Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says; “I am coming.”
[Pereat qui crastina curat.
Mors aurem vellens Vivite, ait, venio.]Virgil (70-19 BC) Roman poet [b. Publius Vergilius Maro; also Vergil]
“Copa [The Dancing Girl / The Barmaid / The Female Tavern Keeper],” ll. 37-38, Appendix Vergiliana [Minor Poems]
(Source)
The Appendix Vergiliana were long considered authentic, if younger, poems by Virgil, but scholars today consider them to be by other, unknown authors from around the 1st Century AD, collected in Late Antiquity.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., quoted the line in a radio address on his ninetieth birthday (1931-03-08), as noted below.
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:
Away with him who heeds the morrow! Death, plucking the ear, cries: "Live; I come!"
[tr. Fairclough (1908)]
Let him perish who
Doth care about to-morrow. Death your ear
Demands and says, "I come, so live to-day."
[tr. Mooney (1916)]
Death plucks my ear and says, Live -- I am coming.
[tr. Holmes (1931)]
Never mind tomorrow. In my ear
Death whispers: "Live! I'm coming. I am here!"
[tr. Slavitt (2011)]
Quotations about:
death
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Sermon, Selma, Alabama (8 Mar 1965)
Possibly the source of the uncited attributions (or variants) "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" and "The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die."