Robert Christy, comp. Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages. 1887.
Death
A dead man does not make war.Italian.
A dead man does not speak.Portuguese.
A dead man has neither relations nor friends.French.
A dead mouse feels no cold.
A death-bed’s a detector of the heart.Young.
A fly, a grape stone, or a hair can kill.Pope.
A man has learned much, who has learned how to die.German.
A sudden death is the best.Cæsar.
All death is sudden to the unprepared.
All men are born richer than they die.German.
An escape from death is worth more than the prayers of good men.Don Quixote.
An honorable death is better than an inglorious life.Socrates.
As dead as a door nail.
As dead as a herring.
As soon as man expert from time has found the key of life, it opes the gates of death.Young.
As soon as man is born he begins to die.German.
As soon dies the calf as the cow.French.
As soon goes the lamb’s skin to market as the old ewes’.
Be still prepared for death, and death or life shall thereby be the sweeter.Shakespeare.
Better once dead than all the time suffering in need.German.
But kings and mightiest potentates must die;
For that’s the end of human misery.Shakespeare.
Charon waits for all.
Come soon or late death’s undetermined day,
This mortal being only can decay.Ovid.
Dead dogs don’t bite.German, Dutch.
Dead folks can’t bite.
Dead men do not bite.Theoditus.
Dead men pay no surgeons.Fielding.
Dead men tell no tales.
Death foreseen, never comes.Italian.
Death always comes too early or too late.Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue.Job.
Death and love are two wings which bear men from earth to heaven.Michael Angelo.
Death defies the doctor.
Death devours lambs as well as sheep.
Death does not blow a trumpet.Danish.
Death has a thousand doors to let out life.Massinger.
Death hath nothing terrible in it, but what life hath made so.
Death is a black camel that kneels at every man’s gate.
Death is but what the haughty brave,
The weak must bear, the wretch must crave.Byron.
Death is in the pot.Dutch.
Death is most unfortunate in prosperity. (Æsop however says it is then most happy to good men.)Plutarch.
Death is never premature except to those who die without virtue.French.
Death is shameful in flight, glorious in victory.Cicero.
Death is the grand leveller.
Death keeps no calendar.
Death meets us everywhere.
Death opens the gate to good fame and extinguishes envy.Byron.
Death rather frees us from ills than robs us of our goods.
Death’s but a path that must be trod,
If man would ever pass to God.Parnell.
Death’s-day is doom’s-day.
Death says to the man with his throat cut, “How ugly thou art.” (Hypocrisy.)Spanish.
Death spares neither pope nor beggar.
Death to the wolf is life to the lamb.
Death to us—liberty.Caucasian battle cry.
Death will hear of no excuse.Euripides.
Deep swimmers and high climbers seldom die in their beds.Dutch.
Do not speak ill of the dead, but deem them sacred who have gone into the immortal state.Ancients.
Dread thought, that all the work man’s life can have
Is but to bear his coffin tow’r’d his grave.
Every one must pay his debt to nature.German.
Feign death and the bull will leave you.Portuguese.
Few have luck, all have death.Danish.
Golden lads and girls, all must
As chimney-sweepers come to dust.Shakespeare.
Great body, great grave.German.
He dies like a beast who has done no good while he lived.
He hath lived ill that knows not how to die well.
He hauls at a long rope that expects another’s death.Italian.
He should wear iron shoes that bides his neighbor’s death.
He that died half a year ago is as dead as Adam.
He that dies pays all debts.Shakespeare.
He that dies this year is quit of the next.Shakespeare.
He that dies troubles his parents but once, but he that lives ill torments them perpetually.
He that waits for dead men’s shoes may go long enough barefoot.
He waits long that waits for another man’s death.Dutch.
He who dies not in his twenty-third year, drowns not in his twenty-fourth, is not slain in his twenty-fifth, may boast of good days.Dutch.
He who waits for a dead man’s shoes is in danger of going barefoot.French, Danish.
He whom the gods love dies young.Plautus.
He would be a good one to send for death.Italian.
Heaven gives its favorites an early death.Byron.
His candle burns within the socket.
How wise in God to place death at the end of life.German.
I know of nobody that has a mind to die this year.
If death be terrible the fault is not in death, but thee.
If you want to be dead wash your head and go to bed.Spanish.
It is a lightning before death.
It is as natural to die as to be born.
It is better to die an honest death than to live an infamous life.Petrarch.
It is better to die once than to live always in fear of death.Cæsar.
It is better to die with honor than to live in infamy.Agricola.
It is hard even to the most miserable to die.
It takes four living men to carry one dead man out of the house.Italian.
Julius Cæsar lived in the midst of combats and died in the midst of the Senate.Turkish Spy.
Keep thine eye fixed on the end of life.Solon.
Me dead, the world is dead.Italian.
Men fear death as children to go in the dark.
Never say die.
No priority among the dead.
Noble spirits war not with the dead.Byron.
Of the great and of the dead, either speak well or say nothing.Italian.
Pale death knocks at the cottage and the palace with an impartial hand.Horace.
She is good and honored who is dead and buried.Spanish.
Six feet of earth makes all men equal.
The actions of a dying man are void of disguise.Turkish Spy.
The bitterness of death must be tasted by him who is to appreciate the sweetness of deliverance.Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.
The dead and absent have no friends.
The dead are soon forgotten.
The dead cannot defend, therefore speak well of the dead.Latin.
The dead man is unenvied.Modern Greek.
The dead open the eyes of the living.Portuguese.
The evening praises the day, death the life.German.
The first breath is the beginning of death.
The greatest business of life is to prepare for death.
The heathen looked on death without fear, the Christian exulted.Bulwer.
The quiet haven of us all.Wordsworth.
The road of death must be travelled by all.Horace.
The sight of death is as a bell that warns old age to a sepulchre.Shakespeare.
The sun and death are two things we cannot stare in the face.
The world’s an inn and death the journey’s end.Dryden.
There is no medicine against death.
There is no remedy for all evils but death.
They never fail who die in a great cause.Byron.
They that live longest must die at last.
Time goes, death comes.Dutch, German.
’Tis ours to bear, not judge the dead.
To die is nothing: ’tis but parting with a mountain of vexation.Massinger.
To die is the fate of man, but to live with lingering anguish is generally his folly.Rambler.
To insult the dead is cruel and unjust.Homer.
To live in the hearts we leave behind us is not to die.
To wrestle with ghosts; i.e., to speak ill of the dead.Latin.
Until death there is no knowing what may befall.Italian.
We die as we live.Turkish.
We had better die at once than to live constantly in fear of death.Dion.
When he’s forsaken—withered and shaken,
What can an old man do but die.Hood.
When I’m dead everybody’s dead and the pig too.Italian.
When one is dead it is for a long time.French.
When you die even your tomb shall be comfortable.Russian.
When you die your trumpeter will be buried.
Who dies in youth and vigor dies the best.Homer.
Who thinks often of death does nothing worthy of life.Italian.