The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (115 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs
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Let the DEAD bury the dead
With allusion to
MATTHEW
viii. 22 (AV) Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.
1815
Hist. Cosmopolite
(1859) 340
A religious bigot made a motion to mob me; but none would second it. A worldling replied to him, ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’
1931
What dare I Think
? vi.
Let, then, the dead bury the dead. The task for us is to rejuvenate ourselves and our subject.
1984
San Andreas
xii.
The best thing would be if
you
forgot them. Sounds cruel, I know, but let the dead bury their dead.
1997
Spectator
8 Nov. 28
There is something repellent, as well as profoundly unhistorical, about judging the past by the standards or prejudices of another age. Let the dead bury the dead.
death
DEAD men don't bite
The words put into the mouth of Theodotus, a teacher of rhetoric, advising the Egyptians to murder Pompey when he came seeking refuge in Egypt after his defeat at Pharsalia in 48 BC: PLUTARCH
Pompeius
lxxvii.
o
o
, a dead man does not bite. Cf. ERASMUS
Adages
III. vi.
mortui non mordent
, the dead do not bite.
a
1547
Chronicle
(1548) Hen. VI 92
V
A prouerbe .. saith, a dead man doth no harme: Sir John Mortimer .. was attainted [convicted] of treason and put to execucion.
1579
tr.
Plutarch's Lives: Pompey
717
A dead man bytes not.
a
1593
Jack Straw
F2
I trow [believe] they cannot bite when they be dead.
1655
Church Hist. Britain
IX. iv.
The dead did not bite; and, being dispatch'd out of the way, are forgotten.
1883
Treasure Island
xi.
‘What are we to do with 'em anyway? .. Cut 'em down like that much pork?’..‘Dead men don't bite,’ says he.
1902
Hist. Scotland
II. xii.
The story that Gray ‘whispered in Elizabeth's ear, The dead don't bite’, is found in Camden.
1957
See Rome & Die
xvi.
A dead man cannot bite, as it says somewhere in Plutarch. Pompey's murderers, I think. Anyhow, that was the way their minds worked then.

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