Well, when I had thus put mine ends together, I shewed them others, that I might see whether They would condemn them, or them justify: And some said, Let them live; some, Let them die; Some said, JOHN, print it; others said, Not so; Some said, It might do good; others said, No.
It shows, too, who set out for life amain, As if the lasting crown they would obtain; Here also you may see the reason why They lose their labour, and like fools do die.
He answered, Sir, I perceive by the book in my hand, that I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgement [Heb. 9:27]; and I find that I am not willing to do the first [Job 16:21], nor able to do the second. [Ezek. 22:14]
"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. "I thought he'd never die."
2009, Julius J Lipner, Debi Chaudhurani, or The Wife Who Came Home, page 121:
I'd heard that you'd died, but you hadn't died to me. In my mind only you remained my wife, no one else could take your place. I won't say I'd actually decided... well, there's no harm in saying it: when I heard that you'd died, I wanted to die too.
"become so hated or ignored as to be dead to someone"edit
2008, Lenore Esposito, Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, page 262:
“She died to me the day she chose you at the mill. Although, I must admit she became useful by luring you here, but that could have happened with her dead as well.” Barrington listened, his mind clicking in deliberation over his next move.
2015, Emily Duvall, Inclusions, page 150:
"My dad […] beat us until we couldn't sit down." […] "What about your mother?" […] "She's alive. […] My aunt visits her once a year, but I don't ask about my mother. She died to me the day she chose my father over protecting us." Luke's voice hitched with emotion.
2015, C. J. Cherryh, Tracker:
He wanted to escape. But that required bowing and then turning his back and having his mother say something to upset him further on his way to the door. "Man'chi was broken," his mother said quietly. "There was a point I let you die to me, son of mine. I told myself you were dead, so I could think about your father. And when you did come back, with her—I found no way to light that fire again. Nothing that could mend what had happened."
2016, C.J. Cala, Some Blue Suited Bird, page 178:
You died to me that day; and it wasn't long before we ended our shared lives together. Perhaps, we were always strangers from the start, starving in the belly of a whale-like beast, just as Mr. Waits had worded about the underworld.
2017, Bonnie Vanak, Navy SEAL Protector: A Military Romantic Suspense Novel:
He'd been only eleven, grief-stricken and numb, for he'd not just lost his mother, but Silas had died to him that day and stopped being the father who treated him well. Despite his best attempts to remain hidden, Shelby always found him.
2018, Daniel Richard Smith, Prinz David's Castle, page 43:
"I know you're dying, and I'm not gonna pretend, even a little, that it bothers me. You've been dying to me, a little bit, day by day, as long as I can remember. And when I started doing some digging and discovered that Niklas existed, well, you died more that day. […] And you died to me, a little more, a little more. I know I don't know everything yet, and maybe never will, and the funny thing is, I don't even know why I'm doing it. After Niklas, well, something just flared up inside me. I knew there was more […]
2020, Mary Gibson, The Bermondsey Bookshop, page 32:
'You died to him the day she did. And I lost me brother because of her.' Kate had never seen her aunt cry, not even when Uncle Tom was killed in the war. But now a single tear trickled down her pallid cheek. She turned away.
(Can we date this quote?), Connor Matthews, Destruction Lovers: Volume 1, page 40:
She's homophobic. He's not. She hardly talks about their son. he never will forget how proud he was of his little Doctor son...who was gay. […] Federick loved his son. Alicia's son died to her the day he came out.
(Can we date this quote?), M. H. He, Different Minds - Different Lives, page 149:
He died to me the day I received his letter telling me proudly how he'd killed a man. I mourned him then. The youngest died to me the day he joined the army. He was a volunteer.
(Can we date this quote?), Candice Gilmer, Slipping Away: A Charming Fairy Tale, page 364:
Partially because it made Father's behavior make more sense—like how I was barely acknowledged after my mother died— and partially because it of what it meant... That I had died to him, the day my mother died.
sense unclear; citations of the form "died to [someone]"edit
1854 (edition printed 2010), Agnes Strickland, Elizabeth Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest, page 468, quoting Margaret of France, Queen of England (speaking c. 1307–1318):
"When Edward died all men died to me." These lamentations for a husband more than seventy, from a widow twenty-six, seem a little exaggerated; yet the after-life of the royal Marguerite proved their sincerity.
2001, Angela McSeveney, "Anorexia", in Gordon Liddell, Anne Gifford, New Scottish Poetry, page 64:
I knew she had already died to me the day I introduced her to my sister. As understanding dawned she blurted 'You mean she's your age? I'd have sworn she was forty.' […]
2003, Mary Ann Carman, Never to Love, page 105:
"Yes, well — I told you she died because after you were born she died to me, but she was actually taken from me by her parents and given to another lord, one who wouldn't care care that she had already conceived. […] She was dead to us both, even though she lived.
2009, Harold Bloom, Charles Dickens, Infobase Publishing (→ISBN), page 53:
[…] the brickmaker's wife, whom Esther now tellingly 'recognises' as 'the mother of the dead child'. For surely it is the childish Esther herself who has now 'died' to her mother, in order to live again—to live 'legitimately'—as a woman in that very society which has made of her mother a scapegoat to purge its own sins of violence, […]
2011, Andrew Winer, The Marriage Artist: A Novel, page 325:
But what he had not anticipated was that when he found her—and find her he did, in June, ill and billeted in a DP camp hospital in Bamberg—she would actually be relieved by his three words, relieved to finally know what she had suspected for an eternity of days. “He's died to me so many times since the last time I heard from him," she whispered […] "and I've died to myself so many times because of it. Now we both can stop dying."
