Posthumous Quotes

• When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.

  Tennessee Williams

  Writing, Alive

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• One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

  Jean Cocteau

  Art, Artist, Men

  "Cock and harlequin: Notes concerning music". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1921.

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• Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Essence, Generosity, Selfishness

  Charles Caleb Colton (1866). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.38

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• But because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relation—and yours too—to the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a structurally posthumous necessity. Suppose, in that case, that I am not alone in my claim to know the idiomatic code (whose notion itself is already contradictory) of this event. What if somewhere, here or there, there are shares in this non-secret’s secret? Even so the scene would not be changed. The accomplices, as you are once again well aware, are also bound to die.

  Jacques Derrida

  What If, Doubt, Secret

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• I'm only really alive when I'm writing.

  Tennessee Williams

  Writing, Alive

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• Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Dark, Slavery, Merit

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• I mean, let's face it, we didn't have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back. I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

  Dave Zirin

  Country, Mean, Dark

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• I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.

  John Keats

  Real, Past, Feelings

  "Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats".

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• Posthumous men-myself, for example-are not as well understood as timely ones, but we are listened to better. More precisely: we are never understood-hence our authority.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Example, Authority

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• The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.

  Milan Kundera

  Moments

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• Darwin, Marx, and Freud meet. They may have understood other things, but the human soul, and in particular the soul of Culture-man, they did not understand. Systems like theirs are only historical curiosities to the 20th century, unless they happen to claim to be appropriate descriptions of Reality. Anyone who believes in these antiquated fantasies stamps himself as ludicrous, posthumous, ineffective, and superfluous. No leading men of the coming decades will be Darwinians, Marxians or Freudians.

  Francis Parker Yockey

  Believe, Reality, Men

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• It always bothers me to see people writing RIP when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop out. To me, RIP is the microwave dinner of posthumous honours.

  Lou Reed

  Rip, Writing, People

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• Proust has been dead since 1922, yet the annual appearance of his posthumous works has left him, to the reader, alive. Now there is nothing left to publish. Five years after his interment, Proust seems dead for the first time.

  Janet Flanner

  Years, Alive, Firsts

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• He no longer wished to be dead. At the same time, it cannot be said that he was glad to be alive. But at least he did not resent it. He was alive, and the stubbornness of this fact had little by little begun to fascinate him - as if he had managed to outlive himself, as if he were somehow living a posthumous life.

  Paul Auster

  Glad To Be Alive, Littles, Facts

  Paul Auster (2008). “The New York Trilogy”, p.5, Faber & Faber

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• Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it; or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up; or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead; but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Light, Heaven, Growth

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.365

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• And yet, after all, what is posthumous fame? Altogether vanity.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Vanity, Fame

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• Dominicus Corea had a posthumous son, Lewis Corea who became the Dissawe of Uva. Sir Paul Peiris wrote that `With the disappearance of Dominicus Corea, came a short lull in military operations of which the Portuguese officials availed themselves to give free rein to that rapacity which so frequently disgraced their careers in the East'. Dominicus Corea was succeeded by his brother Simon, as Dissawe of the Sat Korale, Kotte and Sitawaka.

  Dominicus Corea

  Brother, Military, Son

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• The desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and constant motives of action.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Powerful, Men, Feelings

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• Even if I believed there was a real Jesus, I wouldn't fall for that line of hogwash. The "Virgin" Mary should get a posthumous medal for telling the biggest goddamn lie that was ever told. Anybody who believes that will believe that the moon is made out of green cheese.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Jesus, Lying, Real

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• What is new about Barthes's posthumous reputation is the view of him as a writer whose books of criticism and personal musings must be admired as serious and beautiful works of the imagination.

  Edmund White

  Beautiful, Book, Views

  Edmund White, David Bergman (1995). “The Burning Library: Essays”, Vintage

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• Man has always desired power. Ownership of property gives this power. Man hankers also after posthumous fame based on power.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Men, Giving, Fame

  Mahatma Gandhi (1970). “Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi”

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• Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of the Past.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fashion, Children, Past

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.481, Рипол Классик

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• Reputation being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the Envious and the Ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Echoes, Ignorant, Mind

  "Memoirs and Essays, Washington Allston". As quoted in "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations", p. 256-259, 1922.

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• It's an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous.

  Gloria Steinem

  Atheist, Jobs, Believe

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• Dead men hear no tales; posthumous fame is an Irish bull.

  Israel Zangwill

  Men, Bulls, Fame

  Israel Zangwill (1921). “Works of Israel Zangwill: Italian fantasies”

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