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murder quotes

  • Fhairshon swore a feud Against the clan M'Tavish; Marched into their land To murder and to ravish; For he did resolve To extirpate the vipers, With four-and-twenty men And five-and-thirty pipers.

    -William Edmonstoune Aytoun
      'The Massacre of the Macpherson', stanza1.

  • Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against our souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations.

    - Djuna Barnes
      Doctor. Nightwood, ch.5.

  • Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. 134

    -William Blake
      The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,'Proverbs of Hell'.

  • Five tomahawks, wi' blude red-rusted; Five scymitars, wi'murder crusted.

    - Robert Burns
      'Tam o' Shanter.  A  Tale'.

  • Dashiell Hammett took murder out of theVenetian vase and dropped it into the alley.

    - Raymond Chandler
    On the moving of murder mysteries from the English country house to more realistic areas. Quoted in Contemporary  Authors (1979).

  • Mordre wol out, that see we day by day.

    - Geoffrey Chaucer
      Canterbury  Tales,'The Nun's Priest's Tale', l.3052.

  • See how love and murder will out.

    -William Congreve
      The Double Dealer, act 4, sc.6.

  • If a young man at the age of twenty-three can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder.

    -WalterJohannes Damrosch
      After conducting  Aaron Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra. Quoted in Machlis Introduction to Contemporary Music (1963).

  •    Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.

    -Johnny (John Christopher) Depp
      Title of essay, in Blackwood's Magazine, Feb.

  • 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.

    -Johnny (John Christopher) Depp
      'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine  Arts' (supplementary paper), in Blackwood's Magazine, Nov.

  • Glory Be, whin Business gets above sellin'tinpinny nails Durkheim in a brown paper cornucopy,'tis hard to tell it fr'm murther.

    - Finley Peter Dunne
    Mr Dooley's Opinions,'On Wall Street'.

  • The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder.

    - Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Baron Fisher (of Lambeth)
      In the Sunday Times, 24 Feb.

  • Murder doesn't round out anybody's life except the murdered's and sometimes the murderer's.

    - (Samuel) Dashiell Hammett
      The Thin Man, ch.31.

  • Television has brought back murder into the home where it belongs.

    - SirAlfred Joseph Hitchcock
      In the Observer,19 Dec.

  • Murder is a unique crime for which we can never make reparation.

    -Baroness
      'Series Detectives', collected in Brown and Munro (eds) Writers Writing (1993).

  • Ez fer war, I call it murder, There you hev it plain an'flat; I don't want to go no furder Than myTestyment fer that; God hez sed so plump an'fairly, It's ez long ez it is broad, An' you've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.

    -James Russell Lowell
      'A Letter'. In the Boston Courier,17  Jun. Collected in The Biglow Papers, First Series (1848), no.1.

  • Herein may be seen noble chyvalrye, curtosye, humanyte  , frendlynesse, hardynesse, love, frendshyp, cowardyse, murdre, hate, vertue, and synne.

    - SirThomas   d.1471 Malory
    c.1485  Morte d'Arthur, Caxton's preface.

  • In the interests of economy they condemned hundreds of children to death and I call it murder.

    -James Maxton
      Speech against the withdrawal of child benefits, including the supply of milk, in Scotland. In Hansard, 27  Jun.

  • A woman is stripped of everything by them [saloons]. Her husband is torn from her; she is robbed of her sons, her home, her food, and her virtue; and then they strip her clothes off and hang her up bare in these dens of robbery and murder. Truly does the saloon make a woman bare of all things!

    - CarryAmelia ne  e Moore Nation
    c.1893  Quoted in Carleton Beals Cyclone Carry (1962), ch.14.

  • What can I tell you, son of mine? I could tell you of heartbreak, hatred blind, I could tell of crimes that shame mankind, Of brutal wrong and deeds malign, Of rape and murder, son of mine; But I'll tell instead of brave and fine When lives of black and white entwine, And men in brotherhood combine This would I tell you, son of mine.

    -Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska
      We Are Going,'Son of Mine'.

  • Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroysmy property, and kills or threatenstokill me or those that are in it, and to'bind me in all cases whatsoever'to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?

    -Thomas Paine
      The Crisis, introduction, Dec.

  • One murder made a villain Millions a hero.

    - Beilby Porteus
      'Death'.

  • When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Man and Superman,'Maxims for Revolutionists: Crime and Punishment'.

  • I met Murder on the way He had a mask like Castlereagh.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'The Mask of Anarchy', alluding to English foreign secretaryViscount Castlereagh, who was held responsible for the Peterloo Massacre in1819.

  •    Football causeth fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel- picking, murder, homicide, and agreateffusionof blood, as daily experiences teaches.

    - Philip Stubbes
      Anatomie of Abuses in the Realme of England.

  • Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.

    -John Webster
      The Duchess of Malfi, act 4, sc.2.

  • In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshedthey produced Michelangelo, Leonardo daVinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.

    - (George) Orson Welles
      Harry Lime's speech to Holly Martins as he leaves the great wheel,TheThird Man.This phrase was added to the script by Welles who played Harry Lime.

  • Murder is always a mistake† One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
    The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch.19.

  • One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect. Enough of science and of art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth and bring with you a heart That watches and receives.

    -William Wordsworth
      'TheTablesTurned', stanzas 6^8.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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