Purchase the book from Amazon
Copyright © 1996 Prelude Press, Inc. site credits
DARK AGES
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
G. C. LICHTENBERG
DEATH
Also See ETERNITY
The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
One who longs for death is miserable, but more miserable is he who fears it.
JULIUS WILHELM ZINCGREF
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
SAMUEL GOLDWYN
Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically—to promote a cause you believe in.
SAUL ALINSKY
I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
People living deeply have no fear of death.
ANAIS NIN
For certain is death for the born And certain is birth for the dead; Therefore over the inevitable Thou shouldst not grieve.
BHAGAVAD GITA 2:27
Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.
SCARLETT O'HARA
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
EPICURUS
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
I CORINTHIANS 15:55
Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.
PLATO
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
WALT WHITMAN
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE HAMLET
Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.
Beware! To touch these wires is instant death. Anyone found doing so will be prosecuted.
SIGN AT A RAILROAD STATION
I must leave all that! Farewell, dear paintings that I have loved so much and which have cost me so much.
CARDINAL JULES MAZARIN
If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
CLARENCE DAY
On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of life and death, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony.
JOHN MUIR
Warm summer sun, shine kindly here; Warm northern wind, blow softly here; Green sod above, lie light, lie light Good-night, dear heart, good-night, good-night.
MARK TWAIN epitaph for his daughter
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
NORMAN COUSINS
Die, my dear doctor, that's the last thing I shall do.
LORD PALMERSTON
Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
FRANCIS BACON
Thus, thus, it is joy to pass to the world below.
VIRGIL
One of the situations in which everybody seems to fear loneliness is death. In tones drenched with pity, people say of someone, "He died alone." I have never understood this point of view. Who wants to have to die and be polite at the same time?
QUENTIN CRISP
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
FRANCIS BACON
Death is just nature's way of telling you, "Hey, you're not alive anymore."
BULL NIGHT COURT
Death is nature's way of saying, "Your table is ready."
ROBIN WILLIAMS
Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.
EDMUND SPENSER
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees.
J. J. FURNAS
Death is, to us here, the most terrible word we know. But when we have tasted its reality, it will mean to us birth, deliverance, a new creation of ourselves.
GEORGE MERRIMAN
When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money it's sex. When you have both it's health. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death.
J. P. DONLEAVY
Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down. The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.
The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the emotions, as the inviolable condition of life.
THOMAS MANN
Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
MARK TWAIN near death in 1910
Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.
JOHN KEATS Wooing Fanny Brawne
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
MARK TWAIN
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there is no risk of accident to someone who's dead.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness—through the chinks of her sickness—broken body.
THOMAS FULLER on the death of St. Monica
My candle burns at both ends; It on the death of St. Monica will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends—It gives a lovely light.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
Well, Norton, I guess there'll be no more bus rides for me. I've come to the end of the line. I'm going to that big bus depot in the sky. It's a one-way trip with no transfers
RALPH KRAMDEN THE HONEYMOONERS
The bus bringeth and the bus taketh away. You know, that's a lot like life.
FLOYD LAWSON THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW
PETE: Have you ever thought about death? Do you realize that we each must die? DUD: Of course we must die, but not yet. It's only half past four of a Wednesday afternoon. PETE: No one knows when God in His Almighty Wisdom will choose to vouch-safe His precious gift of Death. DUD: Granted. But chances are He won't be making a pounce at this time of day.
PETER COOK
DUDLEY MOORE
The late F. W. H. Myers used to tell how he asked a man at a dinner table what he thought would happen to him when he died. The man tried to ignore the question, but, on being pressed, replied: "Oh well, I suppose I shall inherit eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such unpleasant subjects."
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I detest life insurance agents. They always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.
HEDY LAMARR
One can survive everything nowadays, except death.
OSCAR WILDE
We should so use the next world, that it should advance us in that which is before it.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Truman Capote, near death, was asked by a friend, "Are you all right?" His last words were, "No, I'm not. But I soon will be.
Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.
GROUCHO MARX
Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Why do we have to die? As a kid you get nice little white shoes with white laces and a velvet suit with short pants and a nice collar and you go to college, you meet a nice girl and get married, work a few years and then you have to die! What is this shit? They never wrote that in the contract!
MEL BROOKS
In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.
DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD
Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
P. J. O'ROURKE
When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
How could they tell?
DOROTHY PARKER when told of "Silent" Calvin Coolidge's death
Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
DEBT
If it isn't the sheriff, it's the finance company; I've got more attachments on me than a vacuum cleaner.
JOHN BARRYMORE
DEPENDENCE
Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
DEPRESSION
Self-love depressed becomes self-loathing.
SALLY KEMPTON
When water covers the head, a hundred fathoms are as one.
PERSIAN PROVERB
The problems of alcoholism and drug addiction have strong links to depression. The search for highs may often begin as a flight from lows.
NATHAN S. KLINE, M.D.
Physical and social functioning are impaired by depression to a greater degree than by hypertension, diabetes, angina, arthritis, gastrointestinal diseases, lung problems, or back ailments.
M., M.D.>JOSÉ M. SANTIAGO, M.D. JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.
WILLIAM STYRON
The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.
I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family there would be not one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better it appears to me.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN who suffered from depression most of his adult life
I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.
OSCAR LEVANT
A depressed person is someone who, if he is in the bath, will not get out to answer the telephone.
QUENTIN CRISP
DESIRE
All human activity is prompted by desire.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I'd love to see Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns. I'd also like just one more hit single.
TINY TIM
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.
GEORGE ELIOT
Our necessities are few but our wants are endless.
JOSH BILLINGS
I want a man who's kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?
ZSA ZSA GABOR
Bring me my bow of burning gold, Bring me my arrows of desire, Bring me my spear O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire!
WILLIAM BLAKE
We lived for days on nothing but food and water.
W. C. FIELDS
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
If you desire many things, many things will seem few.
BEN FRANKLIN
Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet, when we want shoes.
JONATHAN SWIFT
How few our real wants! and how easy it is to satisfy them! Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable.
JULIUS
AUGUSTUS HARE GUESSES AT TRUTH
Follow your desire as long as you live . . . When riches are gained, follow desire, for riches will not profit if one is sluggish.
PTAHHOTEP
If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine work which is so large a part of life.
WALTER PATER
If a man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
There are a million things in this universe you can have, and there are a million things you can't have. It's no fun facing that, but that's the way things are.
CAPTAIN KIRK STAR TREK
RICKY RICARDO: There you go again, wanting something that you haven't got. >I Love Lucy[I Love Lucy];Lucy Ricardo[Ricardo, Lucy]>LUCY RICARDO: I do not. I just want to see what I haven't got that I don't want.
I LOVE LUCY
NOTICE TO OUR GUESTS: If there is anything you need and don't see, please let us know, and we will show you how to do without it.
MARY TOARMINA MCWILLIAMS FADDEN
I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S DETECTIVE PHILIP MARLOWE
A "Bay Area Bisexual" told me I didn't quite coincide with either of her desires.
You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world.
SHEILA GRAHAM
The one thing I do not want to be called is First Lady. It sounds like a saddle horse.
JACQUELINE KENNEDY
I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.
SPANISH PROVERB
One must not lose desires. They are mighty stimulants to creativeness, to love, and to long life.
ALEXANDER BOGOMOLETZ
I'd like a bird for an old lady of ninety-four. She had one, but it died and she doesn't realize it. She keeps it in a cage, talks to it, and takes it out and kisses its head.
CONTESTANT QUEEN FOR A DAY
My motto is "contented with little, yet wishing for more."
CHARLES LAMB
DETACHMENT
The sun will set without thy assistance.
THE TALMUD
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
SIMONE WEIL
Most people are on the world, not in it—having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.
JOHN MUIR
DETERMINATION
Also See PERSEVERANCE
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
Let me tell you the secret that has led to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.
LOUIS PASTEUR
Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.
BENJAMIN JOWETT
I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard.
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
DISCIPLINE
A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought but war and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.
MACHIAVELLI
You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension, and discipline are taken out of your life.
JAMES G. BILKEY
DISCOMFORT
Also See COMFORT
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
The only thing I can't stand is discomfort.
GLORIA STEINEM
My boat sleeps four comfortably, but five is three too many.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
DISSATISFACTION
Also See INGRATITUDE
It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
JOHN CAGE
Isn't there any other part of the matzo you can eat?
MARILYN MONROE when served matzo ball soup three times in a row
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
In Rome you long for the country; in the country—oh inconstant!—you praise the distant city to the stars.
HORACE
He worked like hell in the country so he could live in the city, where he worked like hell so he could live in the country.
DON MARQUIS
You're really letting me down as a boyfriend, not being able to control the weather and all.
STEPHANIE VANDERKELLAN VANDERKELLAN, STEPHANIENEWHART
She not only expects the worst, but makes the worst of it when it happens.
MICHAEL ARLEN
Life is a hospital, in which every patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
There was never a banquet so sumptuous, but someone dined poorly at it.
FRENCH PROVERB
BEAVER: Gee, there's something wrong with just about everything, isn't there Dad? WARD: Just about, Beav.
LEAVE IT TO BEAVER
DIVERSITY
If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.
MARGARET MEAD
DIVINITY
See also GOD
If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.
BRUCE BARTON
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
THOMAS BROWNE
The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and parcel of God.
In no other period of history were the learned so mistrustful of the divine possibilities in man as they are now.
GOPI KRISHNA
To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower, To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.
WILLIAM BLAKE
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
THOMAS BROWNE
DIVORCE
She cried—and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.
TOMMY MANVILLE thirteen-times-divorced millionaire
When a couple decide to divorce, they should inform both sets of parents before having a party and telling all their friends. This is not only courteous but practical. Parents may be very willing to pitch in with comments, criticism and malicious gossip of their own to help the divorce along.
P. J. O'ROURKE
I don't think I'll get married again. I'll just find a woman I don't like and give her a house.
LEWIS GRIZZARD
I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
The happiest time in any man's life is just after the first divorce.
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
DO AS I SAY . . .
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
JANE AUSTEN
For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
ROMANS 7:19
I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
ALFRED ADLER
DREAMS
See also GOALS, PUPOSE
Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength.
LAURENCE OLIVIER
Saddle your dreams afore you ride 'em.
MARY WEBB
I used to work at the International House of Pancakes. It was a dream, and I made it happen.
PAULA POUNDSTONE
You've got to create a dream. You've got to uphold the dream. If you can't, go back to the factory or go back to the desk.
ERIC BURDON
It is said that a man's life can be measured by the dreams he fulfills.
MR. ROARKE FANTASY ISLAND
Dreams are the soul's pantry. Keep it well stocked and your soul will never hunger.
SHIRLEY FEENEY LAVERNE
SHIRLEY
The phone rings. I am not amused. This is not my favorite way to wake up. My favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly at two thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than one might wish.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?
ROBERT BROWNING
You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Back of the job—the dreamer who's making the dream come true!
BERTON BRADLEY
The only thing I ever dream is that I just won every beauty contest in the world and all the people I don't like are forced to build me a castle in France.
STEPHANIE VANDERKELLAN NEWHART
Copyright © 1996 Prelude Press, Inc. site credits