dreams
quotations about dreams, dreaming and dreamers

  A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
- - - - W. H. Auden
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rung his bell,
What would you buy?
- - - - Thomas Lovell Beddoes "Dream-Pedlar"
Dreaming men are haunted men.
- - - - Stephen Vincent Benet
Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
- - - - Bible - Joel 2:28
You know a dream is like a river
Ever changing as it flows.
And a dreamer's just a vessel
That must follow where it goes.
Trying to learn from what's behind you
And never knowing what's in store
Makes each day a constant battle
Just to stay between the shores.
- - - - Garth Brooks "The River"
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
- - - - George Gordon, Lord Byron "Darkness"
Myth is the public dream, and dream is the private myth.
- - - - Joseph Campbell
Once upon a time,
I dreamt
I was a butterfly...Suddenly
I awoke...Now, I do not
know whether I was then
a man dreaming I was
a butterfly, or whether I
am now a butterfly dreaming
that I am a man.
- - - - Chuang-Tzu
A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns.
- - - - Joseph Conrad "Lord Jim"
We live, as we dream -- alone.
- - - - Joseph Conrad "Heart of Darkness"
I walked beside the evening sea
And dreamed a dream that could not be;
The waves that plunged along the shore
Said only: "Dreamer, dream no more!"
- - - - George William Curtis
To dream the impossible dream,
To reach the unreachable star!
- - - - Joe Darion
Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go.
- - - - Louise Driscoll
I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.
- - - - Bob Dylan
Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrop are waiting for thee.
- - - - Stephen Foster "Beautiful Dreamer"
Dreams - A microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
- - - - Erich Fromm
I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.
- - - - Kahlil Gibran
When we can't dream any longer we die.
- - - - Emma Goldman
Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blue prints of your ultimate achievements.
- - - - Napoleon Hill
We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
- - - - Eric Hoffer
Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.
- - - - Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?
- - - - Langston Hughes "Harlem"
Goals are dreams with deadlines.
- - - - Diana Scharf Hunt
You must never stop dreaming. Face reality, yes. But don't stop with the way things are; dream of things as they ought to be. Dream of peace. Peace is rational and reasonable. War is irrational in this age and unwinnable.
- - - - Jesse Jackson
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
- - - - Thomas Jefferson
Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"
Birds singing in the sycamore tree
Dream a little dream of me
- - - - Gus Kahn "Dream A Little Dream of Me"
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - do I wake or sleep?
- - - - John Keats
Let us learn to dream, gentlemen; then we shall perhaps find the truth.
- - - - Friedrich Kekule
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
- - - - T. E. Lawrence
It may be that those who do most, dream most.
- - - - Stephen Leacock
Ah, great it is to believe the dream
As we stand in youth by the starry stream;
But a greater thing is to fight life through,
And say at the end, "The dream is true!"
- - - - Edwin Markham
Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?
- - - - George Moore
Everything starts as somebody's daydream.
- - - - Larry Niven
Dreams are ... illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.
- - - - Marsha Norman
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
- - - - Edgar Allen Poe "A Dream Within a Dream"
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
- - - - Edgar Allen Poe
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
- - - - Edgar Allan Poe "Eleonora"
If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
- - - - Marcel Proust
The thing you have to be prepared for is that other people don't always dream your dream.
- - - - Linda Ronstadt
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
- - - - Eleanor Roosevelt
The republic is a dream.
Nothing happens unless first a dream.
- - - - Carl Sandburg "Washington Monument by Night"
Every challenge we face can be solved by a dream.
- - - - David Schwartz
In a dream you are never eighty.
- - - - Anne Sexton
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
- - - - William Shakespeare "The Tempest"
You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
- - - - George Bernard Shaw "Back to Methuselah"
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
- - - - Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Indian Serenade"
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!
- - - - Logan Pearsall Smith
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
- - - - Wallace Stevens
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
- - - - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
- - - - Henry David Thoreau
Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
- - - - John Updike
Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.
- - - - Peter Ustinov
We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.
- - - - Baron Friedrich von Hardenberg
Saddle your dreams before you ride them.
- - - - Mary Webb
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
- - - - Oscar Wilde
Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.
- - - - Oscar Wilde
We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.
- - - - Woodrow Wilson
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- - - - William Butler Yeats "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"
If I had never met him I would have dreamed him into being.
- - - - Anzia Yezierska

fear
quotations about fear

  But Fear and the Muse in turn guard the place
Where the banished poet has gone
And the night that comes with quickened pace
Is ignorant of dawn.
- - - - Anna Akhmatova
Why do the wicked always form groups, whereas the righteous do not? Because the wicked, walking in darkness, need company, but the righteous, who live in light, do not fear being alone.
- - - - Anonymous
A fool without fear is sometimes wiser than an angel with fear.
- - - - Lady Nancy Astor “My Two Countries”
Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
- - - - Honoré de Balzac
Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
- - - - Dorothy Bernard
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
- - - - Bible - Psalms 23:4
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
the Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
- - - - Bible - Psalm 27:1
He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.
- - - - Napoleon Bonaparte
Who is all-powerful should fear everything.
- - - - Pierre Corneille
Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; Conservatism, distrust of the people, tempered by fear.
- - - - William Ewart Gladstone
I feel my immortality oversweep all pains, all tears, all time, all fears, - and peal, like the eternal thunders of the deep, into my ears, this truth, - thou livest forever!
- - - - George Gordon, Lord Byron
Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
- - - - Zora Neale Hurston
We invent what we love, and what we fear.
- - - - John Irving
I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.
- - - - Erica Jong
The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
- - - - Krishnamurti
Fear is nature's warning signal to get busy.
- - - - Henry C. Link
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
- - - - H. P. Lovecraft
It's the heart afraid of dying, that never learns to dance;
It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance;
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give;
And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live.
- - - - Bette Midler “The Rose"
Fear is the mother of morality.
- - - - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
- - - - Alexander Pope “An Essay on Criticism”
Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.
- - - - Michael Pritchard
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- - - - Ambrose Redmoon
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterwards.
- - - - Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.
- - - - Eleanor Roosevelt
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life.
- - - - Bertrand Russell “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish”
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear.
- - - - Shakespeare, “Hamlet”
Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back.
- - - - Publilius Syrus
Fear is a slinking cat I find
Beneath the lilacs of my mind.
- - - - Sophie Tunnel
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
- - - - Mark Twain
The hopes and fears of all our years are here with us tonight.
- - - - Kurt Vonnegut
Tomorrow holds no fears for me,
Since I have found today.
- - - - Vivian Yeiser Laramor

war
quotations about war
  We make war that we may live in peace.
~ ~ ~ Aristotle
War would end if the dead could return.
~ ~ ~ Stanley Baldwin
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.
~ ~ ~ Bible - Ecclesiastes 1:11
War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.
~ ~ ~ Winston Churchill
Where there is no peril in the fight, there is no glory in the triumph.
~ ~ ~ Pierre Corneille
War is a fevered god
who takes alike
maiden and king and clod....
~ ~ ~ Hilda Doolittle "Telesila"
Men create war to compete with women, who create life.
~ ~ ~ Sharon Doubiago
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.
~ ~ ~ John Fowles "The Magus"
For he who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day;
But he who is in battle slain
Can never rise and fight again.
~ ~ ~ Oliver Goldsmith "The Art of Poetry on a New Plan"
The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air Death moans and sings:
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.
~ ~ ~ Julian Grenfell "Into Battle"
Join the Army! Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people, and kill them.
~ ~ ~ Full Metal Jacket
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
~ ~ ~ Ernest Hemingway
War is death's feast.
~ ~ ~ George Herbert "Outlandish Proverbs"
Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
~ ~ ~ Herbert Hoover
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.
~ ~ ~ John F. Kennedy, 1961
Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation', a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.
~ ~ ~ John F. Kennedy
If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.
~ ~ ~ Rudyard Kipling "Epitaphs of War"
The sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers; for gold alone will not procure good soldiers, but good soldiers will always procure gold.
~ ~ ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
~ ~ ~ H.L. (Henry Lewis) Mencken
What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralisation and disorder on the part of the inferior ... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.
~ ~ ~ Florence Nightingale
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
~ ~ ~ George Orwell "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (Ingsoc party slogan)
Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning.
~ ~ ~ George S. Patton, Jr.
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
~ ~ ~ Jeannette Rankin
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed . . .I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
~ ~ ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong--but that is the way to bet it.
~ ~ ~ Damon Runyon
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
~ ~ ~ Bertrand Russell
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
~ ~ ~ Carl Sandburg
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
~ ~ ~ George Santayana "The Life of Reason"
Cry "havoc!" and let loose the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
~ ~ ~ William Shakespeare "Julius Caesar"
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
~ ~ ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley "A Declaration of Rights" (Dublin, 1812)
It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
~ ~ ~ William Tecumseh Sherman
O I know they make war because they want peace; they hate so that they may live; and they destroy the present to make the world safe for the future. When have they not done and said they did it for that?
~ ~ ~ Elizabeth Smart
You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
~ ~ ~ Margaret Thatcher
It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.
~ ~ ~ Unknown
To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
~ ~ ~ George Washington
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
~ ~ ~ Oscar Wilde
War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.
~ ~ ~ Mao Zedong

rightening things
quotations about scary things
quotes about things that scare and frighten us
Agony Anger Bigotry Censorship
Corruption Cowardice  Crime Criticism
Curses the Devil Enemies Envy
Evil Failure Fear Hatred
Mistakes Murder Pain Violence
War     
       

  Quotations about Fear
A fool without fear is sometimes wiser than an angel with fear.
- - - Lady Nancy Astor "My Two Countries"
Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
- - - Honoré de Balzac
Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
- - - Dorothy Bernard
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
- - - Bible - Psalm 27:1
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
- - - Bible - Psalms 23:4
He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.
- - - Napoleon Bonaparte
Who is all-powerful should fear everything.
- - - Pierre Corneille
Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.
- - - Marilyn Ferguson
I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.
- - - Erica Jong
Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
- - - Zora Neale Hurston
We invent what we love, and what we fear.
- - - John Irving
The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
- - - Krishnamurti
Fear is nature's warning signal to get busy.
- - - Henry C. Link
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
- - - H. P. Lovecraft
It's the heart afraid of dying, that never learns to dance; It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance; It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give; And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live.
- - - Bette Midler "The Rose"
Fear is the mother of morality.
- - - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead; For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
- - - Alexander Pope "An Essay on Criticism"
Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.
- - - Michael Pritchard
We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.
- - - Eleanor Roosevelt
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.
- - - Bertrand Russell "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear.
- - - Shakespeare "Hamlet"
Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back.
- - - Publilius Syrus
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
- - - Harry S Truman, August 8, 1950
Fear is a slinking cat I find Beneath the lilacs of my mind.
- - - Sophie Tunnel
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
- - - Mark Twain
Quotations about Agony
I like a look of agony
Because I know it's true.
- - - Emily Dickinson
On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.
- - - Virginia Woolf
Quotations about Anger
Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry.
- - - Henry Ward Beecher
There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
- - - George Eliot
Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
- - - Elizabeth I
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
- - - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
- - - Thomas Jefferson
Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp's nest.
- - - Malabar Proverb
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
- - - Mark Twain "Pudd'nhead Wilson"

Quotations about Bigotry
Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.
- - - Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
- - - Charles Caleb Colton
The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.
- - - Oliver Wendell Holmes
Quotations about Censorship
You can cage the singer but not the song.
- - - Harry Belafonte
Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.
- - - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.
- - - Doris Lessing
Quotations about Corruption
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
- - - William Shakespeare "Sonnet 94"
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lies in sweetest bud.
All men make faults.
- - - William Shakespeare "Sonnet 35"
Quotations about Cowardice
Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie -- . . .
But rather mourn the apathetic throng --
The cowed and the meek --
Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak.
- - - Ralph Chaplin "Solidarity Forever" (song, January 9, 1915)
Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
- - - Ernest Hemingway
Pacifism is simply undisguised cowardice.
- - - Adolf Hitler
The coward threatens when he is safe.
- - - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When all the blandishments of life are gone,
The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.
- - - George Sewell "The Suicide"
Quotations about Crime
Aside from the murders, DC has one of the lowest crime rates in the country. .
- - - Marion Barry (while mayor of Washington, D. C.)
It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.
- - - Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
- - - Henry Thomas Buckle
Whenever man commits a crime heaven finds a witness.
- - - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
The worst crime is faking it.
- - - Kurt Cobain
Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass.
- - - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
- - - James Russell Lowell
Quotations about Criticism
Seek roses in December, ice in June;
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff;
Believe a woman or an epitaph,
Or any other thing that 's false, before
You trust in critics.
- - - George Gordon, Lord Byron "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers"
Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet.
- - - Chinese Proverb
They have vilified me, they have crucified me. Yes, they have even criticized me.
- - - Richard J. Daley
People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, 'Why wasn't it done the other way?'
- - - Oliver Wendell Holmes
To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
- - - Elbert Hubbard
When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself.
- - - Louis Nizer
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
- - - P. J. O'Rourke "Parliament of Whores"
A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.
- - - George Bernard Shaw
He who slings mud generally loses ground.
- - - Adlai Stevenson
Famous Curses
May your every wish be granted.
- - - Ancient Chinese Curse
May your left ear wither and fall into your right pocket.
- - - Arab Curse
May those that love us, love us;
and those that don't love us,
May God turn their hearts;
and if He doesn't turn their hearts,
may He turn their ankles
so we'll know them by their limping.
- - - Old Irish Toast

May you wander over the face of the earth forever, never sleep twice in the same bed, never drink water twice from the same well, and never cross the same river twice in a year.
- - - Traditional Gypsy Curse
May the grass grow at your door and the fox build his nest on your hearthstone.
May the light fade from your eyes, so you never see what you love.
May your own blood rise against you, and the sweetest drink you take be the bitterest cup of sorrow.
May you die without benefit of clergy;
May there be none to shed a tear at your grave, and may the hearthstone of hell be your best bed forever.
- - - Traditional Wexford Curse
Quotations about the Devil
It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.
- - - Charles Baudelaire
An apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
- - - Samuel Butler "Higgledy-Piggledy"
The devil is an angel too.
- - - Miguel de Unamuno
In all systems of theology, the devil figures as a male person.
- - - Don Herold
Does the devil know he is a devil?
- - - Elizabeth Madox Roberts
God is in my head, but the devil is in my pants.
- - - Jonathan Winters
Quotations about Enemies
When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
- - - African Proverb
Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you.
- - - Yassir Arafat
The wise learn many things from their enemies.
- - - Aristophanes
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
- - - Joseph Conrad "Lord Jim"
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
- - - Baltasar Gracian
One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
- - - Heinrich Heine
One enemy is too much.
- - - George Herbert
The Greatest Happiness is to scatter your enemy and drive him before you. To see his cities reduced to ashes. To see those who love him shrouded and in tears. And to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters.
- - - Genghis Khan
It's far easier to forgive an enemy after you've got even with him.
- - - Olin Miller
The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core -
Scratch a lover, and find a foe!
- - - Dorothy Parker
To have a good enemy, choose a friend; he knows where to strike.
- - - Diane de Pointiers
If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in.
- - - Sun Tzu
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
- - - Voltaire
Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much.
- - - Oscar Wilde
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
- - - Oscar Wilde
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
- - - Woodrow Wilson
When your enemy falls, don't rejoice -- but don't pick him up either.
- - - Yiddish Proverb
Quotations about Envy
He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below.
- - - George Gordon, Lord Byron "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"
Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.
- - - Ayn Rand
How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
- - - William Shakespeare "As You Like It"
Quotations about Evil
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- - - Edmund Burke
Those that set in motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards.
- - - Charles W. Chestnutt
Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.
- - - Tyron Edwards
In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people's wrath.
- - - Kahlil Gibran, 'Narcotics and Dissecting Knives,' Thoughts and Meditations, 1960
Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
- - - Oliver Goldsmith
You are alone my evil and my good With you I have everything - without you nothing
- - - Louise Labe
Evil often triumphs, but never conquers.
- - - Joseph Roux
By the prickling of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.
- - - William Shakespeare "Macbeth"
Evil comes to all us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
- - - William Butler Yeats
Quotations about Failure
A man may fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
- - - John Burroughs
Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.
- - - Julius Hare
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
- - - Abraham Lincoln
There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated.
- - - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche "Beyond Good and Evil"
This thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.
- - - Mary Pickford
Failures are divided into two classes -- those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.
- - - John Charles Salak
I don't know the formula for success, but I know the formula for failure -trying to please everybody.
- - - Robert Louis Stevenson
When you are down and out something always turns up - and it's usually the noses of your friends.
- - - Orson Welles
Quotations about Hatred
Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.
- - - Max Beerbohn
Love, friendship, respect, will never unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
- - - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
- - - Eldridge Cleaver
Hatred - The anger of the weak.
- - - Alphonse Daulet
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
- - - Frank Herbert "Dune"
We must hate - hatred is the basis of communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists.
- - - Vladimir Ilich Lenin - 1923 Speech to the Commissars of Education
Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.
- - - Niccolo Machiavelli
Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
- - - Bertrand Russell
Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
- - - George Bernard Shaw
Hate and mistrust are the children of blindness.
- - - William Watson
Quotations about Mistakes
If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
- - - Dietrich Bonhoeffer "The Way to Freedom"
There is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
- - - Samuel Butler
A man who has committed a mistake and does not correct it is committing another mistake.
- - - Confucius
Of course I shall go astray often...for who does not make mistakes? But I cannot go far wrong for I have seen the truth.
- - - Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below.
- - - John Dryden "All for Love"
To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, you're overdoing it.
- - - Josh Jenkins
Everybody makes mistakes; look at Hitler.
- - - Dean Martin
The physician can bury his mistakes but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines.
- - - Frank Lloyd Wright
Quotations about Murder
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
- - - Thomas De Quincey
And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.
- - - George Bernard Shaw "Caesar and Cleopatra"
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
- - - Voltaire "War"
Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
- - - Oscar Wilde
Never murder a man who is committing suicide.
- - - Woodrow Wilson
Quotations about Pain
If I can stop one heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
- - - Emily Dickinson
In the country of pain we are each alone.
- - - May Sarton
Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other.
- - - Laurence Stern
Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in others' pain
And perish in our own.
- - - Francis Thompson
We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.
- - - H. G. Wells
Quotations about Violence
Violence is the ultimate human degradation.
- - - Ramsey Clark
Not only do most people accept violence if it is perpetuated by legitimate authority, they also regard violence against certain kinds of people as inherently legitimate, no matter who commits it.
- - - Edgar Z. Friedenberg
In violence, we forget who we are.
- - - Mary McCarthy "On the Contrary"
Quotations about War
Men create war to compete with women, who create life.
- - - Sharon Doubiago
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.
- - - John Fowles "The Magus"

War is death's feast.
- - - George Herbert "Outlandish Proverbs"
Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
- - - Herbert Hoover
Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation', a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.
- - - John F. Kennedy
If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.
- - - Rudyard Kipling "Epitaphs of War"
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
- - - George Orwell
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
- - - Jeannette Rankin
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed . . .I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
- - - Franklin D. Roosevelt
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
- - - Carl Sandburg
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
- - - Percy Bysshe Shelley "A Declaration of Rights" (Dublin, 1812)
It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
- - - William Tecumseh Sherman
To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
- - - George Washington
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
- - - Oscar Wilde

death
quotations about death and dying


  I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come. And then - I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn't luckily have to bother about that.
- - - - Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, 1977

Better to die a thousand deaths than wound my honor.
- - - - Joseph Addison

Death should not be seen as the end but as a very effective way to cut down expenses.
- - - - Woody Allen

I answer the heroic question "Death, where is they sting?" with "It is here in my heart and mind and memories."
- - - - Maya Angelou

We do not want to destroy any people. It is precisely because we have been advocating coexistence that we have shed so much blood.
- - - - Yasser Arafat

Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.
- - - - Elizabeth Arden "The Life of the Mind"

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
- - - - Richard Bach

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
- - - - Francis Bacon

If it's natural to kill why do men have to go into training to learn how?
- - - - Joan Baez

But, O Sarah! if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; In the gladdest days and in the darkest nights . . . always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.
- - - - Major Sullivan Ballou, to his wife, a week before his death in 1861

Every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies," there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
- - - - James Matthew Barrie

To die will be an awfully big adventure.
- - - - James Matthew Barrie

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children.
- - - - Henry Ward Beecher

Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is dead. Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable.
- - - - Bhagavad Gita

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
- - - - Bible - 1 Corinthians 55

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
- - - - Bible - Genesis 3:19

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck that which is planted.
- - - - Bible - Ecclesiastes 3:1

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
- - - - Bible - Psalms 23:4

Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
- - - - Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary"

Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest.
- - - - Bion

Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.
- - - - Robert Bolt

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
- - - - Erma Bombeck

It cost about 75 cents to kill a man in Ceasar's time. The price rose to about $3,000 per man during the Napoleonic wars; to $5,000 in the American Civil War; and then to $21,000 per man in World War I. Estimates for the future wars indicate that it may cost the warring countries not less than $50,000 for each man killed.
- - - - Senator Homer T. Bone

In the midst of life we are in death.
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life . . . .
- - - - Book of Common Prayer "The Burial of the Dead" (1662)

Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.
- - - - Dion Boucicault

We all want to be happy, and we're all going to die. … You might say those are the only two unchallengeably true facts that apply to every human being on this planet.
- - - - William Boyd

You can't get out of life alive.
- - - - Les Brown

The human animal dances wildest on the edge of the grave.
- - - - Rita Mae Brown

I'd rather die while I'm living then live while I'm dead.
- - - - Jimmy Buffet

Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.
- - - - Julie Burchill

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
- - - - Samuel Butler

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.
- - - - Albert Camus

Rest is for the dead.
- - - - Thomas Carlyle

Every time I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.
- - - - Lillian Carter

In the stars is written the death of every man.
- - - - Geoffrey Chaucer

Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield. We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible.
- - - - Winston Churchill

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
- - - - Winston Churchill

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
- - - - Winston Churchill

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
- - - - Jean Cocteau

Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.
- - - - Charles Caleb Colton "The Lacon" (1829)

Our life is made by the death of others.
- - - - Leonardo da Vinci

If you don't go to other men's funerals, they won't go to yours.
- - - - Clarence Day

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.
- - - - Simone de Beauvoir "The Second Sex"

Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.
- - - - Josef de Maistre

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
- - - - Thomas De Quincey

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
- - - - Antoine de Saint Éxupéry

Self-destruction is the effect of cowardice, in the highest extreme.
- - - - Daniel Defoe

Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality.
- - - - Emily Dickinson

No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
- - - - John Donne "Devotions XVII"

Men create war to compete with women, who create life.
- - - - Sharon Doubiago

The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. The former is worse that the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation.
- - - - Tyron Edwards

We weep over the graves of infants and the little ones taken from us by death; but an early grave may be the shortest way to heaven.
- - - - Tryon Edwards

Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
- - - - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.
- - - - Epicurus

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
- - - - Susan Ertz "Anger in the Sky" (1943)

What greater pain could mortals have than this:
To see their children dead before their eyes?
- - - - Euripedes

He who doesn't fear death dies only once.
- - - - Giovanni Falcone

Death is an eternal sleep.
- - - - Joseph Fouché

No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.
- - - - Sigmund Freud "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1920)

Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.
- - - - Christian Furchtegott Gellert

We who are left how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?
- - - - Wilfred Wilson Gibson

Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
- - - - Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman"

When we can't dream any longer we die.
- - - - Emma Goldman

Often in winter the end of the day is like the final metaphor in a poem celebrating death: there is no way out.
- - - - Agustin Gomez-Arcos "A Bird Burned Alive"

Success has killed more men than bullets.
- - - - Texas Guinan

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.
- - - - Bishop Hall

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
- - - - Dag Hammarskjold

Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human right.
- - - - Orrin Hatch

On the subject of wild mushrooms, it is easy to tell who is an expert and who is not: The expert is the one who is still alive.
- - - - Donal Henahan

It's funny the way most people love the dead. Once you are dead, you are made for life.
- - - - Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stone, December 2, 1976

War is death's feast.
- - - - George Herbert "Outlandish Proverbs"

Only the young die good.
- - - - Oliver Herford

If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity for the shedding of precious German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin.
- - - - Adolf Hitler

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.
- - - - Hermann Hesse

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
- - - - Herbert Hoover

Tis after death that we measure men.
- - - - James Barron Hope

Life death all does end and each day dies with sleep.
- - - - Gerard Manley Hopkins "No Worst, There is None"

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private citizens will occasionally kill theirs.
- - - - Elbert Hubbard

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?
- - - - Aldous Huxley

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
- - - - Delores Ibarruri

In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.
- - - - John James Ingalls

Death is psychologically as important as birth . . . Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
- - - - Carl Gustav Jung, January 16, 1961

Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable.
- - - - Immanuel Kant

So passes away the glory of this world. ('Sic transit gloria mundi.')
- - - - Thomas A. Kempis

In the long run, we are all dead.
- - - - John Maynard Keynes

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule beings.
- - - - Soren Kierkegaard

If man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
- - - - Martin Luther King, June 23, 1963

Every soul must taste of death.
- - - - Koran

Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.
- - - - Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross, "On Death and Dying," 1969

I often say a great doctor kills more people than a great general.
- - - - G. W. Leibniz

Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.
- - - - Rush Limbaugh

He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.
- - - - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is no such thing as death. In nature nothing dies. From each sad remnant of decay, some forms of life arise so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it.
- - - - Charles Mackay

A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.
- - - - Thomas Mann

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
- - - - William Somerset Maugham

If a child shows himself incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate his kind.
- - - - Don Marquis "The Almost Perfect State"

...it is only death which is hopeless.
- - - - Maria McIntosh

No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
- - - - H. L. Mencken

A suicide kills two people . . . that's what it's for.
- - - - Arthur Miller "After the Fall"

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
- - - - John Milton "Paradise Lost"

Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good.
- - - - William Mitford

We die only once, and for such a long time!
- - - - Moliere

The dead have nothing except the memory they've left.
- - - - Ferenc Molnár

The idea is to die young as late as possible.
- - - - Ashley Montagu

A beautiful death is for people who have lived like animals to die like angels.
- - - - Mother Teresa

I desire to go to Hell, not to Heaven. In Hell I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings and princes, but in Heaven are only beggars, monks, hermits and apostles.
- - - - Niccolo Machiavelli

Abortion is the greatest destroyer of peace because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you, and you to kill me? There is nothing between.
- - - - Mother Theresa

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.
- - - - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.
- - - - Edvard Munch

Defeat is worse than death because you live with defeat.
- - - - Bill Musselman

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
- - - - Vladimir Nabokov

Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?
- - - - Holly Near

To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.
- - - - Friedrich Nietzsche "Expeditions of an Untimely Man"

Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.
- - - - Anais Nin

During the mid-1980s dairy farmers decided there was too much cheap milk at the supermarket. So the government bought and slaughtered 1.6 million dairy cows. How come the government never does anything like this with lawyers?
- - - - P. J. O'Rourke

Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
- - - - P. J. O'Rourke

The purpose of a funeral service is to comfort the living. It is important at a funeral to display excessive grief. This will show others how kind-hearted and loving you are and their improved opinion of you will be very comforting.
- - - - P. J. O'Rourke "Modern Manners"

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
- - - - William Penn "Some Fruits of Solitude"

The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.
- - - - Pope John Paul II, London, 9 June 1991

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
In her sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
- - - - Edgar Allan Poe "Annabell Lee"

I've been thinking of death a lot, and I am amazed by its inevitability, frightened, as we all are, of the totally unknown, and yet feel a long sleep is somehow earned by those of us who live on the edge.
- - - - Jack Pollock "Dear M: Letters from a Gentleman of Excess" (1989)

We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.
- - - - Marcel Proust

As all things eternal and primordial reappear, so all things mortal return to the earth. Honor, old age, probity, justice, constance, virtue, and gentleness are all gathered into the cold tomb.
- - - - Francis Quarles

Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
- - - - Ronald Reagan

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
- - - - Jean Rostand

When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die.
- - - - Eleanor Roosevelt

My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands. Two of them were just napping.
- - - - Rita Rudner

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.
- - - - A. Sachs

On a day of burial there is no perspective--for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was--to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain.
- - - - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
- - - - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Boy, when you are dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you are dead? Nobody.
- - - - J. D. Salinger

Love makes us poets and the approach of death should make us philosophers.
- - - - George Santayana

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness, of a belief.
- - - - Arthur Schnitzler

Each day is a little life; every waking and rising a little birth; every fresh morning a little youth; every going to rest and sleep a little dearth.
- - - - Arthur Schopenhauer

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; . . . that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
- - - - Arthur Schopenhauer

Death--the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.
- - - - Walter Scott

Men have died from time to time, and the worms have eaten 'em, but not for love.
- - - - William Shakespeare "As You Like It"

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste death but once. Of all the wonders that I have yet heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it come.
- - - - William Shakespeare "Julius Caesar"

Let 's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.
- - - - William Shakespeare "King Richard II"

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
- - - - William Shakespeare "Macbeth"

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
- - - - William Shakespeare "Macbeth"

... To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there 's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there 's the respect That makes calamity of so long life ...
- - - - William Shakespeare "Hamlet"

Ay, but to die and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstrution and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world.
- - - - William Shakespeare "Measure for Measure"

O comfort-killing night, image of hell, Dim register and notary of shame, Black stage for tragedies and murders fell, Vast sin-concealing chaos, nurse of blame!
- - - - William Shakespeare "The Rape of Lucrece"

When he shall die Take him and cut him in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.
- - - - William Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet"

And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.
- - - - George Bernard Shaw "Caesar and Cleopatra"

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
- - - - George Bernard Shaw

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
- - - - George Bernard Shaw

Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it.
- - - - George Bernard Shaw

Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
- - - - Wilfrid Sheed

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
- - - - Percy Bysshe Shelley "A Declaration of Rights" (Dublin, 1812)

There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
- - - - Agnes Smedley

Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from one place to another.
- - - - Socrates

Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.
- - - - Bruce Springsteen

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.
- - - - Robert Louis Stevenson

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
- - - - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Hell and Heaven are near man, yes, in him; and every man after death goes to that Hell or heaven in which he was, or to his spirit, during his abode in the world.
- - - - Emauel Swedenborg "Heaven and Hell" (1758)

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.
- - - - Jonathan Swift (1706)

Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.
- - - - Hunter S. Thompson

But what is all this fear of and opposition to oblivion? What is the matter with the soft darkness, the dreamless sleep?
- - - - James Thurber

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
- - - - James Thurber

The possibility of killing one's self is a safety valve. Having it, man has no right to say life is unbearable.
- - - - Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1898)

If the antiabortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine.
- - - - Michael Jay Tucker

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
- - - - Mark Twain

Man dies of cold, not of darkness.
- - - - Miguel de Unamuno

A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
- - - - Percival Arland Ussher

To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.
- - - - Gore Vidal (1968)

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
- - - - Leonardo da Vinci

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
- - - - Voltaire "War"

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
- - - - Alice Walker

The dead carry with them to the grave in their clutched hands only that which they have given away.
- - - - DeWitt Wallace

Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
- - - - Oscar Wilde

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
- - - - Tennessee Williams "The Rose Tattoo"

Funerals are pretty compared with death.
- - - - Tennessee Williams "A Streetcar Named Desire"

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
- - - - Oscar Wilde

Never murder a man who is committing suicide.
- - - - Woodrow Wilson

Death observes no ceremony.
- - - - John Wise

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
- - - - P. G. Wodehouse

Biography is to give a man some kind of shape after his death.
- - - - Virginia Woolf

All men think all men mortal, but themselves.
- - - - Edward Young

An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; legions of angels can't confine me there.
- - - - Edward Young

Our birth is nothing but our death begun, as tapers waste the moment they take fire.
- - - - Edward Young