Gallows Quotes - Page 2

• To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Humanity, Rope, Degradation

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.118

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The great writers like Chekhov know that tragedy and laughter are just a few steps from each other ... but it took me a long time as an actress to learn that. Actually Arthur Miller taught me in the Seventies. We were making a CBS TV drama of his play Playing for Time about Auschwitz but the characters were laughing. It was a big insight for me to realise that that was what's called gallows humour, in this case worse than the gallows, that humans need to laugh and make jokes in order to survive.

  Vanessa Redgrave

  Laughter, Drama, Character

  10 Copy quote

• If you are an executioner, don't expect to have a friend closer than a gallows!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Executioners, Ifs

  4 Copy quote

• Swaraj is not meant for cowards, but for those who would mount smilingly to the gallows and refuse even to allow their eyes to be bandaged.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Eye, Coward, Refuse

  Mahatma Gandhi, Anand T. Hingorani, Ganga Anand Hingorani (1985). “The Encyclopaedia of Gandhian Thoughts”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Country, Heart

  Thomas Jefferson, H. A. Washington (2011). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private”, p.40, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Crosses and gallows - that deadly historic juxtaposition.

  Howard Zinn

  Juxtaposition, Historic, Crosses

  Howard Zinn, Donaldo Macedo (2016). “Howard Zinn on Democratic Education”, p.82, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Prayer, Truth, Firsts

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.514, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take life because He alone gives it . . .

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Giving, Death Penalty, Agree

  "India must do away with the death penalty" by Seema Sengupta, www.theguardian.com. November 23, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hemans gallows ought to be the fate of all such ambitious men who would involve their country in civil wars, and all the evils in its train that they might reign & ride on its whirlwinds & direct the Storm The free people of these United States have spoken, and consigned these wicked demagogues to their proper doom.

  Andrew Jackson

  Country, War, Fate

  Letter to Andrew I. Crawford, May 1, 1833.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• God forbid I should bleed to death, eh? Then you'd have to cart around my rotting corpse. (Kyrian) Could you be any more morbid? Jeez, who was your idol growing up? Boris Karloff? (Amanda) Hannibal, actually. (Kyrian) You're trying to scare me, aren't you? Well, it won't work. I grew up in a house with an angry poltergeist and two sisters who used to conjure demons just to fight them. Buster, I've seen it all and your gallows humor isn't working on me. (Amanda)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Growing Up, Fighting, Idols

  4 Copy quote

• a man was on his way to the gallows when he met another, who asked him: where are you going, my friend? and the condemned man replied: i'm not going anywhere. they're taking me by force.

  Jose Saramago

  Men, Way, Mets

  4 Copy quote

• I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued in a few seconds. In the almost 50 years that I have worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Prayer, Men, Doctors

  22 Copy quote

• Yet, like the sea and the gallows, London refuses nobody.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Sea, London, Refuse

  Peter Ackroyd (2003). “London: The Biography”, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When she looked at herself in her wedding photographs, Ammu felt the woman that looked back at her was someone else. A foolish jewelled bride. Her silk sunset-coloured sari shot with gold. Rings on every finger. White dots of sandalwood paste over her arched eye-brows. Looking at herself like this, Ammu's soft mouth would twist into a small, bitter smile at the memory - not of the wedding itself so much as the fact that she had permitted herself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallows. It seemed so absurd. So futile. Like polishing firewood.

  Arundhati Roy

  Memories, Sunset, Eye

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The God of Small Things”, p.43, Penguin Books India

  244 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gallows humor is part of having a doctor in the house. Deal with it.

  J.R. Ward

  Doctors, House, Deals

  J.R. Ward (2008). “The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider's Guide”, p.305, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I'm called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-Eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-Bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows.

  Neil Gaiman

  Horse, Memories, Father

  "American Gods". Book by Neil Gaiman, 2001.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• The 'gallows' are not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of cruelty, terror and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism.

  Arthur Koestler

  Irreverence, Common, Medieval

  4 Copy quote

• Marriage is a call to die [to self]... Christian marriage vows are the inception of a lifelong practice of death, of giving over not only all you have, but all you are. Is this a grim gallows call? Not at all! It is no more grim than dying to self and following Christ. In fact, those who lovingly die for their [spouses] are those who know the most joy, have the most fulfilling marriages, and experience the most love.

  R. Kent Hughes

  Christian, Following Christ, Practice

  20 Copy quote

• I don't think you're dying," I said. "I think you've just got a touch of cancer. He smiled. Gallows humor.

  John Green

  Cancer, Thinking, Dying

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.217, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And now that Thou has restored to me the knowledge of Thyself, O Lord, let thy pardon fall on me, since Thy infinite mercy is not better known in anything than in pardoning a Dismas (the traditional name of the good thief) on the Cross and a Dominicus Corea on the gallows. If in Hell there is room for sinners, in Heaven also there is room for penitents.

  Dominicus Corea

  Fall, Names, Heaven

  The last address of King Dominicus Corea on the gallows in Colombo before he was executed by the Portugues; as quoted in "Great Sinhalese Men and Women of History - Edirille Bandara (Domingos Corea)" by John M. Senaveratna, 1937.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A voice behind me asked, "Where is God? Where is He? Where can He be now?" and a voice within me answered: "Where? Here He is - He has been hanged here, on these gallows."

  Elie Wiesel

  Voice, Atheism, Behinds

  Elie Wiesel (1985). “Night ; Dawn ; Day”, Jason Aronson

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I support the protection of life from conception to natural death. But a natural death for a murderer is a death on the gallows.

  Janusz Korwin-Mikke

  Support, Protection, Natural

  11 Copy quote

• but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?

  Terry Pratchett

  Men, Years, Law

  Terry Pratchett (2011). “Snuff: (Discworld Novel 39)”, p.19, Random House

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Better to be always in a minority of one with God - branded as madman, incendiary, fanatic, heretic, infidel - frowned upon by "the powers that be," and mobbed by the populace - or consigned ignominiously to the gallows, like him whose "soul is marching on," though his "body lies mouldering in the grave," or burnt to ashes at the stake like Wickliffe, or nailed to the cross like him who "gave himself for the world," - in defence of the RIGHT, than like Herod, having the shouts of a multitude crying, "It is the voice of a god, and not of a man!"

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Lying, Men, Voice

  "Valedictory". The last issue of "The Liberator" newspaper, fair-use.org. January 01, 1866.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• The movie [ The Innkeepers] is in no way a comedy, but I would put some of the funny scenes up against some of the funnier comedies this year. I think it's genuinely really funny, but it's out of the gallows.

  Ti West

  Thinking, Years, Way

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source