QuoteProject
Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy.
Stephen King
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote suggests that only those who have faced death can truly understand and convey profound truths.

Stephen King's quote reflects on the notion that profound insights and truths often come from those who have experienced the depths of life, including its end. The idea that 'only a corpse may speak true prophecy' implies that there is a certain clarity and wisdom that emerges from death or the inevitabilities of life, suggesting that real understanding often arises from confronting harsh realities.

Themes

TruthWisdomDeathLifeProphecy

In practice

Example use cases

During a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life and death, this quote can be used to emphasize the wisdom that comes from facing mortality.

More from Stephen King

Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Stephen KingRead
Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Stephen KingRead
Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.
Stephen KingRead
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
Stephen KingRead
That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them.
Stephen KingRead
Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.
Stephen KingRead

Similar quotes

Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas.
Edward De BonoRead
There are clearly times when quieting down and bringing our energy back into ourselves is a step toward inner peace. _x000D_ _x000D_ Yet the most powerful life is not one in which we bring ourselves back to our center when we have spun away from it, but rather one in which we seek to live from that center at all times.
Marianne WilliamsonRead
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
Charles De GaulleRead
Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
If self-knowledge is the road to virtue, so is virtue still more the road to self-knowledge.
Jean PaulRead
The problem with forbearance is that it always looks like a good thing to do until it stops working.
Raghuram RajanRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Stephen King | QuoteProject