Quotes about die
page 6

Thomas Paine photo

“I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spend in doing good and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Last will (1809), as quoted in The Fortnightly Review https://books.google.com/books?id=PtlBAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA398&lpg=PA398&dq=%22Let+me+have+none+of+your+Popish+stuff%22&source=bl&ots=XKTgMyyfOF&sig=N-KTteQDfZyKQaQA0yyMGyHkBvU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBhM3xmcrLAhXonIMKHSBLCcoQ6AEIIjAD#v=onepage&q=%22Let%20me%20have%20none%20of%20your%20Popish%20stuff%22&f=false, Volume 31, pp. 398–399
1800s

Yoshida Shoin photo
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo

“To accomplish great things we must live as though we had never to die.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Pour exécuter de grandes choses, il faut vivre comme si on ne devait jamais mourir.
Quoted in Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays (2009), by Keith Stern, p. 466.
Variant: In order to achieve great things, we must live as though we were never going to die.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 172.

Tom Jones photo

“When I was younger I got into fights with my brother. Now I’m older, I can’t get into any bother… now if I explode, I’m the one who’s going to die. I’m an old man.”

Tom Jones (1940) Welsh singer

Source: "Tom Jones: 'I have a temper that frightens me'" http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-04-28/tom-jones-i-have-a-temper-that-frightens-me, Radio Times, 28 April 2012.

Christopher Lee photo
Uesugi Kenshin photo

“Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will be alive; wish to survive in the battle and you will surely meet death.”

Uesugi Kenshin (1530–1578) Japanese daimyo

Quoted in Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro; Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture (1970); p. 188
Cited in Wisdom from Early Japan, The Samurai Archives, 2006-11-07 http://www.samurai-archives.com/wisdom.html,
Cited in [Storry, Richard, October 11, 1979, Cult of the Sword, The New York Review of Books, 26, 15, ISSN 0028-7504, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=7675, 2006-11-07] (Review of several books on the samurai of Japan.)
Alternative: "Those who cling to life die, and those who defy death live."

Joseph Hall photo

“He is wealthy enough, that wanteth not: he is great enough, that is his own master: he is happy enough, that lives to die well.”

Joseph Hall (1574–1656) British bishop

Three Centuries of Meditations and Vowes century III, LIX.

Lu Xun photo

“For all of ignorant people of a nation, even if their body is somehow strong, somehow grand, even then they can only make meaningless displays [of this "strength"]. [As for] the multitude of constituents and observers, however many may die from [this] sickness, this is [still] not to be considered as unfortunate.”

Lu Xun studied medicine before he became a writer. Once he saw on a film a Chinese being executed by Japanese while many other Chinese were watching this "spectacular event". This made him feel that saving the "souls" of people is more important than saving their bodies.
Source: From the preface of his work Na Han (Call to Arms) (1922)

Napoleon I of France photo

“How many seemingly impossible things have been accomplished by resolute men because they had to do, or die.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Ovid photo

“No fairer law in all the land
Than that death-dealers die by what they've planned.”

Neque enim lex aequior ulla est, Quam necis artifices arte perire sua.

Book I, lines 655–656 (tr. Len Krisak)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

Angelus Silesius photo

“Saints do not die. It is their lot,
To die while on this earth to all that God is not.”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

Muammar Gaddafi photo

“I am not going to leave this land. I will die as a martyr at the end. I shall remain, defiant. Muammar is Leader of the Revolution until the end of time.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Televised address to the nation, quoted in guardian.co.uk (22 February 2011) " Gaddafi urges violent showdown and tells Libya 'I'll die a martyr' http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/22/muammar-gaddafi-urges-violent-showdown?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487" by Ian Black
Speeches

Jordan Peterson photo
Guru Angad Dev photo

“Die before the one whom you love; to live after he dies is to live a worthless life in this world.”

Guru Angad Dev (1504–1552) The second Guru of Sikhism

Guru Granth Sahib p. 83

Matthew Arnold photo
Jan Hus photo

“God is my witness that I have never taught or preached that which false witnesses have testified against me. He knows that the great object of all my preaching and writing was to convert men from sin. In the truth of that gospel which hitherto I have written, taught and preached, I now joyfully die.”

Jan Hus (1369–1415) Czech linguist, religion writer, theologist, university educator and science writer

Jan Hus (1415); quoted in: Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, Volume 12, 1891, p. 401

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.”

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

Joey Comeau photo

“I'd rather die terrified than live forever.”

Joey Comeau (1980) writer

A Softer World

Menno Simons photo
Alexander Suvorov photo
Emanuel Swedenborg photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“The life is worth living. It's not true, what the tired and reactionary say. We're not on this earth to suffer and die. We're here to fulfill a mission.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Denn das Leben ist wert, dass man es lebt. Das ist nicht wahr, was die Müden und Überlebten sagen. Wir sind nicht in diese Welt gesetzt, um zu leiden und zu sterben. Wir haben hier eine Mission zu erfüllen.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Benjamin Mkapa photo

“When a jumbo jet crashes, we will rush in with assistance, but we forget that each day 30,000 children die unnecessarily from poverty-related preventable causes - equivalent to 100 jumbo jets crashing every day.”

Benjamin Mkapa (1938) Tanzanian politician and former president

At the United Nations' 60th summit, 2005-09-16 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4247296.stm
2005

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Frank Zappa photo

“Beauty is a pair of shoes that makes you wanna die.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Beauty Knows No Pain.
You Are What You Is (1981)

Louis Armstrong photo

“Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. … You might be able to buy a little better booze than some wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat, and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is.”

Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) American jazz trumpeter, composer and singer

Ebony magazine, November 1964 http://books.google.com/books?id=G98DAAAAMBAJ&q=%22making+money+ain't+nothing+exciting+to+me%22+%22You+might+be+able+to+buy+a+little+better+booze+than+some+wino+on+the+corner+But+you+get+sick+just+like+the+next+cat+and+when+you+die+you're+just+as+graveyard+dead+as+he+is%22&pg=PA138#v=onepage

José Saramago photo

“The man changed position, turned his back on the wardrobe blocking the door and let his right arm slide down toward the side on which the dog is lying. A minute later, he was awake. He was thirsty. He turned on his bedside light, got up, shuffled his feet into the slippers which were, as always, providing a pillow for the dog's head, and went into the kitchen. Death followed him. The man filled a glass with water and drank it. At this point, the dog appeared, slaked his thirst in the water-dish next to the back door and then looked up at his master. I suppose you want to go out, said the cellist. He opened the door and waited until the animal came back. A little water remained in his glass. Death looked at it and made an effort to imagine what it must be like to feel thirsty, but failed. She would have been equally incapable of imagining it when she'd had to make people die of thirst in the desert, but at the time she hadn't even tried. The dog returned, wagging his tail. Let's go back to sleep, said the man. They went into the bedroom again, the dog turned around twice, then curled up into a ball. The man drew the sheet up to his neck, coughed twice and soon afterward was asleep again. Sitting in her corner, death was watching. Much later, the dog got up from the carpet and jumped onto the sofa. For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt like to have a dog on her lap.”

Source: Death with Interruptions (2005), p. 172

Jean Anouilh photo

“To die is nothing. Begin by living. It’s less funny and lasts longer.”

Mourir, ce n'est rien. Commence donc par vivre. C'est moins drôle et c'est plus long.
Roméo et Jeannette (1946), Act 3.

J. M. Barrie photo

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”

Act III
Peter Pan (1904)

Francesco Petrarca photo

“Song, if you find a man at peace with love,
say: 'Die while you're happy,
since early death is no grief, but a refuge:
and he who can die well, should not delay.”

Canzon, s'uom trovi in suo amor viver queto,
di': Muor' mentre se' lieto,
ché morte al tempo è non duol, ma refugio;
et chi ben pò morir, non cerchi indugio.
Canzone 331, st. 6 ( tr. A. S. Kline http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=331)
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Death

Barack Obama photo

“We have to do our best to uphold in our own lives the values that they were prepared to die for. We have to honor those who carry forward that legacy, recognizing that people cannot live in freedom unless free people are prepared to die for it.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at the 70th Anniversary of D-Day at Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Omaha Beach, Normandy, France at June 6, 2014 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/06/remarks-president-obama-70th-anniversary-d-day-omaha-beach-normandy
2014

Bertrand Russell photo
Grace Slick photo
Yuan Shao photo

“"A real man should die in front of the ranks, not hide behind a wall!"”

Yuan Shao (154–202) Han Dynasty warlord

Statement in 191 at Battle of Jieqiao. Yuan Shao and his halberdsmen, surrounded by enemy cavalry, refuses to take refuge. He is said to have thrown off his helmet as he said this. Source: "Yingxiong Ji" (英雄記), page 193-194 of Sanguo Zhi.

Kenzaburō Ōe photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“And then you know I can use the biological example too, which would place me outside of the postmodern realm of argument, because the postmodernists don't believe in biology but they act like they do because they all die!”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege talk, 3rd November 2017
Other

Miriam Makeba photo

“I will probably die singing.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

As quoted in

Emiliano Zapata photo

“I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.”

Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919) Mexican Revolutionary

Prefiero morir de pie que vivir de rodillas.
As quoted in Liberation Theologies in North America and Europe‎ (1979) by Gerald H. Anderson and Thomas F. Stransky, p. 281; this is sometimes misattributed to the more modern revolutionary, Che Guevara, and to "La Pasionaria" Dolores Ibárruri, especially in Spain, where she popularized it in her famous speeches during the Spanish Civil War, to José Martí, and to Aeschylus who is credited with a similar declaration in Prometheus Bound: "For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life." The phrase "better that we should die on our feet rather than live on our knees" was spoken by François-Noël Gracchus Babeuf in his defence of the Conspiracy of Equals in April 1797. In French it read, 'Ne vaut-il pas mieux emporter la gloire de n'avoir pas survecu a la servitude?' but translated this bears no resemblance whatever to the quote under discussion. see: The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf Before the High Court of Vendome (1967), edited and translated by John Anthony Scott, p. 88 and p. 90, n. 12.
Spanish variants:
¡Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!
I'd prefer to die standing, than to live always on my knees.
As quoted in Operación Cobra : historia de una gesta romántica (1988) by Alvaro Pablo Ortiz and Oscar Lara, p. 29
Variant translations:
Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
With an extension, as quoted in Timeless Mexico (1944) by Hudson Strode, p. 259
I would rather die standing than live on my knees!
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
I prefer to die standing than to live forever kneeling.
Prefer death on your feet to living on your knees.

Anthony Burgess photo
Gilda Radner photo
Angelus Silesius photo

“I know God couldn't live a moment without me; if I should disappear, He would die, destitute”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

Sharon Tate photo

“Please — please don't kill me — I don't want to die. I just want to have my baby.”

Sharon Tate (1943–1969) actress, victim of murder by Charles Manson followers

Court testimony of Virginia Graham as to what her confessed murderer Susan Atkins (aka Sadie Mae Glutz) had said were among her last words (9 August 1969). Atkins said she responded to this with: "Look, bitch, you might as well face it right now, you're going to die, and I don't feel a thing behind it."

Barack Obama photo

“So we pulled up to this diner, where people told us that we could get some good pie. And I like pie. Do you like pie too? So, we go in there, and we say, "Oh, what kind of pie you got?' And they didn't have sweet potato pie, they didn't have pumpkin pie. They had some cream pies mostly, which is OK with me. So, I got some coconut cream pie. And Governor Strickland, he got lemon meringue pie.
So while we're waiting for our pie, the staff come and they want to take a picture with me because they say, you know, the owner of this dinner is a staunch die-hard Republican, so we want to kind of tease him a little bit by getting this picture with you. So we're taking this picture and suddenly the owner comes out with the pie. And he looks at me and I say, "Sir, I understand that you are a die-hard Republican." He says, "That's right." I said, "How's business?" He said, "Not so good." He said, "My customer, they can't afford to eat out anymore." I said, "Who's been in charge of the economy for the last eight years?" He said, "Republicans." I said, "You know, if you kept on hitting your head against a wall over and over again and it started to hurt, at some point would you stop hitting your head against the wall?"”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

He said, "You've got a point."
At a rally in Londonberry, New Hampshire (16 October 2008) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0810/16/cnr.04.html
2008

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 35e

Socrates photo
Joan Baez photo

“Bangladesh, Bangladesh
When the sun sinks in the west
Die a million people of the Bangladesh”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Joan Baez, in the Song for Bangladesh (1971)

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Heinrich Himmler photo
T. B. Joshua photo
Virginia Woolf photo

“As for the soul: why did I say I would leave it out? I forget. And the truth is, one can't write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle, at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent's Pak, and the soul slips in. Mrs Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. But then there were causes in her life: prayer; principle. None in mine. Great excitability and search after something. Great content – almost always enjoying what I'm at, but with constant change of mood. I don't think I'm ever bored. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say 'This is it'? What is it? And shall I die before I can find it? Then (as I was walking through Russell Square last night) I see mountains in the sky: the great clouds, and the moon which is risen over Persia; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there, which is 'it' – A sense of my own strangeness, walking on the earth is there too. Who am I, what am I, and so on; these questions are always floating about in me. Is that what I meant to say? Not in the least. I was thinking about my own character; not about the universe. Oh and about society again; dining with Lord Berners at Clive's made me think that. How, at a certain moment, I see through what I'm saying; detest myself; and wish for the other side of the moon; reading alone, that is.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Saturday 27 February 1926
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Cyril Connolly photo
Anthony de Mello photo

“Whatever is truly alive must die. Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Flow
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

Jean Paul Sartre photo
Prince photo

“I want to live life to the ultimate high,
Maybe I'll die young like heroes die,
Maybe I'll kiss you some wild special way.
If nobody kills me or thrills me soon,
I'll die in your arms under the cherry moon.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Under the Cherry Moon
Song lyrics, Parade Under the Cherry Moon (1986)

Henry Miller photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“According to the old story, King Midas had long hunted wise Silenus, Dionysus' companion, without catching him. When Silenus had finally fallen into his clutches, the king asked him what was the best and most desirable thing of all for mankind. The daemon stood still, stiff and motionless, until at last, forced by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and spoke these words: 'Miserable, ephemeral race, children of hazard and hardship, why do you force me to say what it would be much more fruitful for you not to hear? The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you — is to die soon.”

Es geht die alte Sage, dass König Midas lange Zeit nach dem weisen Silen, dem Begleiter des Dionysus, im Walde gejagt habe, ohne ihn zu fangen. Als er ihm endlich in die Hände gefallen ist, fragt der König, was für den Menschen das Allerbeste und Allervorzüglichste sei. Starr und unbeweglich schweigt der Dämon; bis er, durch den König gezwungen, endlich unter gellem Lachen in diese Worte ausbricht: `Elendes Eintagsgeschlecht, des Zufalls Kinder und der Mühsal, was zwingst du mich dir zu sagen, was nicht zu hören für dich das Erspriesslichste ist? Das Allerbeste ist für dich gänzlich unerreichbar: nicht geboren zu sein, nicht zu sein, nichts zu sein. Das Zweitbeste aber ist für dich - bald zu sterben.
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 22

Samuel Butler photo

“To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Complete Death
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIII - Death

Jimmy Buffett photo

“I'm growing older but not up.
My metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck.
Let those winds of time blow over my head.
I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Growing Older But Not Up
Song lyrics, Coconut Telegraph (1981)

H.P. Lovecraft photo
Thomas Traherne photo
François-René de Chateaubriand photo

“One does not learn how to die by killing others.”

Book IX: Ch. 4: Danton – Camille Desmoulins – Fabre d’Églantine.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Augustus photo
Martin Luther photo

“If a woman becomes weary and at last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, she is there to do it.”

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

Sermon Von dem ehelichen Stande (1519), p. 41 — as quoted in The Ethic of Freethought: A Selection of Essays and Lectures (1888) by Karl Pearson, "The Sex-Relations in Germany", p. 424
The quote actually comes from Von dem eelichen Leben (1522). It can be seen in an original edition here https://books.google.com/books?id=YGZcAAAAcAAJ&pg=PP28, in a 19th century reissue here https://books.google.com/books?id=wJEKAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA538, and in English translation (as " On the Estate of Marriage https://books.google.com/books?id=KFU0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA33") here https://books.google.com/books?id=KFU0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74.

Jawaharlal Nehru photo

“They fought because they were paid for it; they were not interested very much in the conquest of Greece. The Athenians on the other hand, fought for their freedom. They preferred to die rather than lose their freedom, and those who are prepared to die for any cause are seldom defeated.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

On the defeat of the forces of Darius the Great of Persia at the Battle of Marathon, in Glimpses of World History; Being Further Letters to His Daughter, Written In Prison, And Containing A Rambling Account of History For Young People (1942); also in Nehru on World History (1960} edited by Saul K. Padover, p. 14

Vladimir Nabokov photo
Robert Browning photo

“Can we love but on condition that the thing we love must die?”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

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

Sitting Bull photo

“This is a good day to die. Follow me!”

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

Rallying cry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25 June 1876), quoted in Campaigns of General Custer in the North-west by Judson Elliott Walker

Reinhold Niebuhr photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo

“If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now."”

That's my favorite joke.
A Man Without a Country (2005)

Virginia Woolf photo
Imre Kertész photo

“If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

Svaha (2000), p. 265

Homér photo
Michael Prysner photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Charles Spurgeon photo

“If religion be false, it is the basest imposition under heaven; but if the religion of Christ be true, it is the most solemn truth that ever was known! It is not a thing that a man dares to trifle with if it be true, for it is at his soul's peril to make a jest of it. If it be not true it is detestable, but if it be true it deserves all a man's faculties to consider it, and all his powers to obey it. It is not a trifle. Briefly consider why it is not. It deals with your soul. If it dealt with your body it were no trifle, for it is well to have the limbs of the body sound, but it has to do with your soul. As much as a man is better than the garments that he wears, so much is the soul better than the body. It is your immortal soul it deals with. Your soul has to live for ever, and the religion of Christ deals with its destiny. Can you laugh at such words as heaven and hell, at glory and at damnation? If you can, if you think these trifles, then is the faith of Christ to be trifled with. Consider also with whom it connects you—with God; before whom angels bow themselves and veil their faces. Is HE to be trifled with? Trifle with your monarch if you will, but not with the King of kings, the Lord of lords. Recollect that those who have ever known anything of it tell you it is no child's play. The saints will tell you it is no trifle to be converted. They will never forget the pangs of conviction, nor the joys of faith. They tell you it is no trifle to have religion, for it carries them through all their conflicts, bears them up under all distresses, cheers them under every gloom, and sustains them in all labour. They find it no mockery. The Christian life to them is something so solemn, that when they think of it they fall down before God, and say, "Hold thou me up and I shall be safe." And sinners, too, when they are in their senses, find it no trifle. When they come to die they find it no little thing to die without Christ. When conscience gets the grip of them, and shakes them, they find it no small thing to be without a hope of pardon—with guilt upon the conscience, and no means of getting rid of it. And, sirs, true ministers of God feel it to be no trifle. I do myself feel it to be such an awful thing to preach God's gospel, that if it were not "Woe unto me if I do not preach the gospel," I would resign my charge this moment. I would not for the proudest consideration under heaven know the agony of mind I felt but this one morning before I ventured upon this platform! Nothing but the hope of winning souls from death and hell, and a stern conviction that we have to deal with the grandest of all realities, would bring me here.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Religion—a Reality part II. Secondly, "It is not a vain thing"—that is, IT IS NO TRIFLE. (June 22nd, 1862) http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/0457.HTM

Emiliano Zapata photo

“I want to die a slave to principles. Not to men.”

Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919) Mexican Revolutionary

As quoted in Heroes of Mexico (1969) by Morris Rosenblum, p. 112
Variant: I want to die a slave to principles. Not to men.

Cindy Sheehan photo

“How many more of our loved ones need to die in this senseless war?”

Cindy Sheehan (1957) American antiwar activist

TV Commercial http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/archive/2005/08/gold-star-families-for-pe_5552.html, August 12, 2005
2005

Mark Twain photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“His tired gaze - from passing endless bars -
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
To him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world. His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable. But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part,
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.”

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehen der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.<p>Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.<p>Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf—. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille—
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.
As translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Der Panther (The Panther) (1907)

Jean De La Fontaine photo

“We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Jean de La Bruyère, in Du Coeur
Misattributed

Vladimir Nabokov photo
John Lydon photo
James E. Lovelock photo
Socrates photo
Alexander Pope photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo

“When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

37
Gitanjali http://www.spiritualbee.com/gitanjali-poems-of-tagore/ (1912)

Maria Montessori photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Erving Goffman photo

“The self… is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.”

p 252; Cited in: Javier Trevino, Goffman's Legacy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, p. 55.
1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959

Heath Ledger photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“Death is a bend in the road,
To die is to slip out of view.
If I listen, I hear your steps
Existing as I exist.

The earth is made of heaven.
Error has no nest.
No one has ever been lost.
All is truth and way.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

<p>A morte é a curva da estrada,
Morrer é só não ser visto.
Se escuto, eu te oiço a passada
Existir como eu existo.</p><p>A terra é feita de céu.
A mentira não tem ninho.
Nunca ninguém se perdeu.
Tudo é verdade e caminho.</p>
"A morte é a curva da estrada" (23 May 1932), in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)

William Shakespeare photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Abraham Lincoln photo