Famous quotes
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“For a hundred years hell has been gradually growing cool, the flames have been slowly dying out, the brimstone is nearly exhausted, the fires have been burning lower and lower, and the climate gradually changing. To such an extent has the change already been effected that if I were going there to-night I would take an overcoat and a box of matches.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the plague that will sweep away and destroy civilization; man will have to rise against it sooner or later.”
George Moore (novelist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was too busy to oblige them by dying just now.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Natural selection—the dying out of the poorly equipped—goes on day in and day out, inexorable and automatic. It is as tireless, as inescapable, as entropy.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For dying is not to be feared—it is the final comfort. As we all learn, eventually.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you were born, you cried while others laughed. Perform such deeds that when dying, you laugh while others cry.”
Kabir (1398–1518) said by 1518 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted from Koenraad Elst, The Argumentative Hindu (2012), Chapter: Humour in Hinduism
“He had been, he said, an unconscionable time dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it.”
Charles II of England (1630–1685) said by 1685 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in A History of England (1849) by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Vol. I, Ch. 4, p. 437
“Shooting people to keep them from dying had logical flaws obvious to everyone.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dying is easy. Surviving is hard.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.”
Philip Roth (1933–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I didn't plan on rock 'n' roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock 'n' roll with jazz, and I thought I could make money playing music. In rock 'n' roll you can realize anything that you can in jazz or anything. There's no limitation other than the beat. You have more freedom than you do in anything except jazz — which is dying — as far as making any money is concerned.”
Robby Krieger (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poor David Hume is dying very fast, but with great cheerfulness and good humour and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things then any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.”
Adam Smith (1723–1790) first seen 1776 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Alexander Wedderburn 14 August 1776. The Correspondence of Adam Smith edited by E.C. Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press 1986. The Future Hope in Adam Smith’s System, Paul Osling…
“A theologian is born by living, nay dying and being damned, not by thinking, reading, or speculating.”
Martin Luther (1483–1546) said by 1546 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I bet the worst part about dying is the part where your whole life passes before you.”
Jane Wagner (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Lily Tomlin
“The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.”
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes it's great fun to be silly, like children playing statues and dying of laughter. And sometimes being silly breaks the even pace and lets you get a new start.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dying crimson of the West That faintly tinged his haggard cheek, Fell on her as she stood, and shed A glory round the patient head.”
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Three Sunsets (1861)
“The weakness of the dying slanders life.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep: So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep, And, sacramental, raise me the Divine: Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.”
Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) said by 1953 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that racism and fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed it.”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I were dying, my last words would be, Have faith and pursue the unknown end.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to John Ching Hsiung Wu (1924), published in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: His Book Notices and Uncollected Letters and Papers (1936) by Harry Clair Shriver, p. 175.
“A Christian Anarchist does not depend on bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused and dying world.”
Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A nation shows that it is dying when it ceases to believe in its Mission and its superiority.”
Francis Parker Yockey (1917–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They were afraid of dying but even more afraid to show it.”
Tim O'Brien (author) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing and dying for plain and simple reasons.”
Tim O'Brien (author) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hypocrisy is the characteristic feature of the dying bourgeois epoch.”
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in. News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying.”
David Bowie (1947–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal.”
Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Freedom and Death (1956), ch. 13 (tr. Jonathan Griffin, 1956)
“What astonished me was the very low toxicity of a substance that has such very great physiological power. A little pinch, 5 mg, every day, is enough to keep a person from dying of pellagra, but it is so lacking in toxicity that ten thousand times as much can be taken without harm.”
Linus Pauling (1901–1994) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement about vitamin B3, (either niacin or niacinamide), in How to Live Longer and Feel Better (1986), Avon Books, , p. 24.
“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Do not go gentle into that good night" (1946;1952) · Audio file of Thomas reciting the poem
“Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) said by 1953 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bangladesh, Bangladesh Where so many people are dying fast And it sure looks like a mess I've never seen such distress. Now won't you lend your hand, try to understand? Relieve the people of Bangladesh.”
George Harrison (1943–2001) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bangla Desh (1971); released as a single, and then on The Concert for Bangladesh (1971), and later on the album Living in the Material World (1973)
“Those dying here, the lonely Forgotten by the world, Our tongue becomes for them The language of an ancient planet. Until, when all is legend And many years have passed, On a great Campo di Fiori Rage will kindle at a poet's word.”
Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Campo dei Fiori" (1943), trans. Louis Iribarne and David Brooks
“Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely skeptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort.”
Alain Badiou (born 1937) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From Plato, Our Dear Plato!, Magazine littéraire, no. 447 (November 2005).
“Capitalism is dying and its extremities are already decomposing. The blotches upon the surface show that the blood no longer circulates. The time is near when the cadaver will have to be removed and the atmosphere purified.”
Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) said by 1926 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Heal the Wound, Cure the illness, but let the Dying spirit go”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was utterly miserable, and yet fearless as I had never been. I was carefree. It was like dying. It would be foolish to worry about anything while one died.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You said that the mind is like the wind, but perhaps it is we who are like the wind. Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying”
Haruki Murakami (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I swear that I'm dying slowly but it's happening, and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere... just take me there.”
Conor Oberst (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your class, your caste, your country, sect, your name or your tribe There's people always dying trying to keep them alive”
Conor Oberst (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then, as they land, they hear the tolling bell Reaching across the landscape of hysteria, To where larger than all the charcoaled batteries And imaged towers against that dying sky, Religion stands, the church blocking the sun.”
Stephen Spender (1909–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.”
Margaret Atwood (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.”
Norman Mailer (1923–2007) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.
“A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members; and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying.”
Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to a new ambassador of New Zealand to the Holy See, 25 May 2000
“When I thought I was dying in rehab in 1994, 'I Won't back Down' was my mantra. It lifted my up out of the pain and made me fight through it. 'The Waiting'... summed up my life. We can't stand waiting, we rock 'n' roll men and women. Tom Petty's songs are like a great book that you revisit when you need help. His songs make me better.”
Stevie Nicks (born 1948) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers", Billboard, Vol. 118, No. 12 (25 March 2006), p. 38
“Independence, the freedom of a self-governing nation, is in my estimation the highest political good, for which any disadvantage, if need be, and any sacrifice are a cheap price. It is worth living for; it is worth fighting for; and it is worth dying for.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Stockport (8 June 1973), quoted in The Times (9 June 1973), p. 3
“We are, by nature, so futile that distraction alone can prevent us from dying altogether.[17]”
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source