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Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,161,747 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

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Death

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• “Winds and waters keep A hush more dead than any sleep.”

  William Allingham (1824–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Ruined Chapel; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• “Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.”

  William Allingham (1824–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Autumnal Sonnet; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• “Scarcely a tear to shed; Hardly a word to say; The end of a Summer's day; Sweet Love is dead.”

  William Allingham (1824–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: An Evening; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• “The village idiots in her bed Never cared that her eyes were red Never cared that her brain was dead. In the hours that her face was alive It was a thing just to be by her side.”

  Edie Brickell (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Something of glass about her, of dead water, Chills and holds us, Far more fatal than painted flesh or the lodestone of live hair This despair of crystal brilliance.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Circe", l. 1 (1931)

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

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You'll never get me into a tux. Not until I'm dead and I have no choice because that's what the undertaker put me in.”

  Danny Elfman (born 1953) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: From an interview in Entertainment Weekly #422, March 13, 1998.

• “Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged.”

  Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1848 (quoted in Infections and Inequalities by Paul Farmer, page 1.

• “We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the dead, the wedding more than love and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in the container culture, which despises the content.”

  Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “And we will turn our motherland into the graveyard of the U.S forces and their families should wait for their dead bodies. The Taliban's war is only for the freedom of Afghanistan from the enemies of Muslims.”

  Mullah Dadullah (1966–2007) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Taliban deploy thousands of suicide bombers - commander 02 Apr 2007.

• “Is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?”

  Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Written in 1852, as quoted in ch. 87.

• “The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment. When this sensation is lacking—as when one is in prison, or ill, or stupid, or when living has become a habit—one might as well be dead.”

  Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The collier's wife had four tall sons Brought from the pit's mouth dead, And crushed from foot to head”

  William Henry Davies (1871–1940) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Collier's Wife", in The Bird of Paradise and Other Poems (1914)

• “Whatever. As far as I can see, there is one state of dead and that’s ‘not living.’ Now, do you have anything useful to add to this investigation or not?”

  Jasper Fforde (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Oh!” said Landen, reading a letter. “A rejection from my publisher. They didn’t think Fatal Parachuting Mistakes and How to Avoid Making Them Again was what they had in mind for self-help.” “I guess their target audience doesn’t include dead people.” “You could be right.”

  Jasper Fforde (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Dead,” muttered Mycroft with a resigned air. “Never been that before. Not even once. Are you quite sure?”

  Jasper Fforde (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, in solstitio brumali, ‘the very dead of winter’.”

  Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626) first seen 1622 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speaking of the Three Magi in Sermon 15, "Of the Nativity" (Christmas Day, 1622)

• “Why, then, are my hands red with the blood of so many dead? Is this where I was misled?”

  R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The mural artist is concerned with bringing to life dead surfaces by the application of colour.”

  Fernand Léger (1881–1955) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Revival of Mural Art, The Listener, August 25, 1937 Vol. XVIII. No. 450, pp. 408-409

• “I hate guns. I can use them, but I don’t like being around them; they add this terrible random-act-of-no-god-at-all angle to any fight. Bang, you’re dead, even if you weren’t the person the shooter was aiming for, even if it’s an accidental discharge.”

  Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Fire doesn't burn if you're already dead!”

  Chris Pontius (born 1974) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One of my favorite phrases that brings me great comfort: We are not on earth as museum keepers, but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life and to prepare a glorious future. The Pope is dead. Long live the Pope!”

  Pope John XXIII (1881–1963) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Journal entry on the day Pope Pius XII died (9 October 1958); published in Journal of a Soul (1965)

• “Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady.”

  Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I felt that night, on the stage, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming? (p. 145)”

  Jonathan Safran Foer (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did. (p. 309)”

  Jonathan Safran Foer (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Whoever in his public services is handcuffed and shackled by the vice of consistency will be a man not free to act as various questions come before him from time to time; he will be a statesman locked in a prison house, keys to which are in the keeping of days and events that are dead. Let me quote Emerson: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen.'”

  Henry Fountain Ashurst (1874–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Johnson, James W. (2002). Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious, illustrations by David `Fitz' Fitzsimmons, University of Arizona Press. p 112.

• “The only good enemy of the Reich is a dead one. In particular I have to add, when I received an order, I always carried out this order with the executioner, and I am proud of that to this day.... If I had not done this, they would not have gone to the butcher.”

  Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is not an Indian community in the world that is better off than the Indians in South Africa. That is the type of apartheid that I stand for. That is the type of apartheid that is not dead.”

  P. W. Botha (1916–2006) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As prime minister in the House of Assembly, 23 April 1979, as cited in PW Botha in his own words, Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, p. 40

• “Th’ dead ar-re always pop’lar. I knowed a society wanst to vote a monyment to a man an’ refuse to help his fam’ly, all in wan night.”

  Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On Charity" in Mr Dooley in Peace and War (1898).

• “He weren't no saint—but at jedgment I'd run my chance with Jim. 'Longside of some pious gentlemen That wouldn't shook hands with him. He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing— And went for it thar and then; And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard On a man that died for men.”

  John Hay (1838–1905) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Jim Bludso", Pike County Ballads, (1871).

• “The dead do not survive except upon earth. Wherever there are revolutionaries, there is Lenin. But one may also say that it is in Stalin more than anyone else that the thoughts and words of Lenin are to be found. He is the Lenin of today.”

  Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: About Joseph Stalin, Stalin: A New World Seen Through One Man (1935), p. 275.

• “I come back as I always do to the greatness of mankind's curse, and I repeat it with the monotony of those who are always right — oh, without God, without a harbour, without enough rags to cover us, all we have, standing erect on the land of the dead, is the rebellion of our smile, the rebellion of being gay when darkness envelops us. We are divinely alone, the heavens have fallen on our heads.”

  Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I am frozen by a mass which supports me. My elbow sinks into it. It is the horse's belly; its rigid leg obliquely bars the narrow circle from which my eyes cannot escape. Ah, it is dead! It seems to me that my breast is empty, yet still there is an echo in my heart. What I am looking for is life.”

  Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Artemis Entreri is dead. He died in the Protector's House in Memnon, chasing ghosts".”

  R. A. Salvatore (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Our poet's singing lips are dumb: This his last gift, to us has brought The pain pressed vintage of his thought His life of song, his life of pain, And, being dead, he speaks again.”

  Flora Thompson (1876–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: From On Reading a Posthumous book Gillian Lindsay -Biography of Flora Thompson 1990

• “The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.”

  Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) first seen 1813 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 24 June 1813

• “House of the Dead 2 I gave away. Alone in the Dark 2 I will also not do; even if the DVD movie made money. BloodRayne 2 in the Wild West is what I really want to do.”

  Uwe Boll (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “And I say again, you need not worry any more about money. If I were to drop dead this instant, I have enough to double your present income if you never touched a cent of the principle. If you take a notion to do something that costs more than your income warrants, you need only let me know. You can have it.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter from Albania to Laura Ingalls Wilder, (October 27, 1926).

• “In 1919 I was a communist. My Bolshevik friends of those days are scattered now; some are bourgeois, some are dead, some are in China and Russia, and I did not know the last American chiefs of the Third International, who now officially embrace Democracy. They would repudiate me even as a renegade comrade, for I was never a member of The Party. But it was merely an accident that I was not.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If you don't take risks, you're already dead.”

  Jim Goad (1961–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.”

  Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Wear the cap and the bells And you'll rate all the great swells. If you become a doctor, folks'll face you with dread. If you become a dentist, they'll be glad when you're dead. You get a bigger hand if you can stand on your head. Be a clown, be a clown, be a clown.”

  Cole Porter (1891–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Until the artist is dead, we are not able to determine his work in all its dimensions.”

  Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (1986) n.p.

• “Have you, with your work, made anyone glow? Erupted their sorrow? Evicted their woe? Have you been anyone's consolation through a night? Have you evoked unrehearsed emotion? Chiseled a crack in someone's encasement and watched them escape? Followed the muses wherever they led? Kept on creating when left for dead? Do not bother me with punctuation until you have earned your degree.”

  Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There was no emotion in my blood. There was no anger. There was nothing. It was dead silence in my brain.”

  Mark David Chapman (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Dead, cold quiet, until he walked up. He looked at me... he walked past me and then I heard in my head. It said, 'Do it, do it, do it,' over and over again.”

  Mark David Chapman (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The king dead is a living god.”

  Julian Jaynes (1920–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different. Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.”

  Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Anxiety is dead.”

  Josef Albers (1888–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Albers' short quote in: Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews Sam Hunter, Ediciones Poligrafa, Barcelona, Spain 2006, p. 10

• “Don't be dead or asleep or awake. Don't be anything. What you most want, what you travel around wishing to find, lose yourself as lovers lose themselves, and you'll be that.”

  Attar of Nishapur (1145–1221) said by 1221 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Looking For Your Own Face", translated by Coleman Barks, The Hand of Poetry (1993)

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