduce these innovations respecting our temple.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

Embassy to Gaius, Chapter 28-31, Yonge's translation.

War, Law, Fight

“Since Pharaoh’s bits were pushed into the jaws of kings, these dyings—patient or impatient, but dyings—have happened, by the hundreds of millions; they were all wasted. They taught us to kill others and to die ourselves, but never how to live. Who is “taught to live” by cruelty, suffering, stupidity, and that occupational disease of soldiers, death?”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poetry in War and Peace”, p. 129
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Death, Stupidity, Disease, Suffering

“The time has come for restlessness to be destroyed and the Kingdom of Peace to be established. Whether you take it as my prophecy or anything else, the Kingdom of Peace will be established soon. […] You must understand and have faith in my words. All I ask is your love, all I ask is your trust, and what I can give you is such a peace as will never die. I only need the opportunity[…] I declare that I will establish peace in the world. Just give me the reins and let me rule, and I will rule in such a way that even Rama, Harichandra, Krishna, and other kings could not have ruled like that! That day is fast approaching. So arise, awake, open the ears of each man, and tell him the time has come! Do not tell him that there was a festival. No! Make them understand he has come to reveal the Knowledge, that he has come to show us the true path. And if you truly give me the reins of your life, I swear by Guru Maharaj Ji, I swear by the one who has given me birth, that I will give you peace.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Peace Bomb satsang, 11 October 1970, India Gate, New Delhi, India (translated from Hindi)
1970s

Love, Life, World, Peace

“There is a view that one should never be permitted to be criticized for being even possibly in the future engaged in a contributory act that might be immoral, and that that type of arse-covering is more important than actually saving people's lives. That it is better to let a thousand people die than risk going to save them and possibly running over someone on the way. And that is something that I find to be philosophically repugnant.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

[Wikileaks:Secrets and Lies, http://www.channel4.com/programmes/wikileaks-secrets-and-lies/4od, 2012-06-30]

People, Way, Future

“We now remain, at least on paper, one of the last few countries in the world, where if you don’t die successfully, you’ll go to jail for attempting.”

Anand Gandhi (1980) Indian film director

"Landscape of the individual" in Indian Express (14 September 2015) http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/landscape-of-the-individual/

World, Country

“Our sacrifices are terrible. I can safely say that there is no other part of the world which has been devastated on a vaster scale than Yugoslavia. Every tenth Yugoslav has perished in this struggle in which we were forced to wrest armaments from our enemies, to freeze without clothing, and to die without medication.
Nevertheless our optimism and faith have proved justified. The greatest gain of this conflict between democracy and fascism lies in the fact that it has drawn together everything that was good in humanity. The unity of the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain is the best guarantee to the peoples of the world that Nazi horrors will never again be repeated.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

“Our Optimism and Faith” http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1945/02/04.htm Liberation magazine, page 3 (United Committee of South- Slavonic Americans, 1945) Writings

People, World, Faith, Democracy

“Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, p. 130
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Nature

“Mr. Speaker, in the brief time I have let me give you five reasons why I'm opposed to giving the President a blank check to launch a unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq and why I will vote against this resolution.One: I have not heard any estimates of how many young American men and women might die in such a war, or how many tens of thousands of women and children in Iraq might also be killed. As a caring nation, we should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause. War must be the last recourse in international relations, not the first.Second, I am deeply concerned about the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in terms of international law and the role of the United Nations. If President Bush believes that the US can go to war at any time against any nation, what moral or legal obligation can our government raise if another country chose to do the same thing.Third, the United States in now involved in a very difficult war against international terrorism, as we learned tragically on September eleventh. We are opposed by Osama Bin Ladin and religious fanatics who are prepared to engage in a kind of warfare that we have never experienced before. I agree with Brent Scowcroft, Republican former national security adviser for President George Bush senior, who stated and I quote, "An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize if not destroy the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken."Fourth, at a time when this country has a six-trillion dollar national debt and a growing deficit, we should be clear that a war and a long-term American occupation of Iraq could be extremely expensive.Fifth, I am concerned about the problems with so-called unintended consequences. Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed? And what role will the US play in an ensuing civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the regions who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists? Will the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be exacerbated? And these are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speech on Iraq War Resolution in US House of Representatives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdFw1btbkLM (9 October 2002) 2000s

Women, Men, War, Children

“Perhaps it is fortunate that most heroes who die for their people cannot come back to see what the people do with that hard-bought life and freedom.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 20, “Travelers and Messengers” (p. 639).

Life, People, Freedom

“The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a séance.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

T. H. Huxley in Life and Letters Volume 1, p. 249
Misattributed

Truth, Suicide

“The first encounter with Otto Mueller's paintings was in Berlin, at the showing of the 'Rejects of the Berlin Secession'. which took place at the Galerie Macht in the spring of 1910. And we met him personally the very same day in his studio on Mommsenstrasse. This meeting was significant for all of us and occurred at a fruitful moment; and, as a matter of course, he belonged to Die Brücke community from then on.”

Erich Heckel (1883–1970) German artist

a later recall of Heckel; as quoted in Expressionism, a German intuition, 1905-1920, Neugroschel, Joachim; Vogt, Paul; Keller, Horst; Urban, Martin; Dube, Wolf Dieter; (transl. Joachim Neugroschel); publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980, p. 93

Spring, Communication, Painting, Personality

“To be forgotten. The French say that to part is to die a little. To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (2012)

Parting

“I have heard much of these languishing lovers, but I never yet saw one of them die for love.”

Marguerite de Navarre book Heptaméron

First Day, Novel VIII (trans. W. K. Kelly)
L'Heptaméron (1558)

Love, Lovers

“As Hamas's charter makes clear, Hamas's immediate goal is to destroy Israel. But Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists. That’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the streets of Gaza as thousands of Americans were murdered on 9/11. And that's why its leaders condemned the United States for killing Osama bin Laden, whom they praised as a holy warrior.So when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas. And what they share in common, all militant Islamists share in common. Boko Haram in Nigeria; Ash-Shabab in Somalia; Hezbollah in Lebanon; An-Nusrah in Syria; The Mahdi Army in Iraq; And the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere. Some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shi'ites. Some want to restore a pre-medieval caliphate from the 7th century. Others want to trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the 9th century. They operate in different lands, they target different victims and they even kill each other in their quest for supremacy. But they all share a fanatic ideology. They all seek to create ever expanding enclaves of militant Islam where there is no freedom and no tolerance – Where women are treated as chattel, Christians are decimated, and minorities are subjugated, sometimes given the stark choice: convert or die. For them, anyone can be an infidel, including fellow Muslims. Ladies and Gentlemen, Militant Islam's ambition to dominate the world seems mad. But so too did the global ambitions of another fanatic ideology that swept to power eight decades ago. The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith. They just disagree about who among them will be the master… of the master faith. That's what they truly disagree about. Therefore, the question before us is whether militant Islam will have the power to realize its unbridled ambitions.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the United Nations General Assembly (September 2014), New York City, New York. As quoted in The Jerusalem Post https://web.archive.org/save/http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Full-text-of-Prime-Minister-Netanyahus-UN-speech-376626. 2010s, 2014

Women, World, Faith, Question

“Whatever your opinion of the post-9/11 wars, the need to invade Afghanistan or Iraq, none of that changes the decades old strategy and ideology of Global Jihad. Long before there was a Bush in the White House, Muslims with a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam declared war on all that is Un-Islamic, be it located in the Middle East, Europe or the US. Theirs is a totalitarian ideology, as universalist and absolute as anything Hitler or Stalin came up with, albeit with a holy sanction and promise of salvation. We are in their crosshairs as much as Assad, Maliki, or Sisi. Either everyone must live under Islamic law in a Caliphate, or they must die. Whether they live in a Christian enclave in Norther Iraq, or Washington, New York, or Houston.”

Sebastian Gorka (1970) American politician

Why ISIS is More Dangerous than Al Qaeda and What America Must Do About It http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/07/09/why-isis-is-more-dangerous-than-al-qaeda-and-what-america-must-do-about-it/ (July 9, 2014)

War, Law, Change, Housing

“Then he asked in German (the only language that we ever spoke): "Ist die Sowjetregierung eine faschistische Regierung? - Is the Soviet Government a fascist government?"… I sat silent for some moments. Then I said: "Ja, die Sowjetregierung ist eine faschistische Regierung - the Soviet Government is a fascist government"… Krivitsky turned for the first time and looked at me directly. "Du hast recht," he said, "und Kronstadt war der Wendepunkt”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

You are right, and Kronstadt was the turning point." (pp. 459-460)
Witness (1952)

War, Time

“Anyone wanting slyly to avoid suffering identifies with the entirety of the universe, judges each thing as if he were it. In the same way, he imagines, at bottom, that he will never die. We receive these hazy illusions like a narcotic necessary to bear life. But what happens to us when, disintoxicated, we learn what we are? Lost among babblers in a night in which we can only hate the appearance of light which comes from babbling. The self-acknowledged suffering of the disintoxicated is the subject of this book.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. xxxii

Life, Hate, Books, Way

“There grew her father's cypress tree,
No other monument had he.
He bade that never funeral stone
Should tell of glory overthrown,—
What could it say, but foreign sky
Had seen the exile pine and die?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Wreath
The Golden Violet (1827)

Tree

“When you are a genius, you do not have the right to die, because we are necessary for the progress of humanity..”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote, early January 1986, in: 'El País, Dalí vuelve a casa', 17 July 1986: as cited on Wikipedia: Salvador Dali
Dali was returned to the Teatro-Museo and on his return he made his last public appearance. He was taken in a wheelchair to a room where press and TV were waiting and made this brief public statement
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1981 - 1989

“There are two injustices which revolt Me! First, that which makes the people believe that those responsible for the [Franco-Khmer] treaty and who continue to have dealings with the French are traitors. Secondly, that which holds that… all who do not openly insult and struggle against the French are traitors… For Myself, I refuse [this logic]… If I am a traitor, let the Crown Council permit Me to abdicate!… I can no longer stand by and watch My country drown and My people die… Over these last few months we have no longer dared look each other in the face. In our offices and schools, everywhere people are discussing politics- suspecting each other; hatching plots; promoting this person, bringing down that one, pushing the third aside; doing no constructive work while, in the country at large, killing, banditry and murder hold sway. Chaos reigns, the established order has ceased to exist… The military and the police… no longer know where their duty lies. The Issaraks are told that they are dying for Cambodia, and so are our soldiers dying in battle against them… Each day threatens [to engulf us in] a veritable civil war… This is how things now stand gentlemen. The time has come for the Nation to make clear whether it desires to follow [the way of the rebels], or to continue in the path that I have traced.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Speech to the Council of the Throne (June 4, 1952), as quoted in Philip Short (2004) Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare, page 76.
Speeches

War, People, School, Way

“Life is so much easier today than it was a hundred years ago. People used to have to work on farms from sun-up to sun-down, and still their children would die, and there often wouldn't be enough to eat. I wouldn't have lasted three days under such conditions. I have no right to be alive.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

July 22
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Life, Children, People, Sun

“Place honey on the altars and die,
You lovers that are bitter at heart.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Lovers, Heart

“…institutions like the House of Lords must die, like all other organic beings, when their time comes.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Letter to Alfred Austin (29 April 1888), from Paul Smith (ed.), Lord Salisbury on politics: a selection from his articles in the Quarterly Review, 1860–83 (1972), p. 39, footnote
1880s

Time, Housing

“We saw your [ Cuno Amiet's ] work with feelings of admiration and enthusiasm... Our group [ Die Brücke ] would be exceedingly glad to find in you a comrade in arms and a champion of its cause.”

Erich Heckel (1883–1970) German artist

Quote of Heckel, in a letter of 1 September 1906, to the Swiss artist Amiet; as cited by Günter Krüger, in Die Künstlergemeinschaft Brücke und die Schweiz; as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; by Museum Associates, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 70
Amiet's radically simplified art-style obviously attracted the younger artists of Die Brücke

Feeling

“Yeah, the good news about the move to abolish the death tax, the tax where they come and look at how much money you've got when you die, how much gold is in your teeth and they want half of it, is that — you're right, there's an exemption for — I don't know — maybe a million dollars now, and it's scheduled to go up a little bit. However, 70 percent of the American people want to abolish that tax. Congress, the House and Senate, have three times voted to abolish it. The president supports abolishing it, so that tax is going to be abolished. I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, 'Yes, well, that's only 2 percent,' or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax. I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. 'I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else.' And this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centerpiece of their lives, they may have other things to focus on, they just say it's not just. If you've paid taxes on your income once, the government should leave you alone. Shouldn't come back and try and tax you again.”

Grover Norquist (1956) Conservative Lobbyist

interview with NPR's Terry Gross on the program Fresh Air, October 2, 2003.
2003

Death, Money, Hate, People

“My trainer was a great guy … who made me want to die for an hour. My character was spending most of his life in a state of hunger, and I wanted to get a sense of that, physically and mentally.”

Liam Hemsworth (1990) Australian actor

Hemsworth on physical training for The Hunger Games. — [Liam's in shape, but he loves doughnuts, The Orlando Sentinel, August 3, 2012, Tribune Newspapers, A2, Sentinel Communications Co.]

Life, Hunger, Guy, Sense

“Die, my dear doctor! That's the last thing I shall do!”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Apocryphal account of Palmerston's last words - Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men, 6th ed., comp. by Samuel Arthur Bent. Boston: Ticknor and Co., 1887; [Date of Printout]. via Bartleby.com http://www.bartleby.com/344/308.html Misattributed

“I, Charles, Prince of Wales, do become your liege man of life and limb and of earthly worship and faith and truth I will bear unto you to live and die against all manner of folks.”

Charles, Prince of Wales (1948) son of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Oath of fealty taken by the Prince at his investiture at Caernarfon Castle, 1 July 1969.
1960s

Life, Truth, Faith

“I understood by my reason and by my feeling of my pains that I should die; and I assented fully with all the will of my heart to be at God’s will.
Thus I dured till day, and by then my body was dead from the middle downwards, as to my feeling. Then was I minded to be set upright, backward leaning, with help, — for to have more freedom of my heart to be at God’s will, and thinking on God while my life would last.”

Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love

Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Chapter 3

Life, God, Pain, Feeling

“Tell me, ye that strive in vain to cramp and dwarf the soul,
Wherefore should it cease to be, and when shall essence die?”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Of Immortality.
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1849)

Soul

“[on John McCain being too old] When you die at 72, no matter what you die of, it's natural causes. Even if you get hit by a truck, it's natural causes. 'Cause if you was younger, you'd have got out the way!”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Kill the Messenger (2008)

Way, Nature

“Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 6

Reading

“Perhaps the most dangerous element that was picked out of the Muslim tradition and changed and transformed in the hands of these young men who perpetrated Sept. 11 is this idea of committing suicide. They call it martyrdom, of course. Suicide is firmly rejected in Islam as an act of worship. In the tradition, generally, to die in battle for a larger purpose -- that is, for the sake of the community at large -- is a noble thing to do. Self-sacrifice yourself as you defend the community -- that is a traditional thing, and that has a traditional meaning of "jihad." But what is non-traditional, what is new is this idea that jihad is almost like an act of private worship. You become closer to God by blowing yourself up in such a way. You, privately, irrespective of what effect it has on everyone else…. For these young men, that is the new idea of jihad. This idea of jihad allows you to lose all the old distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, between just and unjust wars, between the rules of engagement of different types. All of that is gone, because now the act of martyrdom is an act of worship… in and of itself. It's like going on the pilgrimage. It's like paying your alms, which every Muslim has to do. It's like praying in the direction of Mecca, and so on and so forth. It is an individual act of worship. That's terrifying, and that's new. That's an entirely new idea, which these young men have taken out, developed.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Men, God, War, Way

“And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

"When I'm Gone" http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/when-im-gone.html from Phil Ochs in Concert (1966) Lyrics

Question

“Some are born to move the world, to live their fantasies
But most of us just dream about the things we'd like to be
Sadder still to watch it die, then never to have known it
For you, the blind who once could see
The bell tolls for thee…
-- Losing It (1982)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

World, Dreams

“The philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet. I became a vegetarian in 1965. … Under the leadership of Dr. King I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like—but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Source: Dick Gregory's Natural Diet For Folks Who Eat (1973), pp. 15-16

Life, Death, Pain, War

“I want to say I may have seen my son die this morning.”

Michael Joyce (1945) American academic and writer

"afternoon, a story" (1990)

“Inconsiderate to the last, Josef Stalin, a man who never had to meet a deadline, had the bad taste to die in installments.”

A. J. Liebling (1904–1963) American journalist

The New Yorker, March 28, 1953, quoted in David Remnick, "Reporting It All: A.J. Liebling at 100", The New Yorker, March 29, 2004.

“No one in his right mind wants to die. That cry is God-given. The Bible tells us that God has put eternity in our hearts.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

God, Heart, Cry

“I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"Her Kind"
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

Learning

“But here one may take occasion to wonder at one Judas, who was of the sect of the Essens, and who never missed the truth in his predictions; for this man, when he saw Antigonus passing by the temple, cried out to his companions and friends, who abode with him as his scholars, in order to learn the art of foretelling things to come?" That it was good for him to die now, since he had spoken falsely about Antigonus, who is still alive, and I see him passing by, although he had foretold he should die at the place called Strato's Tower that very day, while yet the place is six hundred furlongs off, where he had foretold he should be slain; and still this day is a great part of it already past, so that he was in danger of proving a false prophet." As he was saying this, and that in a melancholy mood, the news came that Antigonus was slain in a place under ground, which itself was called also Strato's Tower, or of the same name with that Cesarea which is seated at the sea. This event put the prophet into a great disorder.”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 13.11.2
Antiquities of the Jews

Truth, Art, Mood, Learning

“Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Antithesis
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IV - Memory and Design

Life, Death, Memory, Forgetting

“If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.”

Stephen King book Christine

Pt. 1, Ch. 5
Christine (1983)

Learning

“Why were so few voices raised in the ancient world in protest against the ruthlessness of man? Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The idolatry of might," Volume 1, p. 159
The Prophets (1962)

People, World

“Dicaeopolis: Well, how are things at Megara?
Megarian: We are crying with hunger at our firesides.
Dicaeopolis: The fireside is jolly enough with a piper. But what else is doing at Megara, eh?
Megarian: What else? When I left for the market, the authorities were taking steps to let us die in the quickest manner.
Dicaeopolis: That is the best way to get you out of all your troubles.
Megarian: True.
Dicaeopolis: What other news of Megara? What is wheat selling at?
Megarian: With us it is valued as highly as the very gods in heaven!”

Aristophanés The Acharnians

tr. Athen. 1912, vol. 1, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Ach.+751 Acharnians, line 751-759 Acharnians (425 BC)

Hunger, God, Way, Cry

“I think that part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids…Because as soon as you have a kid, you know for sure that you're going to die. When you have a kid, you see your own gravestone.”

Stephen King book Christine

Pt. 1, Ch. 3
Christine (1983)

Thinking, Parent, Parting

“Mie love ys dedde,
Gon to hys death-bedde,
Al under the wyllowe tree. Waterre wytches, crownede wythe reytes,
Bere mee to yer leathalle tyde.
I die; I comme; mie true love waytes.
Thos the damselle spake, and dyed.”

Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) English poet, forger

Ælla; a Tragycal Enterlude, "Mynstrelles Songe", line 54.

Love, Death, Tree

“"The "futures" and "careers" for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers' paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children. But an important minority of men and women coming to the front today have shown they will die rather than be standardized, replaceable, and irrelevant.”

Mario Savio (1942–1996) American activist

"An End to History" Humanity (December 1964).

Women, Men, Children, Future

“17. Wednesday. A fine morning. Proceeded on my journey towards Braintree. Stopped to see Mr. Haven, of Dedham, who told me, very civilly, he supposed I took my faith on trust from Dr. Mayhew, and added, that he believed the doctrine of satisfaction of Jesus Christ to be essential to Christianity, and that he would not believe this satisfaction unless he believed the Divinity of Christ. Mr. Balch was there too, and observed, he would not be a Christian if he did not believe mysteries of the gospel; that he could bear with an Arminian, but when, Dr. Mayhew they denied the Divinity and satisfaction of Christ, he had no more to do with them; that he knew to make of Dr. Mayhew's two discourses upon the expected of all things. They gave him an idea of a cart whose wanted greasing; it rumbled on in a hoarse, rough manner; there was a good deal of ingenious talk in them, but it was thrown together in a jumbled, confused order. He believed the Doctor wrote them in a great panic. He added further that Arminians, however stiffly they maintain their opinions in health, always, he takes notice, retract when they come to die, and choose to die Calvinists. Set out for Braintree, and arrived about sunset.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Entry for 17 February 1756 in Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams vol. 2, 10-1
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)

Health, Faith, Idea, Christ

“Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

"The Preacher and the Slave" http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave (1911)

Night

“Fascism, since that is the word that is used, fascism presents, wherever it manifests itself, characteristics which are varied to the extent that countries and national temperaments vary. It is essentially a defensive reaction of the organism, a manifestation of the desire to live, of the desire not to die, which at certain times seizes a whole people. So each people reacts in its own way, according to its conception of life. Our rising, here, has a Spanish meaning! What can it have in common with Hitlerism, which was, above all, a reaction against the state of things created by the defeat, and by the abdication and the despair that followed it?”

Francisco Franco (1892–1975) Spanish general and dictator

Life, People, Way, Time

“No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it's paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-10-11
Romney in Central Ohio
Health care called ‘choice’
The Columbus Dispatch
Joe Vardon, Darrel Rowland and Joe Hallett
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/10/11/health-care-called-choice.html
2012-10-12
2012

People

“Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live; will you tell us when to die?
I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Where Do the Children Play?
Song lyrics, Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

Children, Way, Change, Cry

“Whoa there, lad! Whoa! Gentle now! Die well, die well.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Sergeant Michael Connelly, p. 184
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

“Longevity for a columnist is a simple proposition: once you start, you don't stop. You do it until you die, or can no longer put a sentence together. It has always been my intention to die at my desk, although my most cherished ambition is to outlive the estate tax.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, 18 December 2009, An anniversary of sorts http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer121809.php3#.WzW2c8KWyUk at jewishworldreview.com. 2000s, 2009

“Either communism must die or Christianity must die because it's actually a battle between Christ and anti-Christ.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

"Satan's Religion" in American Mercury (August 1954), p. 41

Communication, Christ

“Hurrying to die,
It’s difficult to find a last word.
If I spoke the wordless word,
I wouldn’t speak at all!”

Dokyo Etan (1642–1721) Son of Sanada Nobuyuki

Richard Bryan McDaniel. Zen Masters of Japan. The Second Step East. Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle Publishing, 2014. p. 122.

“GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: I may be allowed this occasion to say that, in undertaking to discharge the duties of the Chair, I relied for success rather upon your forbearance and kindly aid than upon any poor abilities of my own. That reliance, I am happy to say, has not failed me. On the contrary, the untiring efforts I feel I have made to perform the task in a becoming manner, have been met and sustained with a degree of liberality seldom equaled in any deliberative body. A striking illustration of this is seen in the fact, that notwithstanding the multiplied questions of parliamentary law and usage which have arisen, and in despite of errors into which I may have fallen, each and all the decisions of the Chair, with a single exception, (and that upon a question of minor importance,) have been generously sustained by this body. And as a further mark of respect and kindness, you have been pleased to adopt a resolution approving of my general conduct as the Presiding Officer of this body. In all this, I feel that I have been peculiarly fortunate; and for it all I beg you will accept my most sincere thanks.Allow me to congratulate you, gentlemen, upon the harmony and personal kindness which have so generally prevailed throughout this Hall. It must remain a source of unmixed pleasure to us all, that our conflicts of opinion here, however fierce they may occasionally have been, were not allowed materially to disturb our social relations; and that now, having finished our work, we part in peace. This House stands adjourned sine die.”

Linn Boyd (1800–1859) American politician

Journal Of the House of Representatives the United States: Second Session of the Thirty-Second Congress (1853-03-03)

Happiness, Pleasure, Peace, Law

“Thy thoughts to nobler meditations give,
And study how to die, not how to live.”

George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne (1666–1735) 1st Baron Lansdowne

Meditations on Death, Stanza 1; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 504.

Study

“To-morrow let us do or die.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Part III, stanza 37
Gertrude of Wyoming (1809)

“Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or smoot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1830s, Boswell's Life of Johnson (1832)

Age

“We can safely make one prophecy: whatever the outcome of this war, the British Empire is at an end. It has been mortally wounded. The future of the British people is to die of hunger and tuberculosis in their cursed island.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

4 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

Hunger, War, People, Future

“"Poor humans; they will all die."
"Poor us; we will not."”

Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep (1st edition)

Prologue (p. 2).
A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)

“Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
My own high-bosom'd beauty, who increase
Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
Through many years they toil; then on a day
They die not, — for their life was death, — but cease;
And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

The Choice

Life, Death, Beauty, Way

“Refusing to forgive never made anyone feel better about anything. All you are doing is holding on to feelings of upset, anger and jealousy and that can never be good. I once read that being angry and unforgiving towards someone else is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Jealousy, Feeling, Forgiveness, Drink

“The greying east brightened, metamorphosed to pink, then red, and then the giant ball of fire rose out of the blackened hills. Across the desolation lay a supreme indifference, the casualness of night and another day, and yet the secret intimacy of those hills, their silent consoling wonder, made death a thing of no great importance. You could die, but the desert would hide the secret of your death, it would remain after you, to cover your memory with ageless wind and heat and cold.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Death, Secret, Memory, Night

“But once I had a Jabscreen of my own, I soon discovered the novelty lasts six months, tops. There's a limit to how many conversations you can have about it before you reach burnout. Have you seen the app which takes your photo and makes it look like you're really fat? Yes. And the game where you land all the planes on the runway? Yes, that too. Hey, how about this thing with the funny red monster that repeats everything you say? Please leave me. Please just leave me here to die.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Guardian columns

Photo, Game

“love is more thicker than forget
…it is more sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

42
50 Poems (1940)

Love, Forgetting

“I won't die, eaten alive," he said. He put a fresh clip in his gun. I'll do you first if you want, or you can do it yourself.
Save your bullets, Edward. I lifted a can of gasoline in one hand.
What are you planning? he asked.
I'm going to set the shed on fire. I splashed gasoline on the door. The smell was sharp and tugged at the back of my throat.
With us inside? he asked.
Yes.
I'd rather shoot myself, if it's all the same to you.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Edward and Anita
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Guilty Pleasures (1993)

“To be born is to have commenced to die.”

Théophile Gautier Paris

Naître, c'est seulement commencer à mourir.
"L'Horloge", line 24, in Poésies Complètes (Paris: Charpentier, 1845) p. 324; Lewis Nkosi Mating Birds (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1983) p. 46.

“To give is best, live responsibly or die.”

Lisa Mason book Summer of Love

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 2 “Do You Believe in Magic?” (p. 43)

“No. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 7 (pp. 228-229)

Life, Women, Men, People

“In misery's darkest cavern known,
His useful care was ever nigh
Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,
And lonely want retir'd to die.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Stanza 5
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)

“Statistics are silly unless given context. If you have one foot in fire, the other in ice, can we legitimately say that, on average, you're warm? Hardly. Probabilities, in this case the chance that any one of us will die-by-Muslim, are statistically insignificant—unless this happens to you or to yours, to me or mine.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

2010s, 2017

Chance

“Well tonight I'm gonna live for today, so come along for the ride,
I hope I'm old before I die.”

Robbie Williams (1974) British singer and entertainer

Old Before I Die
Life Thru a Lens (1997)

Hope

“So it was that the Catherines poured water and spooned gruel, while the Clares prayed for the intercession of the saints. The Catherines changed sheets. The Clares practiced mortification of the flesh. The Catherines employed antibiotics. The Clares made a public display of a kneecap of their patron saint.
It was soon widely know to which hospital one went to get well, and to which one went to die.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 9, “The Plague Kitchen” (p. 141)

Water, Change

“[Martin Luther King, Jr. ] concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the 'loving your enemies' sermon this way: "So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you,'I love you. I would rather die than hate you.'" Go ahead and reread that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you."”

Sarah Vowell The Wordy Shipmates

The Wordy Shipmates (2008)

Love, Hate, World, Beauty

“Ten thousand people a day die of starvation, according to a United Nations survey. Thousands more die from disease daily: we have earth-quakes, floods. droughts and pestilence. These are only a few of the evidences which show us that something is drastically wrong with our relationship with our creator. All of humanity’s problems stem from rebellion to The Word of God. Since mans rejection of God we have lived in this fallen state, where our weather patterns are chaotic, animals devour each other, our crops are diseased, and multitudes are suffering and dying from sickness and disease. These are stark reminders that what The Word of God says is true.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)

God, People, Disease, Problem

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) United States Senator

Concession speech in his campaign for nomination as the Democratic Presidential candidate against incumbent Jimmy Carter at the Democratic Convention in New York City (12 August 1980).
This has sometimes been misquoted as "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die."

Dreams, Hope