dead quotes

  • He had a fear of the dead, and of all inanimate things, rising up around himto claim him; it isthe fearof thepre- eminently solitary child and solitary man.

    - Peter Ackroyd
      Of Charles Dickens. Dickens, prologue.

  • Here's tae us; wha's like us? Gey few, and they're a'deid.

    -Anonymous
    c  Scottish toast of uncertain origin.'Damn'and other variations are sometimes substituted for 'gey'.

  •    Culture is dead, now let us start creating.

    -Anonymous
      Graffito by Parisian students on the School of  Architecture walls, May.

  • The President is a walking dead man. He just doesn't know it yet.

    -Anonymous
      Senior legislator on President Clinton's political future as he entered the second half of his term of office. In Nightline, ABC  T V broadcast, 6 Dec.

  • Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Poems: Second Series,'Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse', l.85^8.

  • Wemet†Dr Hall insuchverydeep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.

    -Jane Austen
      Letter to Cassandra  Austen,17 May.

  • 'Yestreen I dreamed a dolefu'dream; I ken'd here wad be sorrow! I dreamed I pu'd the heather green, On the dowie banks o' Yarrow.' She gaed up yon high, high hill I wat she gaed wi'sorrow An' in the den spied nine dead men, On the dowie houms o' Yarrow.

    -Ballads
    'The Dowie Houms o' Yarrow'.

  • Every time a child says'I don't believe in fairies'there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

    - SirJ(ames) M(atthew) Barrie
      Peter Pan (published1928), act1.

  • When I am dead, I hope it may be said, 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.'

    - (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
      'On His Books'.

  • As a rule Corde avoided cemeteries and never went near thegravesof hisparents.Hesaidit wasjustaseasy for your dead tovisit you, only by now he would haveto hire a hall.

    - Saul Bellow
      The Dean's December, ch.15.

  • What I like about Clive Is that he is no longer alive. There is a great deal to be said For being dead.

    - Edmund Clerihew Bentley
      Biography for Beginners,'Clive'.

  • Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness, Half dead and half alive.

    - SirJohn Betjeman
      'Death in Leamington', first published in the London Mercury.

  • And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there wasnot a house wherethere wasnot one dead.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Exodus12:30.

  • And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said,We be all dead men.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Exodus12:33.

  • And Samson said,Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slewat his death were more than they which he slew in his life.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Judges16:30.

  • Wherefore I praise the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes 4:2.

  • For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog isbetter thana dead lion.For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes 9:4^5.

  • But Jesussaid untohim,Followme; and letthe dead bury their dead.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 8:22.

  • Heal the sick, cleansethe lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew10:8.

  • Jesus answered and said unto them,Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see:The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew11:4^5.

  • It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Luke15:32.

  • And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them,Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember St Luke how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Luke 24:5^6.

  •    I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St  John11:25.

  • What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Romans 6:1^2.

  • Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Romans 6:9.

  • But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians15:20^2.

  • Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of aneye, atthelasttrump: for thetrumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians15:51^2.

  •   Faith without works is dead.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    James 2:20.

  • And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell as his feet as dead.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation1:13^17.

  • I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation1:18.

  • Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth:Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation14:13.

  • And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And thesea gave up the dead whichwere in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And deathand hell were cast intothelake of fire.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation 20:11^14.

  • With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free.

    - (Robert) Laurence Binyon
      'For the Fallen', in The Times, 21 Sep.

  • Best bloody place is bloody bed, With bloody ice on bloody head, You might as well be bloody dead, In bloody Orkney.

    - Hamish pseudonym of  Andrew James Fraser Blair Blair
      'The Bloody Orkneys', last stanza. First published in Arnold Silcock Verse and Worse,'Queer People'.

  • And night this toppling reed, still as the dead The great pike lies, the murderous patriarch, Watching the water-pit shelving and dark Where through the plash his lithe bright vassals tread.

    - Edmund Charles Blunden
      'The Pike'.

  • I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell;The third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost;The holy Catholick Church;The Communion of Saints;The Forgiveness of sins;The Resurrection of the body, And the life everlasting. Amen.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Morning Prayer,  Apostle's Creed.

  • We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for theresurrection of the body, (when the Sea shall give up her dead).

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Forms of Prayer to be Used at Sea,  At the Burial of their Dead at Sea.

  •    Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

    - Rupert Chawner Brooke
      'The Dead'.

  • The world was beforethecreationand at anend beforeit had a beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive. Though my grave be England, my dying place was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain.

    - SirThomas Browne
    ^5  Religio Medici (published1643), pt.1, section 59.

  • Can we not force from widowed poetry, Now thou art dead, great Donne, one elegy To crown thy hearse?

    -Thomas Carew
      'An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul's, Dr.  John Donne'.

  •    How true it is, that there isnothing dead inthis Universe; that what we call dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse order! 'The leaf that lies rotting in moist winds,'says one,'has still force; else how could it rot?'

    -Thomas Carlyle
      History of the French Revolution, vol.2, bk.3, ch.1.

  • The dead might as well speak to the living as the old to the young.

    -Willa Sibert Cather
      One of Ours, bk.2, ch.6.

  • Some people are better off deadlike your wife and my father for instance.

    - Raymond Chandler
      Line delivered by Robert  Walker as Bruno in the film Strangers on a Train (with Czenzi Ormonde), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith.

  • A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.

    - Raymond Chandler
      The Long Good-Bye, ch.10.

  • Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

    - G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
      Orthodoxy, ch.4.

  • La seule diffe  rence incontestable n'est pas celle des sexes ou des a"  ges ou des forces, mais celle des vifs et des morts. The only incontestable difference isnot that of sexorage or strength, but that of the living and the dead.

    - He  le'  ne Cixous
      Dedans.

  • Quand je n'e  cris pas, c'est comme si j'e  tais morte. When I do not write, it's as though I'm dead.

    - He  le'  ne Cixous
    Quoted in  Jean-Louis Rambures Comment travaillent les e  crivains (1978).

  • Is he then dead? What, dead at last, quite, quite for ever dead!

    -William Congreve
      Almeria to Leonora. The Mourning Bride, act 5, sc.11.

  • The people's flag is deepest red; It shrouded oft our martyred dead. And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold, Their heart's blood dyed its every fold. Then raise the scarlet standard high! Within its shade we'll live or die. Tho'cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the red flag flying here.

    -James Connell
      'The Red Flag', official anthem of the Labour Party.

  • If I were a Mexican, I would tell you,'Have you not enough room in your own country to bury your dead men? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands and hospitable graves.'

    -Thomas Corwin
      Speech to the Senate against the  American^Mexican War,11 Feb.

  • They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed. I wept as I remembered how often you and I Had tired thesunwithtalking and sent himdownthesky.

    -William originally  WilliamJohnson Cory
      Ionica, Poems,'Heraclitus', his translationof an epigram by Callimachus.

  •    There's sand in the porridge and sand in the bed, And if this is pleasure we'd rather be dead.

    - Sir Noe«  l Peirce Coward
      'The English Lido' (song).

  • With awe, around these silent walks I tread; These are the lasting mansions of the dead.

    - George Crabbe
    The Library (published1808), l.105^6.

  •    why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voices of liberty be mute? He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.

    - e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings cummings
      is 5,'Two, III'.

  • I saw corpses, and grew used to their unimportant look, for a dead man without any of the panoply of death is a desperately insignificant object.

    - Robertson Davies
      Of  World War I. Fifth Business, pt.2, ch.1.

  • Sagest in the council was he, kindest in the hall: Sure we never won a battle'twas Owen won them all. Had he lived, had he lived, our dear country had been free; But he's dead, but he's dead, and 'tis slaves we'll ever be.

    -Thomas Osborne Davis
      'Lament for the Death of Owen Roe O'Neil'.

  • However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead.

    - Richard Dawkins
      The Blind Watchmaker, ch.1.

  • If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead.How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception.Youaretheghoul of literature.Lovely.

    - Don DeLillo
      Owen Brademas. The Names, ch.4.

  • The dead have come to take the living. The dead in winding-sheets, theregimenteddead onhorseback, the skeleton that plays a hurdy-gurdy.

    - Don DeLillo
      Underworld.

  • What a finething capital punishment is! Dead mennever repent; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. Ah, it's a finething for thetrade! Five of 'emstrung up ina row; and none left to play booty, or turn white-livered!

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^9  Fagin. Oliver Twist, ch.9.

  • Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead,Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^3  On the death of  Jo. Bleak House, ch.47.

  • Come up and be dead! Come up and be dead!

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^5  Jenny Wren. Our Mutual Friend, bk.2, ch.5.

  • A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.

    - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
    ?1872  Complete Poems, no.1212 (first published1894).

  • The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear Their coming back seems possible For manyan ardent year.

    - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
    Complete Poems, no.1742 (first published1896).

  • I am dead: dead, but in the Elysian fields.

    - Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
      On his elevation to the House of Lords.

  • Fame is a food that dead men eat, I have no stomach for such meat.

    - (Henry) Austin Dobson
      'Fame is a Fool'.

  • The ideal board of directors should be made up of three mentwo dead and the other dying.

    -Tommy (Thomas Henderson) Docherty
      Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere, Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear To teach the sea what it may do too soon.

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'A  Valediction: Of  Weeping', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • She, she is dead; she's dead; when thou know'st this, Thou know'st how dry a cinder this world is.

    -John Donne
      'An  Anatomy of the World: The First  Anniversary'.

  • Remember me when I am dead and simplify me when I'm dead.

    - Gavin Douglas
      'Simplify Me When I'm Dead'.

  •    Sen for the deid remeid is none, Best is that we for dede dispone Eftir our deid that lif may we: Timor mortis conturbat me.

    - Alexandre, pe'  re Dumas
    c.1505  'Lament for the Makaris', stanza 25.

  • The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which ourdull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive formsthis knowledge, this feeling, isatthe centerof true religiousness.In thissense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.

    - Albert Einstein
    Quoted in Philipp Frank Einstein: HisLife and Times (1947), ch.12, section 5.

  • The dead level of provincial existence.

    - George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
      The Mill on the Floss, bk.5, ch.3.

  • He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      The Waste Land, pt.5,'What the Thunder Said'.

  • This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'The Hollow Men'.

  • A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'The  Journey of the Magi'.

  • Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.5.

  • And what the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.1.

  •    Wider comprehensions, deeper insights to the dead belong: Since for Love thou wakest not, sleeper, yet awake for sake of Song!

    - Sir Samuel Ferguson
    c.1864  'The Tain-Quest'.

  • And I'm afraid, reading this passage now, That everything I knew has been destroyed By those whom I admired but never knew; The laughing soldiers fought to their defeat And I'm afraid most of my friends are dead.

    -James Fenton
      'In a Notebook'.

  • Dead men are serious.

    -50 Cent originally  CurtisJackson
      The Wars, pt.1, section 20.

  • The historian must have a third quality as well: some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead.

    - E(dward) M(organ) Forster
      Abinger Harvest,'Captain Edward Gibbon'.

  • They listened at his heart. Littlelessnothing!and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'Out, Out'.

  • No matter how vital experiencemight be whileyou lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.

    - Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
    In This Our Life, pt.3, ch.9.

  • The doctor found, when she was dead, Her last disorder mortal.

    - Oliver Goldsmith
      'Elegy on Mrs Mary Blaize'.

  • The only reason so many people showed up at his funeral was because they wanted to make sure he was dead.

    - Sam(uel) originally  Schmuel Gelbfisz Goldwyn
    Of Louis B Mayer.  Attributed.

  • The concert is dead.

    - Glenn Gould
    Quoted in Richard Kostelanetz Master Minds (1969).

  • To bring the dead to life Is no great magic. Feware wholly dead: Blow on a dead man's embers And a live flame will start.

    - Robert von Ranke Graves
      'To Bring the Dead to Life'.

  • Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism, or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

    - Robert von Ranke Graves
      In the Observer,11 Nov.

  • Mindful of the unhonoured dead.

    -Thomas Gray
    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.93.

  • The Dead Heart of Australia.

    -JohnWalter Gregory
       Title of book, dealing with the centraldeserts of  Australia.

  •    And life is colour and warmth and light And a striving evermore for these; And he is dead, who will not fight; And who dies fighting has increase.

    -Julian Henry Francis Grenfell
      'Into Battle', in The Times, 27 May.

  •    If my life were like hers,I'd rather be dead.Come to think of it, if my life were like mine, I'd rather be dead.

    - (Robert) Ian Hamilton
    Quoted by Al  Alvarez in D Harsent (ed)  Another Road at the Pillars: Essays, Poems and Reflections on Ian Hamilton  (1972).

  • That part of hisspeech wasrather like being savaged bya dead sheep.

    - Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey
      Responding to a speechby Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Geoffrey Howe, House of Commons,  Jun.

  • The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead.

    - Felicia ne  e Browne Hemans
      'Casabianca'.

  • Se ha hecho para los vivos y no para los muertos el porque   metaf|sico y las reflexiones sobre la vida y la muerte, pero no les hace falta aclarar todo el misterio, les hace falta distraerse y son‹  ar en aclararlo. Metaphysical questions and reflections on lifeand death were created for people alive and not for the dead. However, they do not have to solve all mystery; it is enough for them to create some distraction and to dream that they clarify.

    - Felisberto Herna n dez
      Libro sin tapas,'La piedra filosofal' ('The Philosopher's Stone').

  • The public doesn't want new music: the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.

    - Arthur Honegger
    I Am a Composer.

  • These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
      Last Poems, no.37,'Epitaph on an  Army of Mercenaries'.

  • A wise nation preserves its records, gathers up its muniments, decorates the tombs of its illustrious dead, repairs its great public structures, and fosters national pride and love of country, by perpetual references to the sacrifices and glories of the past.

    -Joseph Howe

  • Mr President, I speak for sixty thousand dead!

    -William Morris Hughes
      Reply to Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference,  Jan, referring to the ANZ AC fatalities in World War I. Wilson had asked 'Mr Hughes, I speak for very many millions of people. For whom do you speak?'.

  • To love is to be a fish. My boat wallows in the sea. You who are free, rescue the dead.

    - David Ignatow
      Rescue the Dead,'Rescue the Dead'.

  • His soul swooned slowlyas he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descentoftheir lastend, uponall theliving and the dead.

    -James Augustine Aloysius Joyce
      Dubliners,'The Dead'.

  • Over my dead body.

    - George S(imon) Kaufman
    Suggestion for his own epitaph.  Attributed.

  •    The grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead.

    -John Keats
      Endymion, bk.1, l.20^1.

  • The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

    -John Maynard, 1st Baron Keynes (of Tilton)
      A  Tract on Monetary Reform.

  • For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play, The regiment's in 'ollow squarethey're hangin' himto- day; They've taken of his buttons off an'cut his stripes away, An'they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'Danny Deever'.

  • We have fed our sea for a thousand years And she calls us, still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'A Song of the Dead'.

  • Painters of history make the dead live, and do not begin to livethemselvestill theyare dead.Ipaint the living, and they make me live!

    - Godfrey Kneller
    When asked why he preferred portraits to more prestigious history scenes. Quoted in  A Cunningham The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and  Architects (1829).

  • The dead don't die. They look on and help.

    - D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
      Letter to  J Middleton Murry, 2 Feb, on the death of Katherine Mansfield.

  • Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

    - (Harry) Sinclair Lewis
      Nobel prize address,12 Dec.

  • Four score and sevenyears ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal†we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 510

    - Abraham Lincoln
      Dedication address, Gettysburg NationalCemetery,19 Nov.

  • An'see the deid come loupin'owre The auld grey wa's.

    -Grieve
      Sangschaw,'Crowdieknowe', stanza1.

  • Mura tig's ann thea'  nas ni a Hallaig a dh' ionnsaigh sa'  baid nam marbh, far a bheil an sluagh a' tathaich, gach aon ghinealach a dh' fhalbh. If it does not, I will go down to Hallaig, to the Sabbath of the dead, where the people are frequenting, every single generation gone.

    - Sorley Gaelic name Somhairle MacGill-Eain MacLean
      'Hallaig'.

  • Tradition does not mean that the living are dead; it means that the dead are living.

    -Stockton
      In the Manchester Guardian,18 Dec.

  • The dark was talking to the dead; The lamp was dark beside my bed.

    - (Frederick) Louis MacNeice
    Plant and Phantom,'Autobiography', l.13^14.

  • The Naked and the Dead.

    - Norman Kingsley Mailer
       Title of novel.

  • Either he's dead or my watch has stopped.

    - Groucho originally Julius Henry Marx Marx
      Line delivered in  A Day at the Races (screenplay by George Seaton, Robert Pirosh and George Oppenheimer).

  • When I am dead and opened, you shall find 'Calais' lying in my heart.

    -MaryTudor also known as Mary I
    Quoted in Holinshed Chronicles (1808), vol.4.

  • Yet once more,O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never-sere I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.

    -John Milton
      Lycidas, opening lines.

  • O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies,O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age! Light the prime work of God to me is extinct, And all her various objects of delight Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd, Inferior to the vilest now become Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos'd To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, 586 Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.

    -John Milton
    Samson  Agonistes, l.67^79.

  • To live a life half dead, a living death.

    -John Milton
    Samson  Agonistes, l.100.

  • An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.

    - Nancy Freeman Mitford
      Noblesse Oblige.

  • It's better to be dead, or even perfectly well, than to suffer from the wrong affliction. The man who owns up to arthritis in a beri-beri year is as lonely as a woman in a last month's dress.

    - (Frederic) Ogden Nash
      'How'sYour Sacro-iliac?', in the Saturday Evening Post, 14 Oct.

  • Qualis artifex pereo! Dead! And so great an artist!

    -Nero
    Attributed words on the point of taking his life. Quoted in Suetonius Nero, 49.1 (translated by Robert Graves,1957).

  • Mr President, the president is dead.

    - Clifford Odets
       To Lyndon B  Johnson after the assassination of  John F Kennedy, 22 Nov.

  • Reminds me of nothing so much as a recently-dead fish before it has had time to stiffen.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      Of Clement  Attlee. Diary entry,19 May.

  • Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

    -Wilfred Owen
      'Greater Love'.

  • And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

    -Wilfred Owen
      'Strange Meeting', collected in Poems (published1920).

  • She is older thantherocks among whichshesits; likethe vampire, shehas beendead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave.

    -Walter Pater
      Of the Mona Lisa.'Leonardo daVinci' in Studies in the History of the Renaissance.

  • The people die so, that now it seems theyare fain to carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in. And my Lord Mayor commands people to be within at 9 at night, all (as they say) that the sick may have liberty to go abroad for ayre.

    - Samuel Pepys
      Diary entry,12 Aug.

  • The little cousin is dead, by foul subtraction, A green bough fromVirginia's aged tree.

    -John Crowe Ransom
      Chills and Fever,'Dead Boy'.

  • There may be dead ground in between; and I may not have got The knack of judging a distance; I will only venture A guess that perhaps between me and the apparent lovers, (Who, incidentally, appear by now to have finished,) At seven o'clock from the houses, is roughly a distance Of about one year and a half.

    - Henry Reed
      Lessons of theWar, pt.2,'Judging Distances'.

  • All wars are useless to the dead.

    - Adrienne Cecile Rich
      Leaflets,'Implosions'.

  • Und dasTotsein ist mu«  hsam und voller Nachholn, dass man allm a« hlich ein wenig Ewigkeit spu«  rt. And being dead is hard work and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
      Duinieser Elegien, no.1 (translated by Stephen Mitchell in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke,1989).

  • I shall have more to say when I am dead.

    - Edwin Arlington Robinson
      TheThreeTaverns,'John Brown'.

  • Below him, in the town among the trees, Where friends of other days had honored him, A phantom salutation of the dead Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

    - Edwin Arlington Robinson
    Avon's Harvest,'Mr Flood's Party'.

  • When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.

    - Christina Georgina Rossetti
      Goblin Market and Other Poems,'When I Am dead'.

  • And when war is done and youth stone dead I'd toddle safely home and diein bed.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'Base Details'.

  • 'Good-morning; good-morning!'the General said When we met him last weekon our way to the line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead, And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine. 'He's a cheery old card,'grunted Harry to Jack As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'The General'.

  • You are too young to fall asleep for ever; And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'The Dug-Out'.

  • Who will remember, passing through this Gate, The unheroic Dead who fed the guns? Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      The Heart'sJourney, pt.21,'On Passing the New Menin Gate'.

  • Here Vaughan lies dead, whose name flows on for ever Through pastures of the spirit washed with dew And starlit with eternities unknown.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      The Heart'sJourney, pt.23,'At the Grave of HenryVaughan'.

  • I wouldn't believe that Hitler was dead, even if he told me himself.

    - Hjalmar Horace Greely Schacht
      Attributed remark, 8 May.

  • And said I that my limbs were old, And said I that my blood was cold, And that my kindly fire was fled, And my poor withered heart was dead, And that I might not sing of Love?

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto1, stanza1.

  • Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand!

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto 6, stanza1.

  •    To begin with, I was born with an unreasonably large stock of relations, who have increased and multiplied ever since. My aunts and uncles were legion, and my cousins as the sands of the sea without number. Consequently, even a low death-rate meant, in the course of mere natural decay, a tolerably steady supply of funerals for a by no means affectionate but exceedingly clannish family to go to. Add to this that the town we lived in, being divided in religious opinion, buried its dead in two great cemeteries, each of which was held by the opposite faction to be the ante- chamber of perdition, and by its own patrons to be the gate of paradise.

    - George Bernard Shaw
    'Music in London'.

  • While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talks with the departed dead.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty'.

  • I weep for Adonaishe is dead! O, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Adonais, stanza1.

  •    He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Adonais, stanza 38.

  •    He lives, he wakes,'tis Death is dead, not he.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Adonais, stanza 41.

  •    The beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Epipsychidion', l.154^9.

  • Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, belove'  d Night Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'To Night'.

  • The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

    - Philip Henry Sheridan
      Attributed comment at Fort Cobb, Jan.

  • Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not myTime, the flood that does not flow. Between the double and the single bell Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.

    - Adam Skirving
      Five Bells, title poem.The poem was written as an elegy for Joe Lynch, a friend who fell overboard from a Sydney ferry.

  • And she, being old, fed from a mashed plate as an old mare might droop across a fence to the dull pastures of her ignorance. Her husband held her upright while he prayed to God who is all-forgiving to send down some angel somewhere who might land perhaps in his foreign wings among the gradual crops. She munched, half dead, blindly searching the spoon.

    -A'Ghobhainn
    Thistles and Roses,'OldWoman', stanzas1^2.

  •    Private Means is dead God rest his soul, officers and fellow-rankers said.

    - Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
      Selected Poems,'Private Means is Dead'.

  • Oh, no, no, no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

    - Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
      NotWaving but Drowning,'NotWaving but Drowning'.

  • In ten thousand years the Sierras Will be dryand dead, home of the scorpion. Ice-scratched slabs and bent trees. No paradise, no fall, Only the weathering land The wheeling sky, Man, with his Satan Scouring the chaos of the mind. Oh Hell!

    - Gary Sherman Snyder
      Riprap,'Milton By Firelight (Piute Creek, August1955)'.

  • For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

    - Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
      In the Listener,15 Feb.

  • Every known class of refusal was successfully exhibited. Onehorse endeavoured to climbtherailsintothe Grand Stand; another, having stoppeddeadatthecritical point, swung round, and returned in consternation to the starting-point, with hisrider hanging likea locket around his neck. Another, dowered with a sense of humour

    -Martin Ross
    Nicaraguan   dictator,   educated   in   the   US.   As   Chief   of   the National  Guard  he  established  himself  in  supreme  power  in the  early 1930s,  and  retained  it  until  assassinated,  when  the rule passed to his sons.

  • When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men have said, That you'll remember. For you need not so. Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?

    - Charles Hamilton Sorley
    Marlborough and Other Poems,'A Sonnet' (published1916).

  • But reading is not idleness†it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      Journal entry, 4 Jan.

  • Where is the antique glory now become, What whilom wont in women to appear? Where be the brave achievements doen by some? Where be the battles, where the shield and spear, And all the conquests, which them high did rear, That matter made for famous poet's verse, And boastful men so oft abashed to hear? Bene theyall dead, and laid in doleful hearse? Or doen they only sleep, and shall again reverse?

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.3, canto 4, stanza1.

  • The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silencefree of the networks of dead speech.

    - Dame Freya Madeleine Stark
      Perseus in theWind.

  • Not bad. Most people myage are dead.You could look it up.

    - Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel
    Attributed, when asked how he was.'You could look it up' was one of his catchphrases.

  • It is better to be a fool than to be dead.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
    Virginibus Puerisque,'Crabbed Age andYouth'.

  • Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art God, Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head, Yet thy kingdom shall pass,Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads,'Hymn to Proserpine'.

  • The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

    - Donna Tartt
      The Secret History.

  •    Autumn is desolation in the plot Of a thousand acres, where these memories grow From the inexhaustible bodies that are not Dead, but feed the grass, row after rich row.

    - (John Orley) Allen Tate
      Poems1922^1947,'Ode to the Confederate Dead'.

  •   Home they brought her warrior dead. She nor swooned, nor uttered cry: All her maidens, watching said, 'She must weep or she will die.'

    -Tennyson
      The Princess, pt.6, added song, stanza1.

  • Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest; Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by.

    -Tennyson
      'Come not, when I am dead', complete poem.

  • Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, Dead perfection, no more.

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.1, sect.2, l.82^3.

  • There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries,'She is near, she is near;' And the white rose weeps,'She is late;' The larkspur listens,'I hear, I hear;' And the lily whispers,'I wait.' She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airya tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat; Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.1, sect.22, stanzas10^11, l. 908^23.

  • Dead, long dead, Long dead! And my heart is a handful of dust, And the wheels go over my head.

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.2, sect.5, stanza1, l.239^42.

  • Of happy men that have the power to die, And grassy barrows of the happier dead.

    -Tennyson
      'Tithonus' (revised1864),1.70^1.

  • The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

    -Tennyson
      'In theValley of Cauteretz', l.10.

  • The soul of man is a far country, which cannot be approached or explored. Most of the dead were poor and illiterate.But every single one of them had dreamed dreams, seen visions and had amazing experiences, even the babes in arms (perhaps especially the babes in arms).

    - D(onald) M(itchell) Thomas
    TheWhite Hotel, ch.5.

  • The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      'The HandThat Signed the Paper Felled a City'.

  • The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.

    - (Philip) Edward Thomas
      'Early One Morning'.

  • Now all the roads lead to France And heavy is the tread Of the living: but the dead Returning lightly dance.

    - (Philip) Edward Thomas
      'Roads'.

  • There studious let me sit, And hold high converse with the mighty dead.

    -James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis Thomson
      The Seasons,'Winter', l.431^2.

  • Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthyand wealthyand dead.

    -James Grover Thurber
      'The Shrike and the Chipmunks', in the NewYorker,18 Feb.

  • On doit des e  gards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la ve  rite  . We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.

    -Voltaire pseudonym of  Fran c° ois Marie Arouet
    'Premi e' re Lettre sur ¼dipe'. In ¼uvres, vol.1 (published1785).

  • News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.

    - Evelyn Arthur StJohn Waugh
      Scoop, bk.1, ch.5.

  • O, that it were possible, We might but hold some two days'conference With the dead!

    -John Webster
      The Duchess of Malfi, act 4, sc.2.

  • When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead!

    -John Greenleaf Whittier
      'Ichabod', stanza 8.

  • He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
      The Ballad of Reading Gaol, pt.1, stanza1.

  • Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead was Hope.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
      The Ballad of Reading Gaol, pt.3, stanza 31.

  •    A strange manner of battle, where one side works by constant motion and ceaseless charges, while the other can but endure passivelyas it standsfixed tothesod.The Norman arrow and sword worked on: in the English ranks the only movement was the dropping of the dead: the living stood motionless.

    -William of Poitiers   11c.
    c.1071 Of theBattle of Hastings,14 Oct1066. Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum (edited by R Foreville,1952).

  • Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.

    -TennesseeThomas Lanier Williams
      In the Observer, 26 Jan.

  • Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'September1913', refrain. Collected in Responsibilities (1914).

  •    A dead reign†a strange epoch of folly and shame.

    - EŁ  mile Zola
    On the France of the Second Empire. Quoted inJoanna Richardson LaVie Parisienne (1971), p.276.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learn more about dead

link/cite print suggestion box