pit quotes

Law is a bottomless pit.

-John Arbuthnot
  The History of  John Bull, title of pamphlet.

I waited patiently for the L, and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDPsalms 40:1^2.

Hethat diggetha pit shall fall intoit; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Ecclesiastes10:8.

I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Revelation 9:1.

And helaid hold onthedragon, thatoldserpent, whichis the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Revelation 20:2^3.

Does the eagle know what's in the pit Or wilt thou go ask the mole? Can wisdom be put in a silver rod, Or Love in a golden bowl.

-William Blake
  Thel's Motto. The Book of  Thel.

An'now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkan, A certain Bardie's rantin, drinkin, Some luckless hour will send him linkan, To your black pit; But faith! he'll turn a corner jinkan, An'cheat you yet.

- Robert Burns
  'Address to the Deil', stanza 20.

Headlong themselves they threw Down from the verge of heaven, eternal wrath Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.

-John Milton
  Pursued to the wall of Heaven by the Messiah, Satan and his rebelling angels fall to their punishment as the wall opens. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.6, l.864^6.

You think this cruel? take it for a rule, No creature smarts so little as a fool. Let peals of laughter,Codrus! round thee break, Thou unconcerned canst hear the mighty crack. Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurled, Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world.

- Alexander Pope
  'An Epistle to DrArbuthnot', l.83^8.

There still remains, to mortifya wit, The many-headed monster of the pit.

- Alexander Pope
  Imitations of Horace, bk.2, epistle1, l.304^5.

Not Chaos, not The darkest pit of lowest Erebus Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreamscan breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man My haunt, and the main region of my song.

-William Wordsworth
  'The Excursion', preface, l.35^41.