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Where the brass knocker, wrapt in flannel band,
Forbids the thunder of the footman's hand,
The' upholder, rueful harbinger of death,
Waits with impatience for the dying breath.

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Death

More quotes by John Gay

Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; and now I know it.

While there is life there's hope, he cried.

Fables (1727)

I must have women—there is nothing unbends the mind like them.

The Beggar's Opera (1728)

The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets.

The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Brother, brother! we are both in the wrong.

The Beggar's Opera (1728)

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The thunderstorm is a constant phenomenon, raging alternately over some part of the world or the other. Can a single man or creature escape death if all that charge of lightning strikes the earth?

Kalki Krishnamurthy Sivakozhundu of Tiruvazhundur (1939)

So what if a kid dies? God will take care of him.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Gay (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.