Famous quotes
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“Originality is the most deadly mirage in all of art. You can chase it from now until doomsday, and you'll only find yourself lost and dying of thirst.”
Caitlín R. Kiernan (born 1964) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (24 July 2005)
“The old and powerful never want to let go. They always think they’re both profoundly indispensable and uniquely right. They are always wrong. Part of the function of ageing and dying is to let the next generation have its say, its time in the sun, to sweep away the mistakes of the previous age while, if they’re lucky, retaining the advances made and the benefits accrued.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature, mother feared and wept for since the human family was born, marvel that cannot be praised, that bears and nurtures only to destroy, if dying young brings mortals pain, why let it come down on these blameless heads? And if good, then why is it unhappy, why make this leaving inconsolable, worse than any other woe, for those who live, as well as those who go?”
Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837) said by 1837 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sopra in basso relievo antico sepocrale (Bas-Relief On An Ancient Tomb). Translation by Jonathan Galassi Canti: Poems [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, ]
“I am tired and I am dying, and I want to be merciful. I want to forgive you. But when God summons me and says, But it wasn't for you to forgive, Mullah, what shall I say?”
Khaled Hosseini (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he left, whose existence is threatened by the diminishment of racial oppression. The left’s unspoken terror is that racism is no longer menacing enough to support its own power. The great crisis for the left today—the source of its angst and hatefulness—is its own encroaching obsolescence. Today the left looks to be slowly dying from lack of racial menace.”
Shelby Steele (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is too short — the day we are born, we commence with our dying.”
Joanna Newsom (born 1982) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“James Crometty!” demanded Bowden. “Did you kill him?” “I kill a lot of people,” whispered Felix7. “I don’t remember names.” “You shot him six times in the face.” The dying killer smiled. “That I remember.” “Six times! Why?” Felix7 frowned and started to shiver. “Six was all I had,” he answered simply.”
Jasper Fforde (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you know what the worst bit about dying is?” “Tell me, Gran.” “You never get to see how it all turns out.”
Jasper Fforde (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How the girls could turn to ghosts before your eyes And the very dreams that led to them are keeping them from dying And how the grace with which she walked into your life Will stay with you in your steps, And pace with you a while So long, so long.”
Chris Carrabba (born 1975) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A hallowed grave in dying, with the grave an altar: I adore the sovereign lord, the great, That I be not sad, Christ grant me.”
Taliesin (518–599) said by 599 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'What's the use of dying in a ward surrounded by a lot of groaning and croaking incurables? Wouldn't it be much better to throw a party with that twenty-seven thousand and take poison and depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by lovely drunken girls and happy friends?'”
Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think of myself, of all that I am. Myself, my home, my hours; the past, and the future, — it was going to be like the past! And at that moment I feel, weeping within me and dragging itself from some little bygone trifle, a new and tragical sorrow in dying, a hunger to be warm once more in the rain and the cold: to enclose myself in myself in spite of space, to hold myself back, to live.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...[W]e’re paying more for the privilege of getting sick and dying early. Once again, it makes no sense. And once again, no one in Washington is talking about how to fix it.”
Michael Bloomberg (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union.… You are responsible, and your forebears, for 60 million to 100 million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please.”
Paul Robeson (1898–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why don't you invest all of your money to Rossi's breakthrough yourself? And all of your fellow believers? If it "happens" that nothing will ever come out of it, at least you will help to increase the mankind's IQ by dying of hunger.”
Luboš Motl (born 1973) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dying process begins the minute you are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties.”
Carol Grace (1924–2003) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Funny Ladies : The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women (2001) by Bill Adler, p. 80
“If this is dying, then I don't think much of it.”
Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) said by 1932 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Michael Holroyd Lytton Strachey (1967–68) Vol. 2, part 2, ch. 6.
“I had sought security in the mud and in the stars, sought it in the quick riches and glory of Hollywood and in the security wage of W.P.A. I sought it everywhere but in myself. Suddenly I felt like that ship-wrecked sailor who had been picked up, dying of thirst, unaware that the current into which he had drifted was fresh water.”
Anzia Yezierska (1880–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My heart chokes in me like in a prison! I'm dying for a little love and I got nobody-nobody!" wailed Shenah Pessah, as she looked out of the dismal basement window. (beginning of "Wings")”
Anzia Yezierska (1880–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The appeal to heaven breaks off. The petals begin to fall, in self-forgiveness. It is a flower. On this mountainside it is dying.”
Galway Kinnell (1927–2014) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock (1976).
“You're dying to spend a night with me in the Palace of Wisdom. (to Kelly Kelly)”
John Hennigan (born 1979) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art.”
David Lodge (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”
Claude McKay (1889–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To find the joy of living/ Is to experience the joy of dying/ Where the pain of parting/ Lads to still deeper joy of becoming.”
Kuruvilla Pandikattu (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By sharing it [love] grows/ By giving it up it nurtures/ By dying it deepens./ By being it becomes.”
Kuruvilla Pandikattu (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's like the panda, they say that's dying out. But what do they do? When you see them they're just sitting in the jungle eating”
Karl Pilkington (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These days everything went through the filter of knowing that she might be dying. And not a lot made it through.”
“It was not the sense that something had been there. It was the sense that something was still there, palpable but not visible. A sense (and now he thought he was really losing his mind) that the forest was grieving, or that something in it was dying…a feeling, if he had to name it, that evil had been there.”
“Slowly, my brain let me in on the fact that I had just come this close to dying.”
Abby Sunderland (born 1993) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no instance where men are so easily imposed upon, as at the time of their dying under the pretence of charity.”
William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper (1665–1723) first seen 1707 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attorney-General v. Barnes et uxor (1707), Gilbert Eq. Ca. 5; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 245-248.
“Think of mission like the paddles of a defibrillator applied to the chest of a dying church.”
Alan Hirsch (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If any good comes out of the current famine in the Horn of Africa — amidst the pictures of mothers carrying dying babies at their shrivelled breasts and hollow-eyed children with swollen bellies and matchstick limbs — it will be galvanising the world on the need to ensure access to nutritious food for the world’s most vulnerable people.”
Josette Sheeran (born 1954) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Filling empty bellies is no longer enough" (20 September 2011) at UK Government Department for International Development web site
“First the masters died, now their music is dying, because people only want to listen to pop, rock, and punk.”
Elfriede Jelinek (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Somehow his grandfather had wrought an honorable and glamorous life from the sea. But that era was gone. The system was dying. Advising a young man to join the United States Merchant Marine was like advising him to go into vaudeville.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I knew this guy one, a demac on the Amoco Cádiz, dying of bone cancer. You know what he said? ‘When they give you morphine like there’s no tomorrow, there isn’t.’”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The deed of dying transcends class and breeding. It is every man’s patent of nobility, his summons from the king, his knightly adventure, the greatest deed of his life. And how he acquits himself in that lonely and perilous enterprise is his true measure as a man.”
Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is that the minds last, soundless, dying cry? Who will remember? There is no rustling of old crowds as my long, wrenching, joyous voyage ended, only the question, "Who will remember?”
Roger Kahn (1927–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not possible to express the most precious insights, To see all that craves to be seen, To visit even the closest neighbors in the universe, To learn all that needs to be learned, To live without dying, And I am sad about it. But I lived And I am happy about that.”
Dejan Stojanovic (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Philosophers will always have logical reasons for avoiding the good—and those reasons will always hang on their lust for material goods. A man who has little thinks little of sharing it; but the man who has much will clutch it with his dying fingers.”
Michael F. Flynn (1947–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo—even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.”
Richard Rohr (born 1943) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (2011)
“I’m not sure I like their plan for converting us to their religion, seeing as it involves dying and all.”
John Scalzi (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People who are outwardly distant or shy are often better targets than extroverts. They are dying to be drawn out, and still waters run deep.”
Robert Greene (American author) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This world is the land of the dying ; the next is the land of the living.”
Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The art of dying is part of the art of living.”
Tarık Günersel (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why can't this priest go back to Los Angeles and leave me alone? Why is he taking me to lunch when he should be out there visiting the sick and the dying? That's what priests are for.”
Frank McCourt (1930–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Too many of you, my friends, are dying. Now it's time for me to do my part and help you.”
Estelle Getty (1923–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For those who are concerned about me, please don’t be — I love Groupon, and I’m terribly proud of what we’ve created. I’m OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through.”
Andrew Mason (born 1980) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Groupon CEO: “I Was Fired Today.” (February 28, 2013)
“The grace of God is to God himself as sunlight is to the sun — a means and a way leading us to the latter. It therefore shines within us in a simple, one-fold way and makes us deiform, that is, like God. This likeness constantly sinks away, dying in God and becoming and remaining one with him, for charity makes us become one with God and causes us to remain living in union with him.”
John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) said by 1381 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't get what is wrong with eating bad junky food all the time! benefits include dying earlier and saving at least 2 hours a day”
Bassel Khartabil (1981–2015) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tweet March 12, 2012, 3:21PM at Twitter.com
“I didn't get to masturbate this morning, and I've been dying to, so I've gotta go.”
Anna Nicole Smith (1967–2007) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Anna Nicole Smith in the ; Cited in: David Volk (2004) The Tribe Has Spoken: Life Lessons from Reality TV. p. 89