Quotes about die
page 29

“But if you're a man who eats the crops of the earth,
a mortal born for death—here, come closer,
the sooner you will meet your day to die!”

Homér Iliad

VI. 142–143 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Death

“And if the immortality of the soul had been unable to find vindication in rational empiricism, neither is it satisfied with pantheism. To say that everything is God, and that when we die, we return to God, or more accurately, continue in Him, avails our longing nothing; for if this indeed be so, then we were in God before we were born, and if we die we return to where we were before being born, then the human soul, the individual consciousness, is perishable. And since we know very well that God, the personal and conscious God of Christian monotheism, is simply the provider, and above all the guarantor, of our immortality, pantheism is said, and rightly said to be merely atheism disguised; and in my opinion, undisguised.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), V : The Rationalist Dissolution

God, Soul, Personality

“When you and I were born, only one thing was certain about the rest of our lives: that you and I would someday die. Just as a trillion, trillion, trillion (1036) microorganisms, animals and plants have died before us. …A God who slaughters is no God at all. Or if he is… He is a God who must be stopped.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

The Problem with God: The Tale of a Twisted Confession
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)

God, Animals

“Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on.”

Fay Weldon (1931) English author, essayist and playwright

The Guardian, October 28, 2006. http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/homes/story/0,,1933478,00.html

Life

“time in an allegory of itself imparts to us lessons of wisdom which the moment they are formulated are immediately destroyed by the merest flickers of light or shadow which are nothing more than time in its incarnations and disincarnations which are the phrases that I am writing on this paper and that disappears as I read them:
they are not the sensations, the perceptions, the mental images, and the thoughts which flare up and die away here, now, as I write or as I read what I write: they are not what I see or what I have seen, they are the reverse of what is seen and of the power of sight—but they are not the invisible: they are the unsaid residuum;
they are not the other side of reality but, rather, the other side of language, what we have on the tip of our tongue that vanishes before it is said, the other side that cannot be named because it is the opposite of a name:
what is not said is not this or that which we leave unsaid, nor is it neither-this-nor-that: it is not the tree that I say I see but the sensation that I feel on sensing that I see it at the moment when I am just about to say that I see it, an insubstantial but real conjunction of vibrations and sounds and meanings that on being combined suggest the configuration of a green-bronze-black-woody-leafy-sonorous-silent presence;
no, it is not that either, if it is not a name it surely cannot be the description of a name or the description of the sensation of the name or the name of the sensation:
a tree is not the name tree, nor is it the sensation of tree: it is the sensation of a perception of tree that dies away at the very moment of the perception of the sensation of tree;
names, as we already know, are empty, but what we did not know, or if we did know, had forgotten, is that sensations are perceptions of sensations that die away, sensations that vanish on becoming perceptions, since if they were not perceptions, how would we know that they are sensations?;
sensations that are not perceptions are not sensations, perceptions that are not names—what are they?
if you didn’t know it before, you know now: everything is empty;
and the moment I say everything-is-empty, I am aware that I am falling into a trap: if everything is empty, this everything-is-empty is empty too;
no, it is full, full to overflowing, everything-is-empty is replete with itself, what we touch and see and taste and smell and think, the realities that we invent and the realities that touch us, look at us, hear us, and invent us, everything that we weave and unweave and everything that weaves and unweaves us, momentary appearances and disappearances, each one different and unique, is always the same full reality, always the same fabric that is woven as it is unwoven: even total emptiness and utter privation are plenitude (perhaps they are the apogee, the acme, the consummation and the calm of plenitude), everything is full to the brim, everything is real, all these invented realities and all these very real inventions are full of themselves, each and every one of them, replete with their own reality;
and the moment I say this, they empty themselves: things empty themselves and names fill themselves, they are no longer empty, names are plethoras, they are donors, they are full to bursting with blood, milk, semen, sap, they are swollen with minutes, hours, centuries, pregnant with meanings and significations and signals, they are the secret signs that time makes to itself, names suck the marrow from things, things die on this page but names increase and multiply, things die in order that names may live:”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Wisdom, Secret, Feeling, Thinking

“I may die young, but at least I'll die smart.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Alaska Young, p. 52
Looking for Alaska (2005)

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real… for a moment at least… that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smoke-stacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the song the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever, somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

The Faces of Fantasy (1996)

Love, Dreams, Color, Thinking

“The rugged old Norsemen spoke of death as Heimgang — home-going. So the snow-flowers go home when they melt and flow to the sea, and the rock-ferns, after unrolling their fronds to the light and beautifying the rocks, roll them up close again in the autumn and blend with the soil. Myriads of rejoicing living creatures, daily, hourly, perhaps every moment sink into death’s arms, dust to dust, spirit to spirit — waited on, watched over, noticed only by their Maker, each arriving at its own heaven-dealt destiny. All the merry dwellers of the trees and streams, and the myriad swarms of the air, called into life by the sunbeam of a summer morning, go home through death, wings folded perhaps in the last red rays of sunset of the day they were first tried. Trees towering in the sky, braving storms of centuries, flowers turning faces to the light for a single day or hour, having enjoyed their share of life’s feast — all alike pass on and away under the law of death and love. Yet all are our brothers and they enjoy life as we do, share heaven’s blessings with us, die and are buried in hallowed ground, come with us out of eternity and return into eternity. 'Our little lives are rounded with a sleep.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

pages 439-440 ("Trees towering … into eternity" are the next-to-last lines of the documentary film " John Muir in the New World http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-muir-in-the-new-world/watch-the-full-documentary-film/1823/" (American Masters), produced, directed, and written by Catherine Tatge.) John of the Mountains, 1938

Love, Life, Death, Law

“A soldier's death, he thought, was a happy one, because a man, even in the throes of awful pain, would die in the best company of the world.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

General Thomas Graham, p. 234
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Fury (2006)

Death, Pain, Happiness, World

“You can hit a nail on the head, or cause a machine to do so, and get a fairly predictable result. Hit a dog on the head, and it will either dodge, bite back, or die, but it will never again react in the same way. We can predict only those things we set up to be predictable, not what we encounter in the real world of living and reactive processes.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 2.2

World, Dogs, Way

“Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Soul, Light

“[Manucci says that just before the emperor died, he (Aurangzeb) said:] “I die happy for at least the world will be able to say that I have employed every effort to destroy the enemies of the Muhammedan faith.””

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Niccolao Manucci, Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1700s

Happiness, World, Faith, Effort

“Thank you, dear Sophia. From every cell in my broken body, my radiant body, I thank you. I am alive. I am free… to live… to die.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Bone: Dying into Life (2000), p. 241

“All I see is Rudi.
I die with him, again and again.
And I'll feel good in my revenge.
I'm gonna fill your head with lead
And I'm coming for you!”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

Feeling, Revenge

“Before lunch, and ultimately recess, I need you to know - you're going to die.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBk37T4u03I "Fall Out Boy for DoSomething.org"
YouTube.com

“For our dead are a part of the earth of Spain now and the earth of Spain can never die.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

"On the American Dead in Spain", New Masses (February 14, 1939)

Parting, Dead

“It’s easy to say that if you were there you would have refused, that you would rather die than participate in the slaughter, but it all looks very different when it’s real, when the moment comes to choose.”

Ann Leckie book Ancillary Justice

Source: Ancillary Justice (2013), Chapter 11 (p. 155)

“Cosimo: It is only a play… with music? Does God say the same at every death? It is only a play… with music? When I die, will someone say the same? He was only a prince. He died. It was only a play… with music.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Baby of Mâcon

Death, God, Music

“If you're in the mood for something that's completely visceral and mindless (really mindless — the plot is a joke, filled with contrivances and coincidences), this movie will fit the bill. Parts of it are excruciatingly bad, but there are numerous examples of well-directed action that, on balance, compensate for the worst gaffes. This is a poor man's Die Hard. It has the explosions, gunplay, and spectacular stunts, but little of the wit and intelligence. In other words, it's a typical summer action flick.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1556 of Cliffhanger (1993). Two star reviews

Intelligence, Mood, Summer, Parting

“Did you know you can ask very simple questions to the scientists who claim that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago? You could say to them, in a very nice way of course, "Excuse me, were you there?" You are actually asking them, "Were you there to see the dinosaurs when they first came into existence? Were you there to see them alive? Were you there to see them die out?"”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Obviously, they weren't there, so how could they really know everything about them? Dinosaurs for Kids (2009), p. 14 http://books.google.com/books?id=_2AzUyAj0HQC&pg=PA14

Way, Question

“"Freedom!" their battle-cry,—
"Freedom! or leave to die!"”

George Henry Boker (1823–1890) American poet, playwright, and diplomat

The Black Regiment.

Freedom, Cry

“The fear of death is born with man, though this is the only thing that he knows is certain to happen to him. Attachment to material things makes man cling to life. When you chant the Name of the Divine, when you are one with the divine, you accept death. While you are attached to life and afraid of death, you die with that fear and that weight clinging to you. If you have attained liberation you are free from death (you accept the inevitable). You die without fear and by remembering the Name of God, your soul leaves the body free of that fear and attachment. If you are reborn, your soul is still free from that fear. If you die in "unity", you are free from rebirth, unless you will it.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

1 December 1982
The Teachings of Babaji. (1983, 1984, 1988). Haidakhan, U.P.: Haidakhandi Samaj.
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 1 December 1982.

Life, Death, God, Fear

“If we taught men to repress feelings and rewarded him instead for being a captain he might be willing to die to protect us; if we paid him enough to feed his family if he worked in a coal mine, he might be willing to die sooner to keep us warm. But all that required him to forfeit his feelings – his power as a human being – and substitute it for “power” as a human doing: feeling obligated to earn money someone else spent while he died sooner.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Men, Money, Family, Feeling

“Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 117
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Wisdom, Way, Feeling, Nature

“The chief pleasure of his life in these days was to go down the road and look through the window in the wall in the hope of seeing the beautiful Island. … the sight of the Island and the sounds became very rare … and the yearning for the sight … became so terrible that John thought he would die if he did not have them again soon. … it came into his head that he might perhaps get the old feeling-for what, he thought, had the Island ever given him but a feeling?–by imagining. He shut his eyes and set his teeth again and made a picture of the Island in his mind.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 12–13
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Life, Pleasure, Beauty, Hope

“For on this my heart is set:
When the hour is nigh me,
Let me in the tavern die,
With a tankard by me.”
Meum est propositum in taberna mori, ut sint vina proxima morientis ori.

Archpoet (1130–1165) 12th century poet

Meum est propositum
in taberna mori,
ut sint vina proxima
morientis ori.
Source: "Confession", Line 89

Heart

“Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly, that you feel you could die of it! [And then probably with a fourth sniff as a break] Eh? What? Isn't that so, my dear chap?”

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) French painter

according to Henri Perruchot: 'And then - he would make a joke - stuttering and lisping, with a sniff like a laugh at every three words, or some half melancholy comment in his own particular vein'
Source: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 76

Love, Feeling

“It's past parsons to console us:
No, nor no doctor fetch for me:
I can die without my bolus;
Two of a trade, lass, never agree!
Parson and Doctor!--don't they love rarely
Fighting the devil in other men's fields!
Stand up yourself and match him fairly:
Then see how the rascal yields!”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Juggling Jerry, st. 9 (1859).

Love, Men, Past, Fight

“"Why not just kill all the bad people? Isn't that kind of cruel to destroy the whole world? After all, the penguins didn't sin." Well, we know that God destroyed the whole world. I think there are some things to consider about this flood. Number one, the Flood left evidence where a miracle would not. If God had just said, "Okay, I want everybody to die, except for Noah and his family", then what evidence would be left behind from that? The effects are here today for us to see and remember the judgment of God on sin. Plus, by God telling Noah to build the boat, that gave everybody warning time. Here is Noah out there for many years, some people say seven years, some people say a hundred and twenty years. The Bible doesn't say, but Noah is building this ark for a long time. People are watching him put this big boat together and said, "Noah, are you crazy? What are you doing?" He says, "Man, it's going to rain." Now keep in mind, I don't think you can prove this dogmatically, but it probably never rained before the Flood came. So Noah was preaching about something that had never happened. He said, "Hey guys, guess what. Rain is going to fall out of the sky." Everybody is looking around saying, "Yeah right, that's never happened." They thought that he was nuts. Hey, we're doing the same thing today as Christians. We're going around saying, "Hey, one of these days and angel is going to come down with the Lord and they're going to come through the clouds and blow a trumpet and the Southern Baptists rise first, (you know the dead in Christ go first) and then the rest of us are going to take off for heaven." And everybody is looking at us and saying, "Yeah right. Nobody has ever heard a trumpet blown from a cloud and seen people take off for the clouds. That's just never happened." We are preaching that something is going to happen that has never happened in the history of humanity. That's what Noah was doing. He was preaching something that was going to happen and what he was preaching about had never happened. So while he was preaching, this gave people a chance to repent.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

God, People, World, Family

“Well she was an American girl, raised on promises.
She couldn't help thinkin' that there was a little more to life somewhere else.
After all, it was a great big world with lots of places to run to.
Yeah, and if she had to die tryin', she had one little promise she was gonna keep.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

American Girl
Lyrics, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (1974)

Life, World, Girl, Help

“There's lots of things I'd die for, Emily; my home, my family, my country. But that's love, not principle.”

Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

The Americanization of Emily (1964)

Love, Family, Home, Country

“The review was more a satisfaction to me than a joy. Joy, overpoweringly beautiful moments, comes to an artist without other noticing. The same is true for moments of sadness. That's why it is true that artists live mostly in solitude... Otto [Modersohn] and I shall be coming home [ Worpswede ] again in the spring. That man is touching in his love. We are going to try to buy the Brünjes place in order to make our lives together freer and more open... If the dear Lord will allow me once again to create something beautiful, then I shall be happy and satisfied; if only I have a place where I can work in peace. I will be grateful for the portion of love I've received. If one can remain healthy and not die too young..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter from Paris, 18 November 1906, to her sister Milly; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 206
1906 + 1907

Love, Happiness, Sadness, Peace

“The IMF and World Bank are still appalling, and now the World Trade Organisation too. All over the world people die unnecessarily because of the international financial system. Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War II. But at least Hitler was mad.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

NME, 15 April 2000
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20000529082432/http://www.nme.com/newsdesk/20000411113543.html

War, People, World, Madness

“I shall die … as I have lived, rationalist, socialist, pacifist, and humanitarian.”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

As quoted in Henry Salt, Humanitarian Reformer and Man of Letters, George Hendrick, Illinois (1977).

“It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the sick-room.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

315.
Aes Triplex (1878)

Health

“One of my brothers was nearly of my own age; and he it was whom I most loved, though I was very fond of them all, and they of me. He and I used to read Lives of Saints together. When I read of martyrdom undergone by the Saints for the love of God, it struck me that the vision of God was very cheaply purchased; and I had a great desire to die a martyr's death, — not out of any love of Him of which I was conscious, but that I might most quickly attain to the fruition of those great joys of which I read that they were reserved in Heaven; and I used to discuss with my brother how we could become martyrs. We settled to go together to the country of the Moors, begging our way for the love of God, that we might be there beheaded; and our Lord, I believe, had given us courage enough, even at so tender an age, if we could have found the means to proceed; but our greatest difficulty seemed to be our father and mother.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Source: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (c.1565), Ch. I "Childhood and early Impressions" ¶ 4

Love, Death, God, Age

“There is little pride in writers. They know they are human and shall some day die and be forgotten. Knowing all this a writer is gentle and kindly where another man is severe and unkind.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

"The Declaration of War" (1944)

“If they be dead, as I can no longer doubt, we must submit to the will of God and trust in His divine Providence, that He who has given the blood of His only Son to maintain His Church will do nothing but what will redound to the advancement of His glory and the preservation of His Church—however impossible it may appear. And though we all were to die, and all this poor people were massacred and driven out, we still must trust that God will not abandon his own.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

On the loss of some of his brothers, in a letter to his brother John, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 76

God, People, Appearance, Dead

“I am a sportsman all over, and to the back-bone – 'Unting is all that's worth living for – all time is lost wot is not spent in 'unting – it is like the hair we breathe – if we have it not we die – it's the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, and only five-and-twenty per cent of its danger.”

Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer

Source: Handley Cross (1843), Ch. 7

War, Sport, Time

“Probably the profoundest difference between human and animal needs is made by one piece of human awareness, one fact that is not present to animals, because it is never learned in any direct experience: that is our foreknowledge of death. The fact that we ourselves must die is not a simple and isolated fact. It is built on a wide survey of facts that discloses the structure of history as a succession of overlapping brief lives, the patterns of youth and age, growth and decline; and above all that, it is built on the logical insight that one’s own life is a case in point. Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Philosophical Sketches, Ayer (1979)

Life, Death, Youth, Age

“India is calling. Blood is calling to blood. Get up, we have no time to lose. Take up your arms! we shall carve our way through the enemy's ranks, or if God wills, we shall die a martyr's death. And in our last sleep we shall kiss the road that will bring our Army to Delhi. The road to Delhi is the road to Freedom. Chalo Delhi (March to Delhi).”

Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) Indian nationalist leader and politician

As quoted in India Calling (1946) by himself and R. I. Paul, p. 5

Death, God, Way, Kiss

“My knees started knocking, I did feel so sad.
Then Brown said, "Don't die in a pub, it looks bad,"
He said, "Come with me, I'll show you what to do.
Now I've got a friend who'll be useful to you."
He led me to Black's Undertaking Depot,
And Black, with some crepe round his hat said, "Hello,
My word you do look queer!"”

Stanley Holloway (1890–1982) English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist

My Word! You Do Look Queer!

Sadness, Feeling

“I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top. They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn't impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

As quoted in The Age (25 May 2006) http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/05/24/1148150327071.html

People, Lying, Thinking

“To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", p. 186
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Bird, Wolf, Sun

“Not only does society suffer from racism and sexism but it also suffers from ageism. Once you reach a certain age you're not allowed to be adventurous, you're not allowed to be sexual. I mean, is there a rule? Are you supposed to just die?”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Refuses To Become A Victim of Ageism, chinadaily.com.cn, 2007-12-18 http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/2007-12F/10/content_6310487.htm, Madonna said it at 34 in Jonathan Ross interview ( Ageism and Madonna http://madonnascrapbook.blogspot.ru/2012/02/ageism-and-madonna-saying-fuck-you.html).

Age, Suffering

“He was moderately sure that a thirteen-year-old boy who'd load up four other children and set out in a steamcrawler across the Korunnai Highland at night-a boy who'd rather die than leave an unconscious girl behind-had guts enough for just about anything.”

Matthew Stover book Shatterpoint

Mace Windu, p. 146
Shatterpoint (2004)

Children, Girl, Boy, Night

“I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

last words (15 February 1988), according to James Gleick, in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992), p. 438

Hate

“I have been asked what I mean by 'word of honor.' I will tell you. Place me behind prison walls--walls of stone ever so high, ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground--there is a possibility that in some way or another I may escape; but stand me on the floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of the circle? No. Never! I'd die first!”

Karl G. Maeser (1828–1901) prominent Utah educator and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

BYU Honor Code http://honorcode.byu.edu/index.php?option=com_ezine&Itemid=4613

Way, Drawing

“They say there's a heaven for those who will wait
Some say it's better but I say it ain't.
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
Sinners are much more fun…
And only the good die young.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Only the Good Die Young.
Song lyrics, The Stranger (1977)

Waiting, Cry

“…it is widely but wrongly believed that Beavis and Butt-Head celebrates its characters, and applauds their sublime lack of values, taste and intelligence. I've never thought so. I believe Mike Judge would rather die than share a taxi ride to the airport with his characters — that for him, B&B function like Dilbert's co-workers in the Scott Adams universe. They are a target for his anger against the rising tide of stupidity.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beavis-and-butt-head-do-america-1996 of Beavis and Butthead Do America (20 December 1996) Reviews, Three star reviews

Stupidity, Intelligence, Universe, Anger

“Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

Heart

“Each generation is a filter, a sieve; good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or without reproducing.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

River out of Eden (1995)

“How do you do! My name is Sue! Now you gonna die!”

Shel Silverstein (1930–1999) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

"A Boy Named Sue" (performed by Johnny Cash)

“We shall Strike. We shall pursue the revolution we have proposed. We are sons of the Mexican Revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking, bread and justice. Our revolution will not be armed, but we want the existing social order to dissolve, we want a new social order. We are poor, we are humble, and our only choices is to Strike in those ranchers where we are not treated with the respect we deserve as working men, where our rights as free and sovereign men are not recognized. We do not want the paternalism of the rancher; we do not want the contractor; we do not want charity at the price of our dignity. We want to be equal with all the working men in the nation; we want just wage, better working conditions, a decent future for our children. To those who oppose us, be they ranchers, police, politicians, or speculators, we say that we are going to continue fighting until we die, or we win. We shall overcome.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

The Plan of Delano (1965)

Men, Children, Justice, Future

“A man who will not die to save a woman is no man.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Shienaran saying
(15 November 1990)

“Some day we shall all be free. Racial hatred will die out; citizenship will be important but humanity as a whole much more so. Boundaries and territories will assume their rightful place in man's thinking, but goodwill and international understanding will matter more. Religious differences and sectarian dislikes must eventually vanish and we shall eventually recognise "one God and Father of all, Who is above all and through all and in us all."… They will emerge more rapidly when the right educational processes condition the coming generations… and when money and the products of the earth are regarded as goods to be shared.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter II, Part 1

Money, God, Education, Understanding

“Give me to die unwitting of the day,
And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear!”

Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) American poet, critic, and essayist

"Mors Benefica".

Life, Sense

“That's why the peoples have to die -- so that the Jew can live. He drives the peoples to war to make a profit from the fratricide of the white race.
In the World War 11 million gentiles had to die. The Jew was the winner.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Deswegen müssen die Völker sterben, damit der Jude leben kann. Er hetzt die Völker zum Krieg, um aus dem Brudermord der weißen Rasse Gewinn zu ziehen.
Im Weltkrieg mussten 11 Millionen Nichtjuden sterben. Der Jude aber war der Sieger.
05/20/1932, speech in the Hercules Hall in Nuremberg ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

War, People, World

“An Alma girl! oh shame, deep shame,
To Brahma's race and Brahma's name!
Unmarked, unpitied, she turned aside,
For a moment her bursting tears to hide.
None thought of the Bayadere, till the fire
Blazed redly and fiercely the funeral pyre,
Then like a thought she darted by,
And sprang on the burning pile to die!”

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

The Bayadere from The London Literary Gazette (30th August, 6th and 13th September 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Girl, Tear

“If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from being bored by my own success.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Compensation
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri

Success

“So, the bottom line is: if you want to live well and die well, you first have to find out what is really important to you and stick to it. With that, you can get out there and get yourself a life, a real one.”

Gian Domenico Borasio (1962) physician, specialist of palliative medicine

"It's not about dying", TEDxCHUV address (13 November 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5WYNf1td-4

Life

“The manchildren, the mortals, have many ideas of what happens after they die, and wrangle about who is right and who is wrong. These disagreements often come to bloodshed, as if they wished to dispatch messengers who could discover the answer to their dispute. Such messengers, as far as I know of mortal philosophy, never return to give their brethren the taste of truth they yearn for.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Stone of Farewell (1990), Chapter 28, “Sparks” (p. 707).

Truth, Idea

““You founded the place. Why don’t you want to go?”
“I don’t like children,” the duke replied.
“Then why put out all that money to preserve them?”
“Because it is wrong to let them die.””

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

Source: The Privilege of the Sword (2006), Part I, Chapter VIII, (p. 79)

Money, Children

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Address at Antioch College (1859)

Victory

“And I will always do my duty no matter what the price
I've counted up the cost, I know the sacrifice.
Oh, and I don't want to die for you,
But if dyin's asked of me,
I'll bear that cross with honor,
'Cause freedom don't come free.I'm an American soldier, an American
Beside my brothers and my sisters I will proudly take a stand
When Liberty's in jeopardy, I will always do what's right
I'm out here on the front line
Sleep in peace tonight
American soldier, I'm an American soldier.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

American Soldier.
Song lyrics, Shock'n Y'all (2003)

Peace, Sister, Sleep, Freedom

“I mean artists like Joseph Beuys, who is really a tough, strong artist. B E U Y S. He's been working in Germany for years. He doesn't bother with the burden of ideas. What he desires to do is fill your house with margarine. Let you live encased in fat, die encased in fat. He would take three hundred pounds of margarine and put it exactly where Pat Kelly is now, and then leave it there. That's sort of the tenor of his work.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 25

Idea, Strong, Housing

“When I die, I want to die in a Utopia that I have helped to build.”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Stephen Court in The Creature from Beyond Infinity (1940)
Short fiction

Help

“India is immortal if she persists in her search for God. But if she goes in for politics and social conflict, she will die.”

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

A few hours before his death, as quoted in Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Volume 14 (1963), p. 469

God, Search

“They sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
.....
Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
.....
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

Canto X, st. 10.
The Curse of Kehama (1810)

Love, Life, Passion, Time

“Black life expectancy is much lower than white and they do their best to kill us before we are even born. We are burned alive in fire-trap tenements. Our brothers and sisters OD daily from heroin and methadone. Our babies die from lead poisoning. Millions of Black people have died as a result of indecent medical care. This is murder. But they have got the gall to call us murderers.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Life, People, Sister, Baby

“As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it, "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder", as can be seen throughout much of the Western world right now. The progressive agenda — lavish social welfare, abortion, agnosticism, multiculturalism — is collectively the real suicide bomb.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

It's the Demography, Stupid (2006)

World, Quotes, Suicide

“As far as they were concerned, gunfire was nothing but noise. That’s why wars can keep going. Even the people who make them, who fight in them, don’t really get the picture. Even with a bullet in their gut, they’d go on picking up old shoes that “might come in handy.” The way a sheep, lying on its side in a meadow, will keep on grazing with its dying breath. Most people don’t die until the last moment; others start twenty years in advance, sometimes more. Those are the unfortunates.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 4

War, People, Shoe, Way

“I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism, and to all other isms by which man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this world. They have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die! Let us never forget this.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Life, Men, Health, Truth

“Sleep is a death; oh, make me try
By sleeping what it is to die,
And as gently lay my head
On my grave as now my bed.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 12
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Death, Sleep

“To die is landing on some silent shore
Where billows never break, nor tempests roar;
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.”

Samuel Garth (1661–1719) British writer

The Dispensary, Canto III, line 225; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Feeling

“I'll never be happy. I believe I'll die alone. I would want it that way. I've been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I'm really lost, but I'm trying to find myself. I'm really a sad, pathetic case. My whole life has been a waste. I've been a failure. I just want to escape.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-02-tyson-saraceno_x.htm?csp=34
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,1654125,00.html
On himself

Life, Pain, Happiness, Secret

“Siward, the stalwart earl, being stricken by dysentery, felt that death was near, and said, "How shameful it is that I, who could not die in so many battles, should have been saved for the ignominious death of a cow! At least clothe me in my impenetrable breastplate, gird me with my sword, place my helmet on my head, my shield in my left hand, my gilded battle-axe in my right, that I, the bravest of soldiers, may die like a soldier." He spoke, and armed as he had requested, he gave up his spirit with honour.”
Siwardus, consul rigidissimus, pro fluuio uentris ductus mortem sensit imminere. Dixitque, "Quantus pudor me tot in bellis mori non potuisse, et uaccarum morti cum dedecore reseruarer! Induite me saltem lorica mea impenetrabili, precingite gladio. Sublimate galea. Scutum in leua. Securim auratam michi ponite in dextra, ut militum fortissimus modo militis moriar." Dixerat, et ut dixerat armatus honorifice spiritum exalauit.

Henry of Huntingdon book Historia Anglorum

Siwardus, consul rigidissimus, pro fluuio uentris ductus mortem sensit imminere. Dixitque, "Quantus pudor me tot in bellis mori non potuisse, et uaccarum morti cum dedecore reseruarer! Induite me saltem lorica mea impenetrabili, precingite gladio. Sublimate galea. Scutum in leua. Securim auratam michi ponite in dextra, ut militum fortissimus modo militis moriar."
Dixerat, et ut dixerat armatus honorifice spiritum exalauit.
Book VI, §24, pp. 378-81.
Historia Anglorum (The History of the English People)

Death, Clothes

“You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round
With tombstones in their eyes
But the pusher don't care
Ah, if you live or if you die”

Hoyt Axton (1938–1999) American country singer

The Pusher (1968)

People

“The sight of the Yazidis driven up the arid, exposed mountain range, chased by the militant Sunni of the Islamic State (ISIS), conjures Masada, A. D. 73, where Jews chose to die on their own terms.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Das Kurdische Masada,” http://jungefreiheit.de/allgemein/2014/das-kurdische-masada Junge Freiheit (in German), August 21, 2014. 2010s, 2014

Mountain

“Driven by this basic profit-above-all-else directive, corporations are mandated, in effect, to “grow or die,” a rule also called “the growth imperative.” Of course, a food maker is no different from any other corporation operating in a free economy. However, food companies face special challenges when it comes to obeying the market's growth imperative: because there's a limit—in theory, anyway—to the number of calories humans can consume, competition is especially fierce among food makers for the finite pool of money that consumers can spend.”

Michele Simon (1965) public health lawyer

Source: Appetite for Profit (2006), p. 5

Money, Food

“I was trying to warn you. But… you have no Cause. You and I, we have no Cause. We have only the army. But if a soldier fights only for soldiers, he cannot ever win. It is only the soldiers who die.”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

General Robert E. Lee, Part IV, CH 5: Longsteet, p.361
The Killer Angels (1974)

Fight

“The usual thing — the statistically normal thing — is for the speaker to tell the graduating class that they are going out into a world torn by dissent, racked by problems of unprecedented knottiness and difficulty, and headed for the abyss of destruction unless the graduating class shoulders its burden and does something splendid to put everything right. The speaker generally admits that he is at the end of his tether: he is old, and broken on the wheel of Fate; his decrepitude and his wounds have been received in this great battle with the world's problems. Nothing — absolutely nothing — is to be expected of him in the future. From his failing hands he throws the torch; he plants the task of setting the world right square on the graduating class. He says that he does it with confidence. But he is usually so gloomy that one wonders how much his confidence is worth. Sometimes one gets the impression that immediately after Convocation he is going home to die.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

What Will the Age of Aquarius Bring
One-Half of Robertson Davies (1977)

Fate, World, Home, Confidence

“We'll be Libertines until the day we die.”

Carl Barât (1978) English musician

On himself and Peter Doherty in an NME interview (2006-12-06)

“He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Beauty
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Beauty, Dead

“Where there is desire,
There is gonna be a flame.
Where there is a flame,
Someone’s bound to get burned.
But just because it burns
Doesn’t mean you’re gonna die.
You’ve gotta get up and try, try, try.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

Try, written by Michael Busbee and Ben West
Song lyrics, The Truth About Love (2012)

“But while at the bottom of the national life the slime was thus constantly accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply, so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface, overlaid with the varnish of polished manners and universal friendship. All the world interchanged visits; so that in the houses of quality it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted partly in groups, partly en masse at the close—a distinction which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy, is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy; "friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner, the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials; even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship," which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 2, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
On Roman Friendship in the last ages of the Republic.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life, Death, Friendship, War

“All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.”

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 78–88; for a 1955 anthology text the poet changed this line to "We must love one another and die" to avoid what he regarded as a falsehood in the original.

Love, Hunger, Lie

“"Do not die that we may not die," the dead cry out within you. "We had no time to enjoy the women we desired; be in time, sleep with them! We had no time to turn our thoughts into deeds; turn them into deeds! We had no time to grasp and to crystallize the face of our hope; make it firm!" …
But you must choose with care whom to hurl down again into the chasms of your blood, and whom you shall permit to mount once more into the light and the earth.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Women, Hope, Sleep, Light

“It’s not until they tell you you’re going to die soon that you realize how short life is. Time is the most valuable thing in life because it never comes back. And whether you spend it in the arms of a loved one or alone in a prison-cell, life is what you make of it. Dream big.”

Stefán Karl Stefánsson (1975–2018) Icelandic actor

Twitter post (10 March 2018), as quoted in "LazyTown’s Stefan Karl Stefansson confirms ‘inoperable’ cancer has returned" https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/16/lazytowns-stefan-karl-stefansson-confirms-inoperable-cancer-returned-7392066/ (16 March 2018), by Emma Kelly, Metro

Love, Life, Dreams, Time

“Up to eight feet long and as heavy as a lioness, the adult Komodo dragon brandishes steak-knifelike teeth - sharp, recurved blades with serrated cutting edges. Showing the same sagacity found in veteran Nile crocodiles, fully adult dragons know their hunting territory from years of experience. They know where to lie along hilly game trails, awaiting the light footsteps of a deer. Attacks are instant successes or failures because the ora has no stamina, and if it misses on the first short rush, it has little sustained speed for a long pursuit. When an attack succeeds, the cruel rows of slashing teeth cut fearful wounds on the rump and thigh of ambushed animals and the stricken prey may die of massive infection days later even if it manages to break free from the dragon's mouth. Tethered livestock suffer truly terrible cuts across the legs when an ora slinks into the compound under cover of the warm Indonesian nights. Several humans, both native and European visitors, have died in savage daylight attacks. The victims simply had no warning sign that the ora was waiting patiently a few feet from the trail's edge.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 62-63
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Lie, Fear, Game, Failure

“It is so important for us to have faith, trust, confidence in one another. It is the only way we can communicate. Without faith there is no communication, there is no love, or if there was a little love it will die without hope, trust, and confidence. Even if it doesn't die right away, it will be so ill, so weak, and so tired that communication will be miserable as well.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

Source: Poustinia (1975), Ch. 12

Love, Faith, Hope, Way

“Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there.”

Joan of Arc (1412–1431) French folk heroine and Roman Catholic saint

Trial records (15 March 1431)
Trial records (1431)

Love, God

“When people ask me why I don’t eat meat or any other animal products, I say because they are unhealthy and they are the product of a violent and inhumane industry. Chickens, cows, and pigs in factory farms spend their whole lives in filthy, cramped conditions only to die a prolonged and painful death.”

Casey Affleck (1975) American actor

From a PETA video (6 February 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSuLrvwLoLA, reported in "Casey Affleck’s ‘Go Vegan’ PSA", in peta2.com http://www.peta2.com/heroes/casey-afflecks-go-vegan-psa/.

Death, Pain, People, Animals

“Finally, in the dim region where art, magic, and religion meet and overlap, human beings have evolved the “metaphor that is meant,” the flag which men will die to save, and the sacrament that is felt to be more than “an outward and visible sign, given unto us.” Here we can recognize an attempt to deny the difference between map and territory, and to get back to the absolute innocence of communication by means of pure mood-signs.”

Gregory Bateson book Steps to an Ecology of Mind

From Part 4, section 2: A Theory of Play and Fantasy
Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972)

Men, Religion, Art, Communication