Ruffian Quotes

• The bay-trees in our country are all withered,
  And meteors fright the fixèd stars of heaven.
  The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth,
  And lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change.
  Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap;
  The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,
  The other to enjoy by rage and war.
  These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

  William Shakespeare

  Country, Stars, Kings

  William Shakespeare, Anthony B. Dawson, Paul Yachnin (2011). “The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II”, p.201, Oxford University Press

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• Commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Sex, Way

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) act 4, sc. 5, l. 124

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• He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain. I have heard of the cutting off of the villain Chow, but I have not heard of the putting of a ruler to death.

  Mencius

  Cutting, Villain, Outrage

  "The Mencius". 1B:8, as translated in "China" (1904) by Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas, p. 8, c. 300 BC.

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• Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Sight, Political

  Thomas Paine, John P. Kaminski (2002). “Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion”, p.123, Rowman & Littlefield

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• I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Cheating, Thinking

  Referring to 'Ossian' in a letter to James Macpherson, 20 January 1775: James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 2, p. 298

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• Madam Life's a piece in bloom Death goes dogging everywhere: she's the tenant of the room, he's the ruffian on the stair.

  William Ernest Henley

  Death, Dying, Pieces

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “Poems”

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• Now, neighbor confines, purge you of your scum! Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance, revel the night, rob, murder, and commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways?

  William Shakespeare

  Night, Scum, Way

  1597-8 King Henry to Harry. Henry IV PartTwo, act 4, sc.3, l.254-5.

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• J.R.R.Tolkien has confessed that about a third of the way through The Fellowship of the Ring, some ruffian named Strider confronted the hobbits in an inn, and Tolkien was in despair. He didn't know who Strider was, where the book was going, or what to write next. Strider turns out to be no lesser person than Aragorn, the unrecognized and uncrowned king of all the forces of good, whose restoration to rule is, along with the destruction of the evil ring, the engine that moves the plot of the whole massive trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.

  Ansen Dibell

  Kings, Moving, Book

  Ansen Dibell (1988). “Plot”, Writers Digest Books

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• Be mild with the mild, shrewd with the crafty, confiding to the honest, rough to the ruffian, and a thunderbolt to the liar. But in all this, never be unmindful of your own dignity.

  John Brown

  Liars, Character, Honor

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• Mediocrity is no answer to violence. In fact, it probably invites violence. At least the mediocre and the violent appear together as in the old Western movies - the ruffian outlaw band shooting up main street and the little white church with the little white schoolteacher wringing her hands. To cool violence you need rhythm, humor, tempering; you need dance and rhetoric. Not therapeutic understanding.

  James Hillman

  Hands, White, Understanding

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• Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.

  Erica Jong

  Sweet, Sex, Real

  Erica Jong (2007). “Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life”, p.89, Penguin

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• Thousands are the children of poor foreigners, who have permitted them to grow up without school, education, or religion. All the neglect and bad education and evil example of a poor class tend to form others, who, as they mature, swell the ranks of ruffians and criminals. So, at length, a great multitude of ignorant, untrained, passionate, irreligious boys and young men are formed, who become the "dangerous class" of our city.

  Charles Loring Brace

  Education, Children, Growing Up

  "The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years' Work Among Them".

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• ... No photograph ever was good, yet, of anybody - hunger and thirst and utter wretchedness overtake the outlaw who invented it! It transforms into desperadoes the weakest of men; depicts sinless innocence upon the pictured faces of ruffians; gives the wise man the stupid leer of a fool, and the fool an expression of more than earthly wisdom.

  Mark Twain

  Wise, Stupid, Men

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• He had risked his life and now it was walking away from him, hand-in-hand with a Ruffian prince.

  William Goldman

  Walking Away, Hands, Hand In Hand

  William Goldman (2013). “The Princess Bride”, p.138, A&C Black

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• I don't hold it against the men who beat me because undoubtedly there are some ruffians of every nationality and the English are not exceptions.

  Oswald Pohl

  Men, He Man, Beats

  "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

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• All my plans in private life; all my pursuits; all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers. If I write grammars; if I write on agriculture; if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds; whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants.

  William Cobbett

  Writing, Views, Tyrants

  Political Register, August 14, 1819.

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• A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Doctors, Humanity

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Alexander Chalmers (1822). “The Tatler”, p.40

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• There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Hate, Years, Squad

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• There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.

  Samuel Johnson

  Law, Relentless, Prey

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical”, p.571

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• Until a few months ago we had a code of honor, and even the worst ruffians behaved with decency. You could leave your gold in a tent with no guard and no one would touch it, but now all that has changed. The law of the jungle rules, the only ideology is greed. Don't let yourself be parted from your weapons, and always travel in pairs or groups, because this is a land of thieves.

  Isabel Allende

  Law, Land, Greed

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• ... the scientist would maintain that knowledge in of itself is wholly good, and that there should be and are methods of dealing with misuses of knowledge by the ruffian or the bully other than by suppressing the knowledge.

  Percy Williams Bridgman

  Science, Bully, Scientist

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• The rescue of a person, who is assaulted, or restrained of his liberty, without authority of law, is not only morally, but legally, a meritorious act; for every body is under obligation to go to the assistance of one who is assailed by assassins, robbers, ravishers, kidnappers, or ruffians of any kind.

  Lysander Spooner

  Law, Liberty, Assassins

  Lysander Spooner (1850). “A Defence for Fugitive Slaves”, p.27

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