A Quote by Barbara Pym

There are no sick people in North Oxford. They are either dead or alive. It's sometimes difficult to tell the difference, that's all. — © Barbara Pym
There are no sick people in North Oxford. They are either dead or alive. It's sometimes difficult to tell the difference, that's all.
People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don't. And it doesn't matter if the sickness is cancer or if it's depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the drugs work for a while and then they stop. Sometimes the alternative stuff works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you wonder if no outside interference makes any difference at all; if an illness is like a storm, if it simply has to run its course and, at the end of it, depending on how robust you are, you will be alive. Or you will be dead.
It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.
A mortician can make a dead man look better than he ever did when he was alive. So churches like Sardis may appear very much alive when they are dead in the sight of the Lord. God knows the difference.
I'm either mentally ill or Jewish. I can't sometimes tell the difference.
It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box would you?... Even taking into account the fact that you're dead, it isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off-- I'm going to stuff you in this box now would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all.
The body is never more alive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead in its totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism.
There's some that came here never believing they were dead. They insisted all the way that they were alive, it was a mistake, someone would have to pay; made no difference. There's others who longed to be dead when they were alive, poor souls; lives full of pain or misery; killed themselves for a chance of a blessed rest, and found that nothing had changed except for the worse, and this time there was no escape; you can't make yourself alive again.
Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do. Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
Working-class families in the north of England used to hear the 1611 Bible regularly at church and at home ... for us, the language didn't seem too difficult. I especially liked 'the quick and the dead' - you really get a feel for the difference if you live in a house with mice and a mousetrap.
You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway.
The big debate right now is if Saddam is alive or dead. He's dead, then he's alive, then dead, then alive. It's just confusing. Today they showed videotape, and Saddam was speaking at his own funeral.
Sometimes a person has to be dead a while before people can appreciate what they did when they were alive.
Sometimes it's not catastrophic. Sometimes you only come to the bottom of your coffee cup. Sometimes you have a good day. No one wants to know. No one wants to tell you about theirs either. You might somehow take it. Turn it against them. See the flaw. You always tell them the whole thing sucks. It keeps you alive. They figure if you're out there having a rotten time, everything's fine and you're doing your part. No one will ever try to take your bad times away from you but they'll come swarming for your happiness.
You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl.
If you couldn't tell the difference between what hurt and what didn't, you had no business being alive. You can't have any good times if you can't tell.
What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?
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