Famine Quotes
More Famine Quotes
In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and Famine.
George Bernard Shaw— 1903 The Devil to DonJuan. Man and Superman, act 3.
Devouring Famine, Plague, and War,Each able to undo mankind,Death's servile emissaries are;Nor to these alone confined,He hath at willMore quaint and subtle ways to kill;A smile or kiss, as he will use the art,Shall have the cunning skill to break a heart.
james shirley— Poem The Last Conqueror.
There various news I heard of love and strife,Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,Of loss and gain, of Famine and of store,Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,The fall of favourites, projects of the great,Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.
Alexander Pope— Lines 449-458.
He grew, and grew, A star-bright sign of fated empery; And all conspiring omens led him on To lofty purpose and pre-eminence. The mountain eagles, towering in their pride, Stoop'd at his beck and flock'd about his path, Like the small birds by wintry Famine tamed; Or with their dusky and expansive wings Shaded and fann'd him as he slept at noon. The lightnings danced before him sportively, And shone innocuous as the pale cold moon In the clear blue of his celestial eye.
hartley coleridge— Sylphs. (Prometheus)
They that die by Famine die by inches.
matthew henry— Matthew Henry, Commentaries, Psalm LIX.
Gaunt Famine never shall approach the throne. Though Ireland starve, great George weighstwenty stone.
Robert Byron— 1819-24 Don Juan, canto 8, stanza126.
War has three handmaidens ever waiting on her, Fire, Blood, and Famine, and I have chosen the meekest maid of the three.
— 1418 Comment during the English army's siege of Rouen. Quoted in J R Green A Short History of the English People, vol.1 (1915), ch.5, section 6.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord G, that I will send a Famine in the land, not a Famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the L: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the L, and shall not find it.
Bible (Old Testament)— Amos 8:11-12.
A pert, prim Prater of the northern race, Guilt in his heart, and Famine in his face.
Charles Churchill— 1761 Of the Scottish-born judge Alexander Wedderburn, later Lord Loughborough. The Rosciad, l.75-6.
The wing trails like a banner in defeat, No more to use the sky forever but live with Famine And pain a few days. 436
(John) Robinson Jeffers— 1928 Cawdor,'Hurt Hawks'.
The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever, And Famine grew, and locusts came; Great is the hand that holds dominion over Man by a scribbled name.
— 1936 'The HandThat Signed the Paper Felled a City'.
Now I, Abraham, built an altar in the land of Jershon, and made an offering unto the Lord, and prayed that the Famine might be turned away from my father’s house, that they might not perish.
abraham— Book of Abraham 2:17
In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened. We are continually called upon to have feelings — about genocide, for instance, or about Famine or the blowing up of passenger planes — and we are all aware that we are incapable of reacting appropriately. A guilty consciousness of emotional inadequacy or impotence makes people doubt their own human weight.
Saul Bellow— "The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 156
The people are beginning to fear that the Irish Government is merely a machinery for their destruction; that, for all the usual functions of Government, this Castle-nuisance is altogether powerless; that it is unable, or unwilling, to take a single step for the prevention of Famine, for the encouragement of manufactures, or providing fields of industry, and is only active in promoting, by high premiums and bounties, the horrible manufacture of crimes!
john mitchel— Article in The Nation newspaper on 8 November,1845, titled "The Detectives",on the Administration of Government in Ireland
This is not the bloody potato Famine. We're sending people abroad now for a couple of years. These kids will get good experience and they will come back!
— In relation to the emigration of the young in Ireland
If any good comes out of the current Famine in the Horn of Africa — amidst the pictures of mothers carrying dying babies at their shrivelled breasts and hollow-eyed children with swollen bellies and matchstick limbs — it will be galvanising the world on the need to ensure access to nutritious food for the world’s most vulnerable people.
josette sheeran— "Filling empty bellies is no longer enough" (20 September 2011) at UK Government Department for International Development web site
Naples sitteth by the sea, keystone of an arch of azure,Crowned by consenting nations peerless queen of gayety:She laugheth at the wrath of Ocean, she mocketh the fury of Vesuvius,She spurneth disease, and misery, and Famine, that crowd her sunny streets.
martin farquhar tupper— Of Death
I attacked the English of the Northern Shires like a lion. I ordered their houses and corn, with all their belongings, to be burnt without exception and large herds of cattle and beasts of burden to be destroyed wherever they were found. It was there I took revenge on masses of people by subjecting them to a cruel Famine; and by doing so — alas!— I became the murderer of many thousands of that fine race.
King William I— Quoted in: Ben Walsh (2003) Empires and Citizens: The Roman Empire, Medieval Britain, African Empires, p. 60
— Part of a speech on his deathbed in 1087, referring to the Harrying of the North. This was written down by a monk named Ordericus Vitalis in 1123.
He is one of those wise philanthropists who in a time of Famine would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks.
Douglas William Jerrold— Douglas Jerrold's Wit, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
About three million must be regarded as middle peasants, while barely two million consist of kulaks, rich peasants, grain profiteers... Ruthless war on the kulaks! Death to them! ... [Class struggle entails] ruthless suppression of the kulaks, those bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who batten on Famine.
— As quoted in Comrade Workers, Forward To The Last, Decisive Fight! Collected Works, Vol. 28, pages 53-7
The Irish Famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage.
karl marx— Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 4(f), pg.774
Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, Famine, and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.
william osler— Vol. I, ch. 14
There can be no brotherhood when some nations indulge in previously unheard of luxuries, while others struggle to stave off Famine.
peter singer— Chapter 4, Reason, p. 119
Behold, we live through all things, Famine, thirst, Bereavement, pain; all grief and misery, All woe and sorrow; life inflicts its worst On soul and body, but we cannot die, Though we be sick, and tired, and faint, and worn, Lo, all things can be borne!
— Elizabeth Akers Allen, Endurance.
He is one of those wise philanthropists who, in a time of Famine, would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks.
Douglas William Jerrold— Douglas Jerrold's Wit.
He who runs away from a fearful calamity, a foreign invasion, a terrible Famine, and the companionship of wicked men is safe.
— Attributed without citation in Hindi translation at Chankya Wisdom Quote About Being Safe.. ?. Retrieved on 25 November2013.[ ]
Now I, Abraham, built an altar in the land of Jershon, and made an offering unto the Lord, and prayed that the Famine might be turned away from my father’s house, that they might not perish.
— Book of Abraham 2:17
In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and Famine.
George Bernard Shaw— Man and Superman. Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 841-60.
