Quotes about die
page 25

“O lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
O press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Indian Serenade

The Indian Serenade (1819), st. 3

Love, Kiss, Grass, Heart

“You say they have the right of property in their slaves. Suppose they have, how sacred is this right of property? I want to argue the moral question of it. How sacred is this right of property in the living bodies and souls of men? Just as sacred as it is in a horse? Just as sacred as the tenure of property in a mule? Suppose it is, you own them. As you own a horse or mule. Is the right of property in a horse more sacred than my life? Is the right of property in a mule more sacred than my right to free speech? I tell them, and I tell the people all over the country, if they have a system of an institution that will not allow me to live or speak or read my papers, or worship my God as I please, then I say in God's name that thing must die. My rights I will have!”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838&ndash;64 https://web.archive.org/web/20160319081405/https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA238#v=onepage&q&f=false (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 238 1860s, Speech (October 1860)

Life, Men, God, People

“It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log, dry, bald and sere:
A lily of a day,
Is fairer far, in May,
Although it fall, and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

LXX, To the Immortal Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison, lines 65-74
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Life, Beauty, Flowers, Tree

“I was born ambitious, I suppose I shall die ambitious. I can no more change it than the colour of my eyes.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Russell Harty Plus, ITV (1973), excerpted in "Odd Man Out", BBC TV profile by Michael Cockerell transmitted on 11 November 1995
1970s

Change

“After the rainy season was over, he led an expedition towards the fort of Udit Nagar in AH 912 (AD 1506-07)…“…Although those inside the fort tried their utmost to seek a pardon, but he did not listen to them, and the fort was breached at many points and conquered… The Sultãn thanked Allãh in die wake of his victory… He got the temples demolished and mosques constructed in their stead…”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Sikandar Lodî (AD 1489-1517) Udit Nagar (Madhya Pradesh)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Victory, Season

“Two faiths were on trial. Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies… At heart, the Great Case was this critical conflict of faiths; that is why it was a great case.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 4

Faith, Heart

“What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven't done.”

Tom Hurndall (1981–2004) British activist

Diary, (November 2001) Memorial Address by Jocelyn Hurndall (PDF) https://web.archive.org/web/20060108221709/http://www.tomhurndall.co.uk/memorial/Address%20at%20Memorial%20Westminster%20Cathedral%20_2_.pdf

Life, Happiness, Smile, Animals

“When I die, when I die, I'll rot.
But when I live, but when I live,
I'll give it all I've got.”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Age of Adz"
Lyrics, The Age of Adz (2010)

“We must die without much delay, and corpses may not require such expansive wrappings, in order to go the way of all flesh. The inner wealth of brotherhood will be the same ephemeral spectre, rotting into tree bark like the spurious treasure of Rübezahl, the German mountain spirit, unless it shows it has the strength to withstand even death, and conquer death; and thus not only to undergo it but to be strongly above it as an essential part of eternal life.”

Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) German philosopher

Denn wir müssen sterben, mit kurzem Verzug, und vielleicht brauchen die Leichen keinen so weiten Faltenwurf, den Weg alles Fleisches zu gehen. Der brüderlich innere Reichtum wird nicht minder kurzer Spuk, verwest zu Baumrinde wie Rübezahls falsche Schätze: zeigt sich in ihm keine Kraft, gar den Tod zu bestehen, zu besiegen, mithin nicht nur von unten an hindurch zu gehen, sondern auch an sich selbst ein kräftig oberer Teil zu sein und das Wesenselement des ewigen Lebens.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 41

Life, Death, Way, Mountain

“Master, we can start now; I have killed them all.'
'I am very sorry to hear it,' said Tripitaka. 'One has no right to kill robbers, however violent and wicked they may be. The most one may do is to bring them before a magistrate. It would have been quite enough in this case if you had driven them away. Why kill them? You have behaved with a cruelty that ill becomes one of your sacred calling.'
'If I had not killed them,' said Monkey, 'they would have killed you.'
'A priest,' said Tripitaka, 'should be ready to die rather than commit acts of violence.”

Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 14 (p. 132)

“All programs in the future will be written in a way that there is no single point of failure. There's no one server that can die and take down the service.”

Ray Ozzie (1955) American businessman

Ray Ozzie's view from the clouds http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10400244-56.html in CNET (18 November 2009).

Way, Failure, Future

“Leave a message, don't leave a message. live, die, it's all the same dream.”

Ben Elton book This Other Eden

This Other Eden (1993)

Dreams

“When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were, only we shall understand the whole thing.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Understanding, Madness

“What see we here? Forms, nothing more! Forms fill the brightest, strongest eye,
We know not substance; 'mid the shades shadows ourselves we live and 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)

“I live,
But live to die: and, living, see no thing
To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,
A loathsome and yet all invincible
Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I
Despise myself, yet cannot overcome—
And so I live. Would I had never lived!”

George Gordon Byron book Cain

Cain (1821), Act I, sc. i.

Life, Death, Hate

“Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd,
Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.”

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

The Choice

Love, Drink, Wine, Change

“Let anger pass, make a place for it; do not impede its progress; do not disturb its development, give it the time it needs to die out, open a wide path for it.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Time, Anger

“I am not afraid of reprisals, I have no children, no wife, no car, no debt. It might sound a bit pompous, but I'd prefer to die on my feet than to live on my knees.”

Charb (1967–2015) French caricaturist and journalist

Xavier Ternisien, A "Charlie Hebdo", on n'a "pas l’impression d’égorger quelqu’un avec un feutre" http://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2012/09/20/je-n-ai-pas-l-impression-d-egorger-quelqu-un-avec-un-feutre_1762748_3236.html, Le Monde, 20 september 2012.

Children, Cars

“So might we die, not envying them that live;
So would we die, not unrevenged all.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Noi morirem, né invidia avremo ai vivi:
Noi morirem, ma non morremo inulti.
Canto II, stanza 86 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Envy

“We all laugh and cough with the same language and will die with the same language as well!”

Javad Alizadeh (1953) cartoonist, journalist and humorist

Quoted in Humor & Caricature (June 1995), p. 3

“Every evening after dinner, a new life began. There was no hurry. Some walked in the garden. Others smoked. About nine o’clock we made our way alone or in twos and threes to the Study House. Outdoor shoes came off and soft shoes or moccasins were put on. We sat quietly, each on his or her own cushion, round the floor in the centre. Men sat on the right, women on the left; never together.

Some went straight on to the stage and began to practice the rhythmic exercises. On our first arrival, each of us had the right to choose his own teacher for the movements. I had chosen Vasili Ferapontoff, a young Russian, tall, with a sad studious face. He wore pince-nez, and looked the picture of the perpetual student, Trofimov, in The Cherry Orchard. He was a conscientious instructor, though not a brilliant performer. I came to value his friendship, which continued until his premature death ten years later. He told me in one of our first conversations that he expected to die young.

The exercises were much the same as those I had seen in Constantinople three years before. The new pupils, such as myself, began with the series called Six Obligatory Exercises. I found them immensely exciting, and worked hard to master them quickly so that I could join in the work of the general class.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

Source: Witness: the Story of a Search (1962), p. 90–91 cited in: "Gurdjieff’s Temple Dances by John G. Bennett", Gurdjieff International Review, on gurdjieff.org; About Fontainebleau 1923

Life, Death, Women, Men

“This year alone, total world cereal production was estimated to be 2,114 million tones, while total cereal demand was projected at around 1007 million tones, less than half of the cereal production. Ideally, no one should starve or die of hunger in the world we live. Strangely and sadly enough, they do. This is not fair. This is not right.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

On World Food Day in Rome. 2007-10-17 http://ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2007/10/17/100596.html 2007

Hunger, World

“If you are thinking of ending your life because you are depressed, or cannot cope with the pressures of this difficult world, do not use this book. … Please respect the true intentions of Final Exit: the right of a terminally ill person with unbearable suffering to know how to choose to die.”

Derek Humphry book Final Exit

Cautionary words
Final Exit

Life, Books, World, Thinking

“Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay. It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering just the same. Youth is the drastic antiseptic. It will not let the elders cry peace, where there is no peace. By its fierce sarcasms it keeps issues alive in the world until they are settled right. It drags skeletons from closets and insists that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and distrusts the younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

Page 438 https://books.google.com/books?id=-F8wAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA438. Quote republished in " Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty http://alexpeak.com/twr/lar/1/1/2/," Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 1, no. 1 (Spring, 1965), p. 22 http://alexpeak.com/twr/lar/1/1/2/#p22. "Youth" (1912), II

Youth, World, Fear, Peace

“I shall be like that tree; I shall die from the top.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Predicting that he would go senile, as quoted in The Highway of Letters and its Echos of Famous Footsteps (1893) by Thomas Archer, p. 380

Tree

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”

Albert Camus book The Stranger

The Stranger (1942)

“You were compelled to?' he repeated. 'You mean you weren't sufficiently powerful to resist?'
'In order to seize power,' replied the dictator, 'I had to take it from those that had it, and in order to keep it I had to employ it against those that sought to deprive me of it.'
The chef's hat gave a nod. 'An old, old story. It has been repeated a thousand times, but no one believes it. That's why it will be repeated a thousand times more.'
The dictator felt suddenly exhausted. He would gladly have sat down to rest, but the old man and the children walked on and he followed them.
'What about you?' he blurted out, when he had caught the old man up. 'What do you know of power? Do you seriously believe that anything great can be achieved on earth without it?'
'I?' said the old man. 'I cannot tell great from small.'
'I wanted power so that I could give the world justice,' bellowed the dictator, and blood began to trickle afresh from the wound in his forehead, 'but to get it I had to commit injustice, like anyone who seeks power. I wanted to end oppression, but to do so I had to imprison and execute those who opposed me - I became an oppressor despite myself. To abolish violence we must use it, to eliminate human misery we must inflict it, to render war impossible we must wage it, to save the world we must destroy it. Such is the true nature of power.'
Chest heaving, he had once more barred the old man's path with his pistol ready.'
'Yet you love it still,' the old man said softly.
'Power is the supreme virture!' The dictator's voice quavered and broke. 'But its sole shortcoming is sufficient to spoil the whole: it can never be absolute - that's what makes it so insatiable. The only true form of power is omnipotence, which can never be attained, hence my disenchantment with it. Power has cheated me.'
'And so,' said the old man, 'you have become the very person you set out to fight. It happens again and again. That is why you cannot die.'
The dictator slowly lowered his gun. 'Yes,' he said, 'you're right. What's to be done?'
'Do you know the legend of the Happy Monarch?' asked the old man.
…
'When the Happy Monarch came to build the huge, mysterious palace whose planning alone had occupied ten whole years of his life, and to which marvelling crowds made pilgrimage long before its completion, he did something strange. No one will ever know for sure what made him do it, whether wisdom or self-hatred, but the night after the foundation stone had been laid, when the site was dark and deserted, he went there in secret and buried a termites' nest in a pit beneath the foundation stone itself. Many decades later - almost a life time had elapsed, and the many vicissitudes of his turbulent reign had long since banished all thought of the termites from his mind - when the unique building was finished at last and he, its architect and author, first set foot on the battlements of the topmost tower, the termites, too, completed their unseen work. We have no record of any last words that might shed light on his motives, because he and all his courtiers were buried in the dust and rubble of the fallen palace, but long-enduring legend has it that, when his almost unmarked body was finally unearthed, his face wore a happy smile.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Mirror in the Mirror", page 193

Love, Life, Wisdom, War

“Your job is not to die for your country. Your job is to get the other poor sonofabitch to die for his country.”

Ben Bova (1932) American science fiction and science writer

Orion Among The Stars (1995)

Country

“Whom the gods love, die young.”

Mimnermus (-670) ancient Greek poet

Fragment 111

Love, God

“And by the way, there is some irony here, when we are told that we need these workers to support an aging society, yet, over the past three decades we have allowed over 40 million Americans to die in abortion clinics. Why have we turned our hearts on our own innocent babies and embraced the culture of death? We no longer even talk about the tragedy of abortion or its consequences on our mothers, our culture, or our land. Instead, of course, we are replacing- we are seeking to replace the missing with an imported servant class.”

Tom Tancredo (1945) American politician

Death, Age, Way, Support

“In all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter Thirteen (p. 434).

Age

“I’m not waiting to die, I don’t believe I’ll die, I am waiting for something else.
To arrive. To understand. To be at my destination.”

China Miéville book The Scar

Part 1 “Channels”, Interlude II (p. 65)
The Scar (2002)

Understanding, Waiting

“You have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran, "though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night's rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me—the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch—the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution for the sake of example—a man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour if he likes—Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you also. Today Kemp is to die.”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 27: The Seige of Kemp's House

Death, People, Food, Imagination

“They die and leave their wives their money. I should know, shouldn't I? Sometimes they're driving home from their mistress's apartment and their brakes suddenly fail. An accident, Delores, can be an unhappy woman's best friend.”

Stephen King book Dolores Claiborne

Dolores Claiborne (1992)

Money, Home

“Die goldene Medina. The accent was not on the golden (except in the sense of some mysterious Light), but on the Medina - that is, the city of hope, the city of deliverance. (p. 281)”

Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) Defected Communist spy

Cold Friday (1964)

Hope, Sense, Light

“If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Nature

“Would we be existent O men, while people are frightened at home? what kind of manhood is this? what would we say to God in the judge day as we are responsible for the security of people? no we would better go and die.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by el-Sisi during a military conference (28 April 2013) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC93fn9s3-c. 2013

Men, God, People, Home

“For thy sake, tobacco, I
Would do anything but die.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)

“I live and will live for the Church; I live and will die for her.”

Francisco Palau (1811–1872) Beatified Spanish Discalced Carmelite friar and priest

Vivo y viviré por la Iglesia; vívo y moriré por ella. As quoted in "Father Francisco Palau y Quer A Passion for the Church" by Carmelite Missionaries, Rome, as translated by David Joseph Centner http://www.ourgardenofcarmel.org/palau.html

“We live among particulars, but we always want and see something more than any particular can give or reveal—thus our restlessness, our boredom, our suffering. We are certain to die, although we find in ourselves tokens of undying spirit—thus our sense of living under the pressure of an intolerable contradiction between our experience of selfhood and our recognition of the unyielding limits nature imposes on our existence. We can see only dimly beyond the boundaries of the social world that we ourselves make—thus our confusion, our inability to place our undeniable suffering and our apparent accomplishment within a context of all contexts that would keep them safe from doubt and denigration.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 24

World, Nature, Sense, Suffering

“You cannot die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

musings of Princess Meredith; p. 41
Merry Gentry series, A Stroke of Midnight (2005)

Death, Happiness, World, Smile

“When we don't allow ourselves to hope, we don't allow ourselves to have purpose. Without purpose, without meaning, life is dark. We've no light within, and we're just living to die.”

Dean Koontz book From the Corner of His Eye

Source: From the Corner of His Eye (2000), Chapter 41; words of Agnes Lampion

Life, Hope, Light

“Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow….
In this world – as I have known it – we are made to suffer without the shadow of a reason, of a cause or of guilt….
There is no morality, no knowledge and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that… is always but a vain and fleeting appearance….
A moment, a twinkling of an eye and nothing remains – but a clod of mud, of cold mud, of dead mud cast into black space, rolling around an extinguished sun. Nothing. Neither thought, nor sound, nor soul. Nothing.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, quoted in Joseph Conrad: A Biography (1991) by Jeffrey Meyers, p. 166

World, Faith, Hope, Soul

“He who weeps does not die; weeping is a sign of life; weep, and your life is worth something again.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

Life

“The Tippoo still led the fight. […] Those gaudy stones made him a target for every redcoat and sepoy, yet he insisted on staying in the very front rank where he could pour his rifle fire at the stalled attackers, and his charms worked, for though the bullets flicked close none hit him. He was the Tiger of Mysore, he could not die, only kill.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 358
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

Fight

“What to do now? How to detach yourself?
With every work that’s born you die a little.”

Primo Levi book Collected Poems

"The Work" (1983)
Collected Poems (1984)

“What if you're right? Husbands die everyday, Delores, why, one is probably dying right now while you're sitting here weeping.”

Stephen King book Dolores Claiborne

Dolores Claiborne (1992)

“I don't think you ever die on Buffy.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Chat at BBC-CULT December 19, 2002 http://www.dykesvision.com/en/interviews/alyamber_new.html

Thinking

“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)

Death, Dead

“When he is forsaken,
Withered and shaken,
What can an old man do but die?”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Spring it is cheery; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

“1772. Let thy Vices die before thee.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1738) : Let thy vices die before thee.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

“We must recognize that in our generation there might come a day with no remaining avenue of escape. State laws can be avoiding simply by moving, but what of unconstitutional Federal laws? At that point we will have no choice but to rebel against tyranny. (Since the alternative would be to live as little better than bleating sheep.) When we reach that juncture I doubt that I will advocate expatriation. Most foreign lands have less freedom than we enjoy here in these United States. I don't think that I will find some ideal "bolt hole" nation with more firearms freedom, better banking privacy, a more positive business climate, lower taxes, full religious freedom, unimpeded personal property rights, fair courts, and assured freedom of speech. If I must die, then I will do so here in America, fully armed and facing my oppressors. I won't die in some ditch, begging for mercy.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Letter Re: Drawing the Line on Noncompliance with Unconstitutional Laws https://survivalblog.com//?s=noncompliance, Survivalblog, 11 June 2013

Law, Business, Thinking, Freedom

“As God carries on the work of converting the souls of fallen men through all ages, so He goes on to justify them, to blot out all their sins, and to accept them as righteous in His sight through the righteousness of Christ. He goes on to adopt and receive them from being the children of Satan to be His own children, to carry on the work of His grace which He has begun in them, to comfort them with the consolations of His Spirit, and to bestow upon them, when their bodies die, that eternal glory which is the fruit of Christ's purchase.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 489.

Men, God, Children, Age

“This was incredibly foolish. To live just to die. And to die so easily.”

Why the lucky stiff American computer programmer

Collected PDFs (2013)

“Be careful then, patients,
and don’t accept any doctor;
die for free and do not give
a single coin to medicine.”

Juan del Valle y Caviedes

Y así, enfermos, ojo alerta
y ningún médico admitan;
mueran de gorra sin dar
un real a la medicina.
Diente del Parnaso ('Parnassus' Tooth') (1689), 'Prólogo al que leyere este tratado’.
Quoted in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 1038.

“That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Which on the shaft that made him die
Espied a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

To a Lady singing a Song of his Composing; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). See also Eagles, for variations on this theme.

Fate

“It was close; but that's the way it is in war. You win or lose, live or die — and the difference is just an eyelash.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

To Gen. Richard Sutherland after their flight over Japanese held territory to reach Australia (17 March 1942), as quoted in MacArthur and the War Against Japan (1944) by Frazier Hunt, p. 71

War, Way

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love, Life, Death, God

“The fault is all ours. We have become overwhelming. About one in twenty of all the people who have ever existed is alive today, compared to just one in a thousand of other species. As a result we are depleting the earth.
But even now the question is still asked: Does it really matter? So we lose a few cute mammals, and a lot of bugs nobody ever heard of. So what? We’re still here.
Yes, we are. But the ecosystem is like a vast life-support machine. It is built on the interaction of species on all scales of life, from the humblest fungi filaments that sustain the roots of plants to the tremendous global cycles of water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Darwin’s entangled bank, indeed. How does the machine stay stable? We don’t know. Which are its most important components? We don’t know. How much of it can we take out safely? We don’t know that either. Even if we could identify and save the species that are critical for our survival, we wouldn’t know which species they depend on in turn. But if we keep on our present course, we will soon find out the limits of robustness.
I may be biased, but I believe it will matter a great deal if we were to die by our own foolishness. Because we bring to the world something that no other creature in all its long history has had, and that is conscious purpose. We can think our way out of this.
So my question is—consciously, purposefully, what are we going to do?”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 16 “An Entangled Bank” section I (pp. 509-510)

Life, People, World, Way

“But for those that are caught in any heinous sins, they cast them out of their society; and he who is thus separated from them does often die after a miserable manner; for as he is bound by the oath he hath taken, and by the customs he hath been engaged in, he is not at liberty to partake of that food that he meets with elsewhere, but is forced to eat grass, and to famish his body with hunger, till he perish; for which reason they receive many of them again when they are at their last gasp, out of compassion to them, as thinking the miseries they have endured till they came to the very brink of death to be a sufficient punishment for the sins they had been guilty of.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Death, Hunger, Food, Thinking

“When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die.”

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

"The Obscurity of the Poet," Harvard University lecture (15 August 1950) delivered at the Harvard University Summer School Conference on the Defense of Poetry (August 14-17, 1950); reprinted in Partisan Review, XVIII (January/February 1951) and published in Poetry and the Age (1953)
General sources
Variant: When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die.

Life, Death, Wisdom, Law

“I was born a Hindu because I had no control over this, but I shall not die a Hindu.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)

“They are always talking about the fire of hell, but no one has ever seen it, my friends. For hell is cold. It used to be that the nights weren't long enough to wear out your malice, and you got up each morning with your breasts still full of poison. But now the devil himself has withdrawn from you. Ah, how alone we are in evil, my brothers! The poor human race dreams from century to century of breaking that solitude — but it's no use! The devil, who can do so many things, will never succeed in founding a Church, a Church that will put in common both the merits of hell and the sin of all. From now until the end of the world, the sinner will have to sin alone, always alone — for just as we die alone, so also do we sin alone. The devil, you see, is the friend who never stays with us to the end.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

The curé of Fenouille to his congregation, p. 171
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

World, Dreams, Hell, Solitude

“It's true that old actors don't die, their parts get smaller. You're less likely to get the part, many parts, if you're playing people your age as opposed to people who are younger. There are fewer parts around.”

Albert Finney (1936–2019) English actor

Interview with Paul Fischer at Dark Horizons (2 December 2003).

People, Age, Parting

“3330. Man begins to die before he is born.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Perhaps this is what really happens in life to most good men. They are not crucified. They simply pass through life and then die, and their passing influences just a few people to make them just a little happy.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Charles Dickens: The Pickwick Papers (p. 102)
More Classics Revisited (1989)

Life, Men, Happiness, People

“In spite of the fact that the Jews do not even refrain from attacking Christendom, they are protected by those who wear the cassock. The Christendom of the early time was different to the one of today.
The first Christians were fighters, who wanted to free their people from the Jewish ignominy. Then the Jew crept into that community and had the originally pure Christendom ridiculed by mankind. The first Christians were willing to die to defend the Christian doctrine.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Obwohl die Juden auch nicht vor Angriffen auf das Christentum zurückschrecken, werden sie noch von denen geschützt, die das Priesterkleid tragen. Das Christentum der ersten Zeit war ein anderes als das heutige.
Die ersten Christen waren Kämpfer, die ihr Volk von der jüdischen Schmach befreien wollten. Dann stahl sich der Jude in diese Gemeinschaft ein und machte aus dem ursprünglich reinen Christentum ein Gespött der Menschheit. Die ersten Christen waren bereit, für die Erhaltung der christlichen Lehre zu sterben.
04/21/1932, speech in the Hercules Hall in Nuremberg ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

People, Communication, Time

“The boy seemed ready to die… he almost lost the use of his Legs and Feet… and to compleat his misfortunes was afflicted with so violent a disorder in his Eyes that there appeared to be the utmost danger of his becoming totally blind.”

Granville Sharp (1735–1813) English campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade

Describing his first meeting with Jonathan Strong (slave).
Quoted in Black Slaves in Britain by Folarin O. Shyllon, Institute of Race Relations/Oxford University Press (1974)

Boy, Affliction, Appearance

“Spanish for, You have to think that you have to die, that we are here by the way and prepare and do all the good that you can”

Sara García (1895–1980) Mexican actress

Hay que pensar en que se tiene uno que morir que estamos aquí de paso y prepararnos y hacer todo el bien que se pueda.
Sara Garcia

Way, Thinking

“I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American!”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Speech (July 17, 1850); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), p. 437

“Flowers fade and fly, and flying fill the sky;
Their bloom departs, their perfume gone, yet who stands pitying by? …
Oh, let me sadly bury them beside these steps to-night! …
Farewell, dear flowers, for ever now, thus buried as 'twas best,
I have not yet divined when I with you shall sink to rest.
I who can bury flowers like this a laughing-stock shall be;
I cannot say in days to come what hands shall bury me.
See how when spring begins to fail each opening floweret fades;
So too there is a time of age and death for beauteous maids;
And when the fleeting spring is gone, and days of beauty o'er,
Flowers fall, and lovely maidens die, and both are known no more.”

Herbert Giles book A History of Chinese Literature

"The Hung Lou Mêng", p. 368
A History of Chinese Literature (1901)

Love, Death, Age, Beauty

“Furthermore there's the whole argument that the administration made, that so many people were killed by chemical weapons. Their number was around 1,400, the fact of the matter is that over 40,000 other people were killed with bombs and bullets, before those 1,400 people. If 40,000 people were killed, and that didn't provide a moral justification for intervention, what's the moral justification for killing people… when 1,400 die with chemical weapons. I don't get it, in fact, I don't think there's a moral case to be made for intervention.”

John Mearsheimer (1947) American political scientist

John Mearsheimer on America Unhinged https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqqzh59sVo provided by the Center for the National Interest. Here Mearsheimer is speaking about the Syrian conflict and potential United States intervention due to the Assad's regime alleged usage of chemical devices.

People, Thinking