Stevie Smith Quotes

The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.

I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.

Virtuous people often revenge themselves for the constraints to which they submit by the boredom which they inspire.

We are never like angels till our passion dies.

And why not death rather than living torment? To die is to be banish'd from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her Is self from self: a deadly banishment!

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were friends and the last people I expected would predecease me. They were, in a sense, casualties of fame.

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.

A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.

Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.

I wondered if that's what aging felt like. That desire and reality were dueling until the day you die, that nobody every got to a place of peace. I had always wanted to get old so I didn't have to care anymore, but I began to think that it would be best just to skip the getting older part and just die.

If I had any decency, I'd be dead. Most of my friends are.

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

The living will envy the dead.

It's just a relief, really. I'm scared to die, but I want to die.

I lived like a man who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himself.

I wish they were all dead and we were, too. It would be best." Well, there's no good response to that. I can hardly dispute it since I was walking around with a syringe to kill Peeta when I found them. Do I really want him dead? What I want...what I want is to have him back.

If I could have two things in one: the peace of the grave, and the light of the sun.

If that thy fame with ev'ry toy be pos'd, 'Tis a thin web, which poysonous fancies make; But the great souldier's honour was compos'd Of thicker stuf, which would endure a shake. Wisdom picks friends; civility plays the rest; A toy shunn'd cleanly passeth with the best.

To Harry Secombe: I hope you die first as I don't want you singing at my funeral.

At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it, breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life; by dying, you would escape this longing for death.

Friendship is the union of spirits, a marriage of hearts, and the bond thereof virtue

I crave to die with my hand at the spinning wheel.