Quotes about die
page 27

Andrew Johnson photo

“I have had a son killed, a son-in-law die during the last battle of Nashville, another son has thrown himself away, a second son-in-law is in no better condition, I think I have had sorrow enough without having my bank account examined by a Committee of Congress.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Letter to his friend Colonel William G. Moore, complaining of Congressional investigations.... (1 May 1867).
Quote

“Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop,
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop…
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop…
And my head shrieks--"Stop"
And my heart shrieks--"Die"…”

Theo Marzials (1850–1920) Anglo-French poet and eccentric

A Tragedy, reported by several critics to be the worst poem published in the English language. http://www.reedleycollege.edu/academic/Departments/CompLitComm/sbowie/Tragedy.htm.

Thomas Nashe photo

“Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick, I must die:
Lord, have mercy on us.”

Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) English Elizabethan pamphleteer and poet

Source: Summer's Last Will and Testament http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/summ1.htm (1600), lines 1590-1594.

Elizabeth I of England photo
Kim Stanley Robinson photo
Keir Hardie photo

“History is one long record of like illustrations. Must our modern civilisation with all its teeming wonders come to a like end? We are reproducing in faithful detail every cause which led to the downfall of the civilisations of other days—Imperialism, taking tribute from conquered races, the accumulation of great fortunes, the development of a population which owns no property, and is always in poverty. Land has gone out of cultivation and physical deterioration is an alarming fact. An so we Socialists say the system which is producing these results must not be allowed to continue. A system which has robbed religion of its saviour, destroyed handicraft, which awards the palm of success to the unscrupulous, corrupts the press, turns pure women on the streetsm and upright men into mean-spirited time-servers, cannot continue. In the end it is bound to work its own overthrow. Socialism with its promise of freedom, its larger hope for humanity, its triumph of peace over war, its binding of the races of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood, must prevail. Capitalism is the creed of the dying present; socialism throbs with the life of the days that are to be. It has claimed its martyrs in the past, is claiming them now, will claim them still; but what then? Better to "rebel and die in the twenty worlds sooner than bear the yoke of thwarted life."”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 103–104

James C. Collins photo
Patrick Buchanan photo
Thomas Browne photo
Scott Lynch photo

“People die when they get hanged. It’s why they hang them!”

Prologue “The Minder” section 8 (p. 19)
The Republic of Thieves (2013)

George Whyte-Melville photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Margaret Cho photo

“If we don't talk about this epidemic we are going to die.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, SPEAKING UP

Jean-Baptiste Say photo
John Bright photo
Johann Hari photo
Walter Raleigh photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
John Lewis (civil rights leader) photo
Conrad Aiken photo
Murray N. Rothbard photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“I ask myself why do these worshipers of this God want to convict him of being such a crummy designer - most of his creations die off, the rest suffer miserably; of being cruel and capricious and bungling and incompetent and callous as a father?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

www.youtube.com/watch?v=THHapkLeSGo?t=24m23s

Christopher Hitchens vs John Lennox - Is God Great? [2009]
2000s, 2009

Clint Eastwood photo

“I thought I might die. But then I thought, 'Other people have made it through these things before'. I kept my eyes on the lights on shore and kept swimming.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

On surviving a plane crash in 1951
Zmijewsky, Boris; Lee Pfeiffer (1982). The Films of Clint Eastwood. p. 16. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press. .

Jonathan Swift photo

“Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.”

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

Letter to Bolingbroke (March 21, 1729); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

William Wordsworth photo

“Where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die,
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Part III, No. 43 - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“To die every day to every problem, every pleasure, and not carry over any problem at all; so the mind remains tremendously attentive, active, clear.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

3rd Public Talk, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (24 May 1967)
1960s

Abd al-Karim Qasim photo
Joseph Addison photo

“A thousand trills and quivering sounds
In airy circles o'er us fly,
Till, wafted by a gentle breeze,
They faint and languish by degrees,
And at a distance die.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Ode on St. Cecilia's Day (1699), st. 6.

George du Maurier photo

“A little work, a little gay
To keep us going—and so good-day!

A little warmth, a little light
Of love’s bestowing—and so, good-night.

A little fun, to match the sorrow
Of each day’s growing—and so, good-morrow!

A little trust that when we die
We reap our sowing—and so—good-bye!”

Trilby (1894). Compare:
:PEU DE CHOSE
La vie est vaine,
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de haine,
Et puis—Bonjour!

La vie est brève:
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de rève
Et puis—Bon soir!
::Léon de Montenaeken; translated by Louise Chandler Moulton as:
:Ah, brief is Life,
Love’s short sweet way,
With dreamings rife,
And then—Good-day!

And Life is vain—
Hope’s vague delight,
Grief’s transient pain,
And then—Good-night.

Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Ray Bradbury photo

“Roecker sure is a romantic about certain things, like art and music, though you might not know it from watching Live Freaky! Die Freaky!, his claymation musical retelling of the Helter Skelter Charlie Manson saga.”

John Roecker (1966) American film director

[LA Weekly, http://www.laweekly.com/2006-03-02/news/punk-puppet-apocalypse/, LA Weekly LP, Lina, Lecaro, Punk Puppet Apocalypse: Starring members of Green Day, Rancid, X and more, Live Freaky! Die Freaky! is guaranteed to offend, February 28, 2006]
About

Ambrose photo

“And what else did John have in mind but what is virtuous, so that he could not endure a wicked union even in the king's case, saying: "It is not lawful for thee to have her to wife." He could have been silent, had he not thought it unseemly for himself not to speak the truth for fear of death, or to make the prophetic office yield to the king, or to indulge in flattery. He knew well that he would die as he was against the king, but he preferred virtue to safety. Yet what is more expedient than the suffering which brought glory to the saint.”
Quid autem aliud Ioannes nisi honestatem consideravit? ut inhonestas nuptias etiam in rege non posset perpeti, dicens: Non licet tibi illam uxorem habere. Potuit tacere, nisi indecorum sibi iudicasset mortis metu verum non dicere, inclinare regi propheticam auctoritatem, adulationem subtexere. Sciebat utique moriturum se esse, quia regi adversabatur: sed honestatem saluti praetulit. Et tamen quid utilius quam quod passionis viro sancto advexit gloriam?

Ambrose (339–397) bishop of Milan; one of the four original doctors of the Church

De officiis ministrorum ("On the Offices of Ministers" or, "On the Duties of the Clergy"), Book III, chapter XIV, part 89 as quoted in www.ewtn.com http://www.ewtn.com/library/PATRISTC/PII10-2.HTM

Robert Jordan photo

“But whether on the scaffold high
Or in the battle's van,
The fittest place where man can die
Is where he dies for man!”

Michael Joseph Barry (1817–1889) Irish poet and political figure

The Dublin Nation, Sept. 28, 1844, Vol. ii. p. 809, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Come again: sweet love doth now invite,
Thy graces that refrain,
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.”

John Dowland (1563–1626) English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer

"Come again", line 1, The First Book of Songs.

Frederick Douglass photo
Joseph Addison photo
Tunku Abdul Rahman photo

“I'm doing this for the sake of this country [Malaysia], because this nation belongs to us. We were born here and we will die here. If I were to die fighting, let it be… but I can't just stand and do nothing, when I see the things that are happening in our nation. So right now I have to give a message to my brethren: The people who have been living in unity all this time. Don't believe the propaganda of today's government. They go around to kampungs to spread all sorts of propaganda, that whatever they implement must be obeyed. Think for yourself - are they really doing what is right? Don't just follow without question, use your wisdom and think. What is happening is, they take credit for all that is good, their opponents are responsible for all bad things, and they [government he is referring to as "spreading propaganda"] cover up all the bad things they do and point the finger of blame on the people who stand up to them. So this is the situation today, the press has no voice. When a newspaper reports something, the issue is covered up. This just goes to show that the people who stand up to them have no voice at all. This government [todays government] controls everything. But the ones who really hold power in this nation, you, the ordinary rakyat (Dewan Rakyat). So if we don't seek what is true, or use wisdom to discern a matter, this nation will crumble. If only the rakyat could understand all of this, at the end of the day, the rakyat has the right to vote, and the rakyat itself can elect anyone to be the leader here, ordinary rakyat, think for yourselves, because that "magic lamp" is in the hands of the original rakyat. So, ordinary rakyat with power in their hands, use your wisdom, protect your rights, in order to preserve our beloved nation, Malaysia, because it's not only this present generation that depend on our nation, that depends on fairness in our nation, but even our next generation to come all depend on the governance of our nation. If this Merdeka is to have any meaning at all, may they be well until the end of time. This is our responsibility. I pray that all will be well.”

Tunku Abdul Rahman (1903–1990) Malaysian politician

"Tunku Abdul Rahman last speech" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdoxoum02BA, interview taken on National Day, 1988, Malaysia.

Ernest Hemingway photo

“That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you.”

One of the alternative endings to the novel, published in A Farewell to Arms The Special Edition.
A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Tina Fey photo
Robert Graves photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Robert Frost photo

“Never grieve for me if it is my good fortune to die with my boots on. That's what I most hope for.”

Maynard Owen Williams (1888–1963) American journalist

in a letter to Gilbert Grosvenor, editor of the National Geographic (1948)

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee photo
Marjorie Dannenfelser photo
Chinua Achebe photo
Peter Rhee photo

“She has a 101 percent chance of surviving. She will not die. She does not have that permission from me.”

Peter Rhee (1961) American surgeon

As trauma chief of the University Medical Center at Tucson after treating Representative Gabrielle Giffords [Doctor: Giffords has '101 percent chance' of surviving, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41018273/ns/health-health_care/, MSNBC, January 11, 2011, 2011-01-12]

Nas photo

“Born alone, die alone, no crew to keep my crown or throne”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

The World Is Yours
On Albums, Illmatic (1994)

Samuel Foote photo
Kent Hovind photo
Brigham Young photo
Henryk Sienkiewicz photo
Dionysius Lardner photo

“Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”

Dionysius Lardner (1793–1859) Irish science writer

While widely quoted as an example of failed predictions about technological progress and attributed to Lardner, there are no known citations of this line prior to 1980 and it does not seem to appear in his published works. It may result from the conflation, through imperfect memory and oral transmission, of reference to three separate concepts: the real, and at the time new, danger of suffocation by engine combustion gasses in tunnels (and in particular an 1861 incident http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=202 in the Blisworth Tunnel), the hypothetical (and unfounded) fear of suffocation by vacuum in a speculated system of trains propelled by pneumatic force https://books.google.com/books?id=2Tc1AQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA261&ots=lL3eBeyoex&dq=lardner%20train%20speed%20suffocation&pg=PA261#v=onepage&q=Lardner&f=false, and Lardner's erroneous prediction of mechanical failure of trains in the Box Tunnel of the Great Western Railway from over-acceleration due to excess gradient.
Misattributed

Kent Hovind photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Love is divine in our belief
Of its eternity — how vain,
When we have known that Love can die,
To think that he can live again!”

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

4th February 1826) The Past (under the pen name Iole
The London Literary Gazette, 1826

John F. Kennedy photo

“The truth doesn't die. The desire for liberty cannot be fully suppressed.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Address at the Free University of Berlin

Noel Gallagher photo
Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji photo
Lou Reed photo

“The chroniclers of the early Turkish rulers of India take pride in affirming that Qutbuddin Aibak was a killer of lakhs of infidels. Leave aside enthusiastic killers like Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, even the "kind-hearted" Firoz Tughlaq killed more than a lakh Bengalis when he invaded their country. Timur Lang or Tamerlane says he killed a hundred thousand infidel prisoners of war in Delhi. He built victory pillars from severed heads at many places. These were acts of sultans. The nobles were not lagging behind. One Shaikh Daud Kambu is said to have killed 20,000 with his dagger. The Bahmani sultans of Gulbarga and Bidar considered it meritorious to kill a hundred thousand Hindu men, women and children every year….. The rite of Jauhar killed the women, the tradition of not deserting the field of battle made Rajputs and others die fighting in large numbers. When Malwa was attacked (1305), its Raja is said to have possessed 40,000 horse and 100,000 foot.43 After the battle, "so far as human eye could see, the ground was muddy with blood"…. Under Muhammad Tughlaq, wars and rebellions knew no end. His expeditions to Bengal, Sindh and the Deccan, as well as ruthless suppression of twenty-two rebellions, meant only depopulation in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century. For one thing, in spite of constant efforts no addition of territory could be made by Turkish rulers from 1210 to 1296; for another the Turkish rulers were more ruthless in war and less merciful in peace. Hence the extirpating massacres of Balban, and the repeated attacks by others on regions already devastated but not completely subdued….. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the war between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar King in 1366 in which "Farishtah computes the victims on the Hindu side alone as numbering no less than half a million." Muhammad also devastated the Karnatak region with vengeance….. Under Akbar and Jahangir "five or six hundred thousand human beings were killed," says emperor Jahangir. The figures given by these killers and their chroniclers may be a few thousand less or a few thousand more, but what bred this ambition of cutting down human beings without compunction was the Muslim theory, practice and spirit of Jihad, as spelled out in Muslim scriptures and rules of administration.”

Ch 3
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Emily Dickinson photo

“That such have died enables us
The tranquiller to die;
That such have lived, certificate
For immortality.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Time and Eternity, p. 228
Collected Poems (1993)

Jorge Rafael Videla photo
Gwendolyn Brooks photo
John Wooden photo

“Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

They Call Me Coach (1972)

Gabrielle Roy photo
Miho Mosulishvili photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Kenneth Griffin photo

“Every organization has two choices. Choice one is to grow. Choice two is to die. If you decide not to grow, it's a clear-cut message to talented people that it's time to leave.”

Kenneth Griffin (1968) American hedge fund manager

Institutional Investor Magazine (September 2001) http://web.archive.org/20060329190803/ddo.typepad.com/ddo/files/Citadel_2001.pdf

“When I die, I will not see myself die, for the first time.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Cuando yo muera, no me veré morir, por primera vez.
Voces (1943)

John McCain photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Ben Croshaw photo

“I'm going to get that bloody bastard if I die in the attempt.”

Part 1, Ch. 1, Lt. Grey, First line of the story.
King Rat (1962)

Rachel Carson photo
Eric Hoffer photo

“We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1955)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Derek Humphry photo
William Gifford photo

“In all her charms, set Virtue in their eye,
And let them see their loss, despair, and—die!”

Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta.

William Gifford (1756–1826) English critic, editor and poet

Translation of Persius, Satire III, line 71 (38).

Winston S. Churchill photo

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II pp. 248–250
This passage does not appear in the 1902 one-volume abridgment, the version posted by Project Gutenberg.
Downloadable etext version(s) of this book can be found online http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=4943 at Project Gutenberg
Early career years (1898–1929)

Bob Dylan photo

“And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Masters of War

Thomas Carlyle photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
George Fitzhugh photo
André Maurois photo

“Byron says that it is easier to die for the woman one loves than to live with her.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Barry Eichengreen photo
Michael Swanwick photo
Georg Büchner photo

“I’ll know how to die with courage; that is easier than living.”

Act II.
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

Cornstalk photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Cecil Day Lewis photo

“It's hard to believe a spirit could die
Of such generous glow”

Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972) English poet

Birthday Poem for Thomas Hardy (1949)

Honoré Mercier photo

“When I say that we owe nothing to England, I speak in regards of politics, for I am convinced, and I shall die with this conviction, that the Union of Upper and Lower Canada as well as Confederation were imposed to us with a purpose hostile to the French element and with the hope of making it disappear in a more or less distant future. I wanted to show you what our homeland could be. I have made my best to open yourselves up to new horizons and, as I let you glimpse at them, push your hearts towards the fulfilment of our national destinies. You have colonial dependence, I offer you independence; you have shame and misery, I offer you fortune and prosperity; you are but a colony ignored by the whole world, I offer you becoming a great people, respected and recognized amongst free nations. Men, women and children, the choice is yours; you can remain slaves in the state of colony, or become independent and free, amongst the other peoples that, with their powerful voices beckon you to the banquet of nations.”

Honoré Mercier (1840–1894) Canadian politician

Quand je dis que nous ne devons rien à l'Angleterre, je parle au point de vue politique car je suis convaincu, et je mourrai avec cette conviction, que l'union du Haut et du Bas Canada ainsi que la Confédération nous ont été imposées dans un but hostile à l'élément français et avec l'espérance de le faire disparaître dans un avenir plus ou moins éloigné. J'ai voulu vous démontrer ce que pouvait être notre patrie. J'ai fait mon possible pour vous ouvrir de nouveaux horizons et, en vous les faisant entrevoir, pousser vos coeurs vers la réalisation de nos destinées nationales. Vous avez la dépendance coloniale, je vous offre l'indépendance; vous avez la gêne et la misère, je vous offre la fortune et la prospérité; vous n'êtes qu'une colonie ignorée du monde entier, je vous offre de devenir un grand peuple, respecté et reconnu parmi les nations libres. Hommes, femmes et enfants, à vous de choisir; vous pouvez rester esclaves dans l'état de colonie, ou devenir indépendant et libre, au milieu des autres peuples qui, de leurs voix toutes puissantes vous convient au banquet des nations.
Speech of April 4, 1893.

Kid Cudi photo

“if I fall if I die know I lived it to the fullest, if I fall if I die know I lived and missed some bullets”

Kid Cudi (1984) American rapper, singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor from Ohio

-Pursuit of Happiness
Music

Adolf Eichmann photo

“Long live Germany. Long live Argentina. Long live Austria. These are the three countries with which I have been most connected and which I will not forget. I greet my wife, my family and my friends. I am ready. We'll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die believing in God.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Before his execution in Jerusalem (1 June 1962), as quoted in Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a "Desk Murderer" by David Cesarani (2006), p. 321. ISBN 978-0-306-81539-3.