Quotes about die
page 3

“When I die, my only wish is that Cambodia remain Cambodia and belong to the West. It is over for communism, and I want to stress that.”

Pol Pot (1925–1998) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

September 2018
Nate Thayer interview (1997)

Communication

“This is the year which people will talk about
This is the year which people will be silent about.The old see the young die.
The foolish see the wise die.The earth no longer produces, it devours.
The sky hurls down no rain, only iron.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Finland 1940" [Finnland 1940] (1940), trans. Sammy McLean in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 350
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

People

“The gnani is afraid of nothing. But he pities the man who is afraid. After all, to be born, to live and to die is natural. To be afraid is not. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Courage
Source: I am That, P.183.

Nature

“Do not demand love. Begin to love. You will be loved. It is the law and no statute can alter it. If we do not follow the law, and let the law die with the teacher, we shall become accomplices to the murderer. But if follow the law with our hearts, [Bapu] will live with us and through us.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

Rajagopalachari (12 February 1949), quoted in [Rajmohan Gandhi, Rajaji: A Life, http://books.google.com/books?id=JjPHeRd7_UYC&pg=PA475, 1997, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-026967-3, 286]
Spoken by C.R when Mahatma Gandhi (Bapu) was assassinated.

Love, Law, Teachers, Heart

“It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die, so that the country may live.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Original French: Je prononce à regret cette fatale vérité... mais Louis doit mourir, parce qu'il faut que la patrie vive. Speech to the National Convention http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/journal_debats/an/1792/convention_1792_12_03.htm on the judgment of Louis XVI (3 December 1792)

Truth, Country

“Something told me to draw or die.”

Minnie Evans (1892–1987) American artist

Cited In Susan Mitchell Crawley "Let It Shine: Self-Taught Art From The T. Marshall Hahn Collection" p. 177

Drawing

“Every time you stand at a crossroads of life and death, you have two universes in front of you; one loses all relation to you because you die, the other maintains its relation to you because you survive in it. Just as you would take off your clothes, you abandon the universe in which you are still alive. In other words, various universes emerge around each of us the way tree limbs and leaves branch away from the trunk.”

Kenzaburō Ōe book A Personal Matter

A Personal Matter (1964)

Life, Death, Way, Tree

“The Revolution is so that people can live, not so that they can die!”

Lu Xun (1881–1936) Chinese novelist and essayist

Source: [citation needed]

People

“The First Sermon on the Day of the Visitation of Mary (Die erste Predigt am Tag der Heimsuchung Mariä).”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

1532 Denifle, Heinrich, Luther and Lutherdom http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029249567, vol.1, part 1, tr. from 2nd rev. ed. of German by Raymund Volz, Somerset, England: Torch Press, 1917, (Cornell University Library 2009), ISBN 1112168176 ISBN 9781112168178, p. 305. Denifle cites Luther’s Sämtliche Werke (Vols 4-6 in 1), Erlangen-Frankfurt edition, 1865, Heyder & Zimmer, vol. vi, p. 401 http://books.google.com/books?id=zTMoAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA3-PA401&dq=%22und+fluchen+wie+die+Landsknecht%22&lr=#v=onepage&q=%22und%20fluchen%20wie%20die%20Landsknecht%22&f=false

“Die for the Virgin, for your mother the Empress, for the royal family. The Church will pray to God for the dead. The survivor has honor and glory.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

"The Art of Victory: The Life and Achievements of Field Marshal Suvorov" - Page 217 by Philip Longworth - 1966.

God, Family, Dead

“Most men think they are immortal--until they get a cold, when they think they are going to die within the hour.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

http://books.google.com/books?id=feWS3EhzaRwC&q=%22Most+men+think+they+are+immortal+until+they+get+a+cold+when+they+think+they+are+going+to+die+within+the+hour%22&pg=PA216#v=onepage
Human Options (1981)

Men, Thinking

“Hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in BAM (1992-01-10).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

Hope

“What is our life? A play of passion;
our mirth: the music of division;
our mother's wombs: the tiring houses be
where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
that sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
only we die in earnest, that's no jest.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

"On the Life of Man" (1612)
Attributed

Life, Music, Search, Passion

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Life, Money, Happiness, World

“The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don't, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it — they felt this as never before and were filled with bitter rage when, in the dark of the early morning, they saw the brightly lit windows and knew that those glowing gold curtains gave shelter and freedom to hundreds of thousands of people, men with women they desired, while they themselves were homeless, plodding blindly through the streets, through the rain; it was cruel as only the sea could be cruel — the sea in which a person can die of thirst.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Women, Men, Money, People

“I am a man of great age and my wish is to pray two rak'ahs in the al-Aqsa mosque before I die, can I get my wish?”

Faisal of Saudi Arabia (1906–1975) King of Saudi Arabia

quora.com https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-stance-on-the-Arab-Israeli-conflict

Age

“I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet in law ought any man use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death, if a man is willing to say or do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

38e–39a
Plato, Apology

Death, War, Law, Way

“"What I don't like are kids (being raped.) You can mess with, maybe Miss Universe. Maybe I will even congratulate you for having the balls to rape somebody when you know you are going to die," for your crime”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Philippines' Duterte makes fresh rape joke https://ph.news.yahoo.com/philippines-duterte-makes-fresh-rape-joke-143846355.html

Universe

“I'm not gonna help nobody get something my negroes don't have. If I'm gonna die, I'll die now right here fighting you, if I'm gonna die. You my enemy. My enemies are white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight, but you won't even stand up for me here at home.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Regarding the Vietnam War and conscription (1967) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeFMyrWlZ68

People, Justice, Home, Freedom

“I will remain what I am until I die, a hunter, and when there are no buffalo or other game I will send my children to hunt and live on prairie, for where an Indian is shut up in one place his body becomes weak.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Recorded by James M. Walsh, inspector in the Northwest Territory of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, at a conference with Sitting Bull on March 23, 1879. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 206.

Children, Game

“He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Phaedo
Plato, Phaedo

Death, World, Hope

“Be more careful in guarding against censure than against danger; for the wicked may well dread the end of life, but good men should dread ignominy during life. Strive by all means to live in security, but if ever it falls to your lot to face the dangers of battle, seek to preserve your life, but with honour and not with disgrace; for death is the sentence which fate has passed on all mankind, but to die nobly is the special honour with nature has reserved for the good.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verse 43.
To Demonicus

Life, Death, Men, Fate

“People are afraid to die, because they do not know what is death. The gnani has died before his death, he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. (…) The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Death
Source: I am That, P.139.

Death, Happiness, People, Freedom

“Having a child changes every aspect of your life — for the better, of course. The sacrifices are large, but what you get in return is even bigger than the sacrifices you make. I feel, in a sense, ready to die because you are living on in your child. Not literally, not ready to die — but you know, that sort of feeling in a profound way.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

November 2007 interview remarks quoted by Susan Chenery, "Who Is That Man?" http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23097733-15803,00.html, In Touch Weekly, January 23, 2008.

Life, Way, Feeling, Sense

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Time Enough for Love (1973)

Problem, Change, Fight, Cooking

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love, Death, War, People

“I am here today, I may not be here tomorrow. But the responsibility to look after national interest is on the shoulder of every citizen of India. I have often mentioned this earlier. Nobody knows how many attempts have been made to shoot me, lathis have been used to beat me. In Bhubaneswar itself, a brickbat hit me. They have attacked me in every possible manner. I do not care whether I live or die. I have lived a long life and I am proud that I spend the whole of my life in the service of my people. I am only proud of this and nothing else. I shall continue to serve until my last breath and when I die, I can say, that every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

In: Selected Speeches of Indira Gandhi: January 1, 1982-October 30, 1984 http://books.google.com/books?id=ndA3AQAAIAAJ, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1986, p. 495. Her last speech delivered in Orissa on 30 October 1984 before she was assassinated.

Life, People

“One of the first signs of the beginnings of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

13
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Life, Hate, Understanding, Appearance

“Another white man's trick! Let me go! Let me die fighting!”

Crazy Horse (1840–1877) Oglala Sioux chief

During the final confrontation in which he was fatally wounded, as quoted in Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains (1919) by Charles Alexander Eastman

Fight

“In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order.”

Idi Amin (1925–2003) third president of Uganda

Quoted in Morrow's International Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations, 1982, Jonathon Green.
Attributed

People, Law, Country

“We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

The ABC of Relativity (1925), p. 166
1920s
Variant: "Most people would rather die than think; many do."

People, World, Thinking, Effort

“We shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and a migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the site of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now, if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O friends and judges, can be greater than this? …Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. …What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they would not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

40c–41c
Plato, Apology

Life, Death, Men, World

“If you will do some deed before you die,
Remember not this caravan of death,
But have belief that every little breath
Will stay with you for an eternity.”

Al-Maʿarri (973–1057) Medieval Arab philosopher

As quoted in The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala (1909) by Henry Baerlein, XLVII

Death

“Because I grew up playing for Roma and I want to die playing for Roma, because I have always been a Roma's fan!”

Francesco Totti (1976) Italian footballer

Answering the question: "Francesco, why don't you play for another team for two or three years in order to win something more?" From the TV show "Controcampo" 4/18/2007).

“My boys may charge me with all they want. The main thing is, it helps them. They are not evil and no criminals. They are the products of total war, grown up on the streets of scattered towns without any education! The only thing [they] knew was to handle weapons for the Dream of [the] Reich. They were young people with a hot heart and the desire to win or to die, according to the word: right or wrong—my country!”

Joachim Peiper (1915–1976) SS officer

Letter to Willis Everett, July 4, 1946. Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 14, citing Everett Papers in note 5.

War, People, Education, Dreams

“The Phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us, we two being one, are it.
So to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.”

John Donne The Canonization

The Canonization, stanza 3

Love, Sex

“God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much.”

Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916) Russian mystic

As quoted in Rasputin: The Untold Story By Joseph T. Fuhrmann p.100

God, Tear

“Indian, Indian what did you die for?
Indian says, nothing at all.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

“Let a politician die, and his worst enemies will stand up on the ﬂoor of the House and utter pious lies in his honour, but a writer or artist must be sniffed at, at least if he is any good.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

As I Please (1943–1947)

Housing

“He said to me, "It will always be difficult, but if you cry like this every time, you will die of heartbreak. Just know it is enough sometimes to know it is difficult."”

Chris Abani (1966) Nigerian author

Quoting a former child soldier who held his hand over a goat's eyes while Abani, aged 13, killed it
"Chris Abani muses on humanity," dotSUB (2008-11-13)
TED Africa Conference (2008)

Time, Cry

“Religionists have kept their followers in line by suppressing their egos. By making their followers feel inferior, the awesomeness of their god is insured. Satanism encourages its members to develop a good strong ego because it gives them the self-respect necessary for a vital existence in this life. If a person has been vital throughout his life and has fought to the end for his earthly existence, it is this ego which will refuse to die, even after the expiration of the flesh which housed it. Young children are to be admired for their driving enthusiasm for life. This is exemplified by the small child who refuses to go to bed when there is something exciting going on, and when once put to bed, will sneak down the stairs to peek through the curtain and watch. It is this child-like vitality that will allow the Satanist to peek through the curtain of darkness and death and remain earthbound.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Life, Death, God, Children

“I was born poor, I have lived poor, I wish to die poor.”

Pope Pius X (1835–1914) Catholic Pope and saint

His last will, as quoted in an obituary in The Maine Catholic Historical Magazine (1914) Volumes 3-6, p. 17

“Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Whoever can not take care of themself without that law is both. For a wounded man shall say to his assailant, "If I live, I will kill you. If I die, you are forgiven."”

Randy Blythe (1971) American musician

Such is the rule of honor.
Opening to 'Omerta', from the album Ashes Of The Wake
Lyrics

Law, Fools

“The terrible situation of the country makes my mind restless and I cannot keep silent. Meaningless ritual keep the Hindus divided in hundred sects. Sop we are suffering from series of defeats. We are tired and worn-out by the fortunes by the internal external enemies. The Muslims are united in religion and rituals. The Bengali Muslims the South Indian Muslims and even the Muslims outside India-all are united. They always stand untied in face of danger. The broken and divided Hindus will not be able to combat them. Days are coming when the Hindus will be again humiliated by the Muslims. "You are a mother of children, one day you will die, passing the future of Hindus society on the weak shoulders of your children, but think about their future."”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

From the letter to Hemantabala Sarkar, written on 16the October, 1933, quoted in Bengali weekly `Swastika', 21-6-1999 http://hindusamhati.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughts-of-rabindranath-tagore-on.html

Children, Religion, Thinking, Suffering

“At the end of the second day as I was lying all alone, I saw clearly a being, with a part of the head cut off, in a military uniform (or the remains of a military uniform) approaching me and suddenly flinging himself upon my chest, with that half a head to suck my force. I took a good look, then realised that I was about to die. He was drawing all my life out … I was completely nailed to the bed, without movement, in a deep trance. I could no longer stir and he was pulling. I thought: now it is the end. Then I called on my occult power, I gave a big fight and I succeeded in turning him back so that he could not stay there any longer. And I woke up … I know how much knowledge and force were necessary for me to resist. It was irresistible.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

When she was attacked by a serious fever epidemic which had engulfed Japan in 1917 and this occult experience was widely publicized after the epidemic had abated, quoted in "Japan (1916-20)", also in “Yogi-doctors” and Occult Healing Arts:Towards a Post-colonial Anthropology of Holistic Therapeutics at Sri Aurobindo Ashram http://www.isa-sociology.org/publ/E-symposium/E-symposium-vol-1-1-2011/EBul-Mar-11-Paranjape.pdf., p. 8

Life, Lying, Knowledge, Fight

“I am a fascist and will die a fascist.”

Licio Gelli (1919–2015) Italian financier, liaison with Nazi Germany, P2 grandmaster, involved in many scandals

[Licio Gelli, financier - obituary, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/12054716/Licio-Gelli-financier-obituary.html, 16 August 2018, The Daily Telegraph, December 16, 2015]

“Sons, the event proves that your fathers were brave men; for we might have lived dishonourably, but have preferred to die honourably rather than bring you and your children into disgrace, and rather than dishonour our own fathers and forefathers”

Plato book Menexenus

A speech of Aspasia, recounted by Socrates, as portrayed in the dialogue.
Menexenus
Context: p>Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind. Even as I exhort you this day, and in all future time, whenever I meet with any of you, shall continue to remind and exhort you, O ye sons of heroes, that you strive to be the bravest of men. And I think that I ought now to repeat what your fathers desired to have said to you who are their survivors, when they went out to battle, in case anything happened to them. I will tell you what I heard them say, and what, if they had only speech, they would fain be saying, judging from what they then said. And you must imagine that you hear them saying what I now repeat to you:Sons, the event proves that your fathers were brave men; for we might have lived dishonourably, but have preferred to die honourably rather than bring you and your children into disgrace, and rather than dishonour our own fathers and forefathers; considering that life is not life to one who is a dishonour to his race, and that to such a one neither men nor Gods are friendly, either while he is on the earth or after death in the world below.Remember our words, then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the condition of the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all possessions and pursuits are dishonourable and evil.For neither does wealth bring honour to the owner, if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice.And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us.And we shall most likely be defeated, and you will most likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order your lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your ancestors, knowing that to a man who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his ancestors.The honour of parents is a fair and noble treasure to their posterity, but to have the use of a treasure of wealth and honour, and to leave none to your successors, because you have neither money nor reputation of your own, is alike base and dishonourable.And if you follow our precepts you will be received by us as friends, when the hour of destiny brings you hither; but if you neglect our words and are disgraced in your lives, no one will welcome or receive you. This is the message which is to be delivered to our children.</p

Men, Children

“So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Through A Glass, Darkly (1918)
Context: So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me. And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o'er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought. So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

Future

“We do not die since we are alone. It is the others who die. And this sentence, which comes to my lips tremulously, at once baleful and beaming with light, announces that death is a false god.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: Once, bowed in the evening light, the dead man had said, "After my death, life will continue. Every detail in the world will continue to occupy the same place quietly. All the traces of my passing will die little by little, and the void I leave behind will be filled once more."
He was mistaken in saying so. He carried all the truth with him. Yet we, we saw him die. He was dead for us, but not for himself. I feel there is a fearfully difficult truth here which we must get, a formidable contradiction. But I hold on to the two ends of it, groping to find out what formless language will translate it. Something like this: "Every human being is the whole truth." I return to what I heard. We do not die since we are alone. It is the others who die. And this sentence, which comes to my lips tremulously, at once baleful and beaming with light, announces that death is a false god.

Death, God, Light, Falseness

“In a little while it will be all over. We may fail. But the rights for which we contend will not die.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Letter from Batoche, N.W. T. to The Irish World (6 May 1885), also published as " An Appeal for Justice" in The Gibbet of Regina : The Truth about Riel, Sir John A. Macdonald and His Cabinet Before Public Opinion, by One who Knows (1886) by One who knows, Napoléon Thompson, p. 186
Context: In a little while it will be all over. We may fail. But the rights for which we contend will not die. A day of reckoning will come to our enemies and of jubilee to my people. The hated yoke of English domination and arrogance will be broken in this land, and the long-suffering victims of their injustice will, with God's blessing, re-enter into the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions.

“War may be unavoidable sometimes, but its progeny are terrible to contemplate. Not mere killing, for man must die, but the deliberate and persistent propagation of hatred and falsehood, which gradually become the normal habits of the people.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book The Discovery of India

The Discovery of India (1946)
Context: The world of today has achieved much, but for all its declared love for humanity, it has based itself far more on hatred and violence than on the virtues that make one human. War is the negation of truth and humanity. War may be unavoidable sometimes, but its progeny are terrible to contemplate. Not mere killing, for man must die, but the deliberate and persistent propagation of hatred and falsehood, which gradually become the normal habits of the people. It is dangerous and harmful to be guided in our life's course by hatreds and aversions, for they are wasteful of energy and limit and twist the mind and prevent it from perceiving truth.

War, People

“Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.”

Sophocles Electra

Electra, 1007.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Death, Evil

“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slaughterhouse-Five

Billy writing a letter to a newspaper describing the Tralfamadorians
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Context: The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."

Learning, Appearance, Personality

“I'll blow my brains in your lap, lay here and die in your arms”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Space Bound"
2010s, Recovery (2010)
Context: After a year and six months, it's no longer me that you want. But, I love you so much it hurts. Never mistreated you once; I poured my heart out to you. Let down my guard, swear to God. I'll blow my brains in your lap, lay here and die in your arms. Drop to my knees and I'm pleading; I'm trying to stop you from leaving. You won't even listen, so...

“Only the young die good.”

Oliver Herford (1863–1935) American writer

Speaker's Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 70.
Attributed

“Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson book Ulysses

Source: Ulysses (1842), l. 54-62
Context: The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

World, Star

“We don’t live in order to die, we live in order to live.”

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

in an interview http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n12/htdocs/ursula-k-le-guin-440.php?country=uk in Vice Magazine. Context: Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it’s simply meaningless. We don’t live in order to die, we live in order to live.

“The learning process continues until the day you die. ”

Kirk Douglas (1916–2020) American stage and film actor

Learning

“A new scientific truth does not generally triumph by persuading its opponents and getting them to admit their errors, but rather by its opponents gradually dying out and giving way to a new generation that is raised on it. … An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist. … Eine neue große wissenschaftliche Idee pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner allmählich überzeugt und bekehrt werden — daß aus einem Saulus ein Paulus wird, ist eine große Seltenheit —, sondern vielmehr in der Weise, dass die Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Idee vertraut gemacht wird. Auch hier heißt es wieder: Wer die Jugend hat, der hat die Zukunft.
Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie. Mit einem Bildnis und der von Max von Laue gehaltenen Traueransprache. Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag (Leipzig 1948), p. 22, in Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, (1949), as translated by F. Gaynor, pp. 33–34, 97 (as cited in T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Translation revised by Eric Weinberger.

Truth, Youth, Making love, Way

“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Thoughts of Prince Andrew Bk XII, Ch. 16
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

Love, Life, Death, God

“I think you can understand time just by the fact that everything, everything changes. Everything ages. You’re born, you die. The living beings as the objects if they are new, then they become old. Even the stones, even in our Earth, aged four and a half billion years, has changed enormously. So we can define time only thanks to the fact that everything changes.”

Margherita Hack (1922–2013) Italian astrophysicist and popular science writer

Interview with Euronews' Claudio Rocco in 2011; as quoted in " Science says 'ciao' to Italy's Margherita Hack: the 'lady of the stars'", euronews.com (1 July 2013) https://www.euronews.com/2013/07/01/science-says-ciao-to-italy-s-margherita-hack-the-lady-of-the-stars.

Age, Understanding, Thinking, Change

“Why was my own dress good enough to live in, and not good enough to die in?”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Diogenes Laertius

“Everyone has to die. I'm not particularly scared about it. What really frightens me is that if I go before my wife, I will leave her alone, and vice versa. The ideal would be to die together.”

Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor

“Why do things have to die? It is nature. And nature is flawed.”

Aaron Guzikowski tv series Raised by Wolves

Raised by Wolves, season 1, episode 4. Character Mother.

Nature

“We know so little,
so little, almost nothing
and this is only truth,
when and from where?
from the fissure of infinity
and the unreel of time,
lonely splinters
we wander on dreamy travels,
and the truth a flowing shadow
and it call us,
but the call still is not heard,
nor does the caller reveal his face.
and people voicelessly love and die,
because the truth dosen't speak
but dance in the harmony of unity.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: An ocean of souls

“Healing hurts. But what hurts more is the refusal of the call. The true pain of living is the abandonment of self, the mind-body split that makes us fear life. Our ache may be heavy and our souls tired today, but resistance makes it all feel a thousand times worse. Rejection of where we are amplifies suffering. Until we cannot take it anymore. Until there is no way out but in. Diving into the blackness, we discover not death but more abundant life. This is the great paradox of healing, which all great artists and poets and seers have known. We die into our trauma and discover our courage. The fiercest warriors are the ones who have let life break and remake them a thousand times over. The gods of healing are calling through your pain today. Healing hurts, yes, but the hurt itself may eventually heal you.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-16fjMHi5o/

“I would rather die of passion than of boredom”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Not by van Gogh, but from Emile Zola's novel The Ladies' Paradise (1883)
Misattributed

Passion, Motivational, Deep, Inspirational

“I am afraid to die sometimes, but God is the one to decide when a person dies. I want to live to the fullest until then.”

Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953–2001) Afghan military leader

As quoted in Massoud's Smile https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBR8V8YWEAI9OWu?format=jpg, by Hiromi Nagakura

God, Personality

“Remember that, most of the prophets began as poor people, but they did not die in the same state as they began.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

People

“Most will live a selfish life
Stubbornly die
without regret
Poisoning the hope
We all drink
Thirsting for love”

Boukabyegga

Love, Life, Hope, Drink

“(Engr. Abah Sule favorite speech)1. Give birth to yourself. 2. Others are feeling the same. 3. As a man you got to be strong. 4. Love the one you are with, 5. Where challenges are important, 6. to live is the hardest, to die is the simplest. 7. Peace of mind, long life, 8. Can't be done without you. 9. Do what's real. 10. Live the world and live your life.”

Engr.Abah Sule

Love, Life, World, Peace

“Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“How many different deaths I can die?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Death

“How good would it be if one could die by throwing oneself into an infinite void.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Truth, Art

“The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Source: The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One

Women, Men, Age, Travel

“We didn't die,' she said.

Of course not. I'm too clever to die, and you're too pretty.'

I am pretty,' Valkryie said, managing a grin.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Playing with Fire

“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Beauty

“I am your wife if you will marry me.
If not, I'll die your maid. To be your fellow
You may deny me, but I'll be your servant Whether you will or no.”

William Shakespeare The Tempest

Source: The Tempest

“Don't feel bad, I'm usually about to die.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Feeling

“It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country," he read. "This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.”

Terry Pratchett book Jingo

Source: Jingo

Reading, Country

“Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

World, Evil

“Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Source: Beyond Good and Evil

Drink

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117 Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846) Context: Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man who, like Satan, thought himself, for an instant, equal to God; but who now acknowledges, with Christian humility, that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom... There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.

Life, Happiness, World, Wise

“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

As quoted by Thomas A. Bruno in Take your dreams and Run (South Plainfield: Bridge, 1984), p. 2-3. Source: Dr. Preston Williams (2002): By the Way - A Snapshot Diagnosis of the Inner-City Dilemma, p. 38-39. Xulun Press, Fairfax, Virginia http://books.google.de/books?id=Xn9jxqatFecC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=woodrow+wilson+We+Grow+Great+By+Dreams%27&source=bl&ots=TtioQ-yO0-&sig=qHWPj4-8g3hSjcV-qJTbzNg6nuI&hl=de&sa=X&ei=1QZ0U4DBOaf80QWSqYDQAw&ved=0CHYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=woodrow%20wilson%20We%20Grow%20Great%20By%20Dreams'&f=false 1880s

Men, Dreams, Hope, Spring