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“The living need charity more than the dead.”
George Arnold (1834–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead; They followed still his crooked way And lost a hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent.”
Sam Walter Foss (1858–1911) said by 1911 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Calf-Path, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Lo! all things moving must go by. The sea lies dead. Behold, this land Sits desolate in dust beside His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand; The very clouds have wept and died, And only God is in the sky.”
Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) said by 1913 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the Right, through thickest night, Till the man-brute Wrong be driven From high places; till the Right Shall lift like some grand beacon light. For the Right! Love, Right and duty; Lift the world up, though you fall Heaped with dead before the wall; God can find a soul of beauty Where it falls, as gems of worth Are found by miners dark in earth.”
Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) said by 1913 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead!”
Jack Gibson (1929–2008) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gibson quotes the title of the song from The Wizard of Oz at the start of his post-game speech to fans after his Parramatta Eels side win the club their first-ever Australian Rugby League premiership title in 1981 after…
“Costly,” Zeb fretted. “How will I ever pay—” “The dead do not worry about debts,” she said. “You have such an engaging way of putting matters.” “Subtlety is wasted here.”
Gregory Benford (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That mood had persisted when she finally got home and, unable to sleep, watched some TV. It was as usual, a cacophony, which combined with the other audio media gave a disposable pop culture that made every moment but the present seem quaint, bloodless, dead.”
Gregory Benford (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wind is full of memories; It whispers low and clear The sacred echoes of the past, And brings the dead more near.”
Elizabeth Chase Allen (1832–1911) said by 1911 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To understand the extraordinary fact of Ceausescu's monolithic power, and the otherwise incomprehensible lack of resistance to it, one must try to experience the sheer dead weight the Romanians bore day in, day out. During the twenty-four years of his reign, their thoughts were blunted and restricted by what George Orwell might have called 'Homagespeak'.”
John Sweeney (journalist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the flesh Vladimir Putin is nattily-dressed, very short and a dead ringer for an Auton, the ultra-creepy monsters in Doctor Who that morph into wheelie-bins and gobble you up and spit you out as plastic. His cosmetic surgery is not a great advert for Botox but if you get to be the master of the Kremlin no one's going to tell you your skin-job sucks.”
John Sweeney (journalist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I say it to my Ukrainian friends again and again: there is another Russia. The problem is that the alternatives to Vladimir Putin are either dead or not very alive.”
John Sweeney (journalist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So why did Prigozhin stop dead? My working hypothesis is that the secret police got to Prigozhin's family. For example, if his grandchildren had been kidnapped, then that might well have forced him to call off his mutiny. In return, the word on the street was, Prigozhin and his lieutenants would be granted immunity because of their previous heroics. But would Putin honour his word?”
John Sweeney (journalist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nowadays, everyone seems to be emotionally dead, like zombies in pinstripe suits. Trudging to work each day to make a living, queueing up at McDonalds for their daily fuel intake, coming home to vegetate in front of the TV for hours on end. (22 October 2004)”
Ben Croshaw (born 1983) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Did you know that a laugh is something that comes out of a hole in your face? Anywhere else and you're in dead trouble!”
Ken Dodd (1927–2018) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Manchester Evening News, Dodd's Bolton bonus, Natalie Anglesey. (2008-04-28)
“Lord help you! Tell ’em Queen Anne's dead.”
George Colman the Younger (1762–1836) first seen 1797 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Heir at Law (1797), act I, sc. i
“Two months after marching through Boston, half the regiment was dead; at the dedication, William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat. Its Colonel is as lean as a compass-needle.He has an angry wrenlike vigilance, a greyhound's gentle tautness; he seems to wince at pleasure, and suffocate for privacy.”
Robert Lowell (1917–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This Being out of God cannot, by any means, be a limited, completed, and inert Being, since God himself is not such a dead Being, but, on the contrary, is Life; — but it can only be a Power, since only a Power is the true formal picture or Schema of Life. And indeed it can only be the Power of realising that which is contained in itself — a Schema.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My legal wife is to me dead; the only ecclesiastical authority I recognise pronounces me free; the attacks and threats of men do not disturb me. I am acting according to a clear conscience, and am doing hurt to no man. For my conduct, I will answer to my maker.”
William the Silent (1533–1584) said by 1584 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: William talking about his personal life, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 176
“The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.”
Edward Thomas (poet) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Edward Thomas, "Early One Morning" from Poems (1917)
Also quoted by: Cyril Connolly (misattributed)
“I remember the day I saw my hair was thinning. I don’t remember caring much. I don’t care. It’s just hair. It never bothered me much. I was pretty young, too. And it happened and is happening veeery slowly. I have a feeling dead people get really mad when we complain about losing hair.”
Louis C.K. (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I take that back I won't stop singing when I'm dead”
Tomas Kalnoky (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Would you be impressed if I said that the dead would help us counting”
Tomas Kalnoky (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems to him that he extends backwards (or is it forwards?) without beginning (or is it end?) and he can't just now remember whether the great tales and plots which he supposes he knows and forever broods on lie in the to-come or lie dead in the has-been. But then suppose that's how secrets are kept, and age-long tales remembered, and unbreakable curses made too.”
John Crowley (1942–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Abbey always reminds me of that old toast, 'Above lofty timbers, the walls around are bare, echoing to our laughter, as though the dead were there.'”
Garrett Fort (1900–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't murder a man who's been dead for five centuries.”
Garrett Fort (1900–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though all the bards of earth were dead, And all their music passed away, What Nature wishes should be said She’ll find the rightful voice to say.”
William Winter (author) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The golden Silence, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“When will the dead world cease to dream, When will the morning break?”
William Winter (author) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Night Watch, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“The children play At hide and seek About the monument To Speke. And why should the dead Explorer mind Who has nothing to seek And nothing to find?”
Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speke", from Kensington Gardens (London: Ernest Benn, [1924] 1927) p. 50.
“Someone [on the staff of The Times] had invented a game – a competition with a small prize for the winner – to see who could write the dullest headline. It had to be a genuine headline, that is to say one which was actually printed in the next morning's newspaper. I won it only once with a headline which announced: "Small Earthquake in Chile. Not many dead.”
Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: No such headline has ever been found in The Times at the period in question (the spring and summer of 1929), though one paragraph reads "An earthquake was felt yesterday between Illapel, to the north, and Talca, to the …
“At the piping of all hands, When the judgment-signal's spread— When the islands and the lands And the seas give up their dead, And the South and North shall come; When the sinner is dismayed, And the just man is afraid, Then Heaven be thy aid, Poor Tom.”
John Gardiner Calkins Brainard (1795–1828) said by 1828 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lament for Long Tom, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Everyone has Good and Bad Times. Find your creative/thinking time. Defend it ruthlessly, spend it alone, maybe at home. Find your dead time. Schedule meetings, phone calls, and mundane stuff during it.”
Randy Pausch (1960–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The nursery of brooding Pelicans, The dormitory of their dead, had vanish'd, And all the minor spots of rock and verdure, The abodes of happy millions, were no more.”
James Montgomery (poet) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those that he loved so long and sees no more, Loved and still loves,—not dead, but gone before,— He gathers round him.”
Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Old Grimes is dead, that good old man We never shall see more; He used to wear a long black coat All buttoned down before.”
Albert Gorton Greene (1802–1868) first seen 1823 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Old Grimes, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: Compare: "John Lee is dead, that good old man,— / We ne'er shall see him more; / He used to wear an old drab coat / All buttoned down bef…
Also quoted by: Albert G. Greene
“They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.”
William Johnson Cory (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is big, but the dead are bigger”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These rites of the dead. I do not know why you take them on,”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you take me for a common gawper after misery?... My bed is among the dead, and when the road rises a victory cry to break my sleep I hurry to a disgruntled swam of souls full of spite for their rejected bodies”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Over my dead body.”
James Bolivar Manson (1879–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Response to Sir Robert Sainsbury, who wanted him to exhibit Henry Moore's Mother and Child sculpture. Quoted in Frances Spalding, The Tate: A History (1998), pp. 62–70. Tate Gallery Publishing, London. .
Also quoted by: Mohamed Morsi, Marjorie Scardino, 韓國瑜 (zh)
“It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot, I will not do that. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids either.”
Sarah Palin (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A large portion of Christ's miracles of love were wrought at the urgent request of parents for their suffering children. Is that ear gone deaf to-day? Will He not do for our children's souls what He did for the bodies of the ruler's daughter, and the dead youth at Nain?”
Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) said by 1909 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh! hush these suspicions," Fair Imogine said, "Offensive to Love and to me! For if ye be living, or if ye be dead, I swear by the Virgin, that none in your stead Shall Husband of Imogine be.”
Matthew Lewis (writer) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My dead family and I are in your debt, and I long to help you in any way I can.”
Joey Comeau (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Language of the liberal dead speaks From the soil of Highgate, tears Show a great water table is intact. You cannot leave England, it turns A planet majestically in the mind.”
Peter Porter (poet) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And we talked of girls, and dropping bombs on Rome, And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities Exhorting us to slaughter.”
Alun Lewis (1915–1944) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: All Day It Has Rained", line 17, from Raider's Dawn and Other Poems (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1942) p. 16.
“All this slowness, all this hardness, The nearness that is waiting in my bed, The gradual self-effacement of the dead.”
Alun Lewis (1915–1944) said by 1944 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You'd have to be dead not to be impressed by his sincerity. But then didn't Oscar Wilde say say "The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity".”
Jani Allan (1952–2023) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Description of Eugene Terre'Blanche in "Face to Face" column for the Sunday Times (South Africa) published 31 January 1989.
“A dead end nor total loss.”
Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dead trees enclosed the bodies of men and women, violently distorted and subjected to hideous and shameful tortures.” (Garden of Tortures)”
Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”
Ted Chiang (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source