Wish To Die Quotes

• Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.

  Sophocles

  Evil, Wickedness, Worst

  "Electra". Play by Sophocles, Line 1007. "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

  Franz Kafka

  Understanding, Literature, Firsts

  Franz Kafka (1994). “The collected aphorisms”

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• In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die!

  David Livingstone

  Missionary, Missions, Hope To Live

  David Livingstone (1959). “Family Letters, 1841-1856”

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• I do not wish to die: but I care not if I were dead.
  [Lat., Emori nolo: sed me esse mortuum nihil aestimo.]

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Death, Care, Dies

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• We cannot hope to die peacefully if our lives have been full of violence, or if our minds have mostly been agitated by emotions like anger, attachment, or fear. So if we wish to die well, we must learn how to live well: Hoping for a peaceful death, we must cultivate peace in our mind, and in our way of life.

  Dalai Lama

  Death, Attachment, Peaceful

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• I should wish to die if a man who is impure should parade his purity in front of me.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Men, Purity, Parades

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• I do not wish to die- There is such contingent beauty in life: The open window on summer mornings Looking out on gardens and green things growing, The shadowy cups of roses flowering to themselves- Images of time and eternity- Silence in the garden and felt along the walls.

  A. L. Rowse

  Beauty, Summer, Morning

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• There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?

  George Henry Borrow

  Life, Sweet, Brother

  'Lavengro' (1851) ch. 25

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• It is not among the palm trees that I wish to die, but among the poor who are Jesus Christ.

  Luigi Orione

  Jesus, Tree, Catholic

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• I love the sound of the distant bugle call in the countryside in early morning I love to be pushed in busy crowds I love the sound of gongs and trumpets along the streets I love circus performances I even wish to die in this moment of glorious encounter.

  Ai Qing

  Morning, Joy, Sound

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• TRIAD: Three separate highways intersect at a place no reasonable person would ever want to go. Three lives that would have been cut short, if not for hasty interventions by loved ones. Or Fate. Three people, with nothing at all in common except age, proximity, and a wish to die. Three tapestries, tattered at the edges and come unwoven to reveal a single mutual thread.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Fate, Cutting, People

  Ellen Hopkins (2008). “Impulse”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• You have driven me from the East to this place, and I have been here two thousand years or more....My friends, if you took me away from this land it would be very hard for me. I wish to die in this land. I wish to be an old man here....I have not wished to give even a part of it to the Great Father. Though he would give me a million dollars or more I would not give to him this land....When people want to slaughter cattle they drive them along until they get them to a corral, and then they slaughter them. So it was with us....My children have been exterminated; my brother has been killed.

  Standing Bear

  Brother, Children, Father

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• Despite all expectations, the time of my last campaign and of my passing is near. I wish to die at home. Let not my end disarm you, and on no account weep for me, lest the enemy be warned of my death.

  Genghis Khan

  Home, Expectations, Enemy

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• I am a missionary, heart and soul. God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician. I am a poor, poor imitation of Him, or wish to be. In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die!

  David Livingstone

  Heart, Son, Soul

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• It is my wish to die of unique causes, perhaps in a high-speed tricycle crash, a bizarre stapling incient, or as a result of inadvertently sucking my brains out through my ear while trying to untwist the vacuum hose.

  Paula Poundstone

  Unique, Brain, Trying

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• and in that recurring dream, I found myself trapped in some sort of gigantic game of which I was unfamiliar with the rules; lost in a labyrinthine town of dark and damp, criss-crossing streets, ambiguous characters of uncertain authority having no idea of why I was there nor what I had to do, and where the first sign of the beginning of understanding was the wish to die.

  Franz Kafka

  Dream, Character, Dark

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• I don't know as I am fit for anything and I have thought that I could wish to die young and let the remembrance of me and my faults perish in the grave rather than live, as I fear I do, a trouble to everyone.... Sometimes I could not sleep and have groaned and cried till midnight.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Sleep, Remembrance, Faults

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• One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one willl only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: "This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me.

  Franz Kafka

  Hate, Moving, Men

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• Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing - the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Jesus, Pain, Giving

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• I wish to die knowing that I took a fleeting instant of eternity and fashioned from it a lifetime.

  Robert Breault

  Life, Philosophical, Knowing

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• And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
  That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

  John Milton

  Kings, Lying, Tombs

  John Milton (1874). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: Edited with Introductions, Notes and an Essay on Milton's English by David Masson”, p.414

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• TO THOSE WHO WOULD USE INTELLIGENCE IN THE BATTLE AGAINST DEATH - TO STRENGTHEN THE WILL TO LIVE AGAINST THE WISH TO DIE, AND TO REPLACE WITH LOVE THE BLIND COMPULSION TO GIVE HOSTAGES TO HATRED AS THE PRICE OF LIVING.

  Karl A. Menninger

  Life, Giving, Hatred

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• Without music I should wish to die.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Music, Should, Dies

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (1972). “Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay”

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• So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die, Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough, And Virtue also says: We are not yet friends enough.

  Stevie Smith

  Fancy, Muse, Virtue

  Stevie Smith (1969). “The best beast: poems”

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• I was born poor, I have lived poor, I wish to die poor.

  Pope Pius X

  Poor, Born, Dies

  The Maine Catholic Historical Magazine, Volumes 3-6, (p. 17), 1914.

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