On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

-Allen,Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg
  Without Feathers,'Early Essays'.

Estou farto do lirismo comedido Do lirismo bem comportado Do lirismo funciona¤  rio p u¤ blico com livro de ponto expediente protocolo e manifesta c° o‹  es de apre c° o ao Sr Diretor. Estou farto do lirismo que pa¤  ra e vai averiguar no diciona¤  rio o cunho verna¤  culo de um voca¤  bulo. Abaixo os puristas I'm sick of cautious lyricism of well-behaved lyricism of a civil servant lyricism complete with time card office hours set procedures and expressions of esteem for Mr Boss, Sir. I'm sick of the lyricism that has to stop in midstream to look up the precise meaning of a word. Down with purists!

-Bandeira, Manuel
  Libertinagem,'Poe¤  tica' (translated as'Poetics',1989).

Why art thou cast down,O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Psalms 42:5.

He that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low no pride. He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide.

-Bunyan,John
  The Pilgrim's Progress, pt.2.

It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down. It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses. It isnotthestreetsthatexist.It isthestreetsthat no longer exist. It is not your memories which haunt you. It is not what you have written down. It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget. What you must go on forgetting all your life.

-Fenton,James
  'A German Requiem'.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'Birches'.

A foggy day in LondonTown Had me low and had me down.

-Gershwin, Ira originally Israel Gershowitz
  'A Foggy Day', song from the musical Damsel in Distress (music by George Gershwin).

A great partyought nottobe brought down because of a squalid affair between a woman of easy virtue and a proved liar.

-Hailsham, Quintin (McGarel) Hogg, 2nd Viscount
  On the Profumo affair, BBC  T V,13  Jun.

Your levellerswishto leveldownas farasthemselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark, 21  Jul. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

Everybody wants you to pick it up, and nobody wants you to put it down.

-Ruckelshaus,William D(oyle)
  Articulating 'the First Law of Garbage'. In Fortune, 21 Nov.

The question that isso clearly in many potential parents' minds: 'Why should we stunt our ambitions and impoverish our lives in order to be insulted and looked down upon in our old age?'

-Schumpeter,Joseph Alois
  Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, ch.14.

Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat, And round about the prow she wrote The Lady of Shalott.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'The Lady of Shalott' (revised1842), pt.4, l.123^6.

  That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out but they never let you down.

-Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn
  Decline and Fall, pt.1, ch.3.

I started at the top and worked down.

-Welles, (George) Orson
Attributed.

I play with the fear of letting people down. That's what motivates me.

-Wilkinson,Jonny
  Quoted on www.bbc.co.uk.