Living death

La[dy Anne]. Neuer hung poiſon on a fouler toade, Out of my ſight thou doeſt infect my eies. Glo[ucester]. Thine eies ſweete Lady haue infected mine. La[dy Anne]. Would they were baſiliſkes to ſtrike thee dead. Glo[ucester]. I would they were that I might die at once, For now they kill me with a liuing death: […]

Mr Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout the critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest to his chamber.

If their creed were no longer tolerated, then, and if they remained true to it, they must either fly from the country or spend a living death tugging at an oar or working in a chain-gang upon the roads.

"[W]e cling so closely here to our own doctrine of isolation. . . ." "Isobel is intended, then?" I asked. "For the Church," Madame Richard answered. . . . "Madame," I answered, "Isobel is meant for life—not a living death."

WORF: When my foster brother and I were of age, we entered the Starfleet Academy. He hated it and returned to Gault. I stayed. KONMEL: You have not spent much time among your own kind. WORF: Hardly none. KORRIS: So, when the night was still and quiet, and the sound of the blood rushing through your veins filled your ears, the only way to silence it was to slip out into the night and, like the hunter that spawned you, join in the struggle of life and death. You were unable KONMEL: And those around you did not understand. You frightened them. KORRIS: They shunned you. Cursed you. Called you vile names, and you knew not why. Even now do you know why you are driven? Why you cannot relent or repent or confess or abstain? How could you know? There have been no other Klingons to lead you to that knowledge. WORF: Yes. Yes, those feelings are part of me. But I control them. They do not rule me. KORRIS: Yes. To fit in, the humans demand that you change the one thing that you cannot change. Yet, because you cannot, you do. That too is the mark of the warrior. You said that I mock you. I do not. I salute you. KONMEL: But against whom do you test yourself? Against what enemy do you charge into battle? WORF: I have been in battle. KORRIS: Then you understand. WORF: Yes, I do. KORRIS: Brother, this peace, this alliance, is like a living death to warriors like us. KONMEL: You're right, we lied to your Commander. We commandeered that freighter and left the crew behind, and we were in search of a place where we could live our lives like true Klingons.

A.L.S., or Lou Gehrig's disease, is often described as a kind of living death in which the body goes flaccid while the mind remains intact and acutely aware.