Grim Quotes
More Grim Quotes
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
thomas gray— Thomas Gray, The Bard, (1757), II, 2, Line 9.
Come, see the Dolphin's anchor forged; 'tis at a white heat now: The billows ceased, the flames decreased; though on the forge's brow The little flames still fitfully play through the sable mound; And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round, All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare; Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there.
— Samuel Ferguson, The Forging of the Anchor, Stanza 1.
All unprejudiced persons objectively surveying the grim events in Bangla Desh since March 25 have recognized the revolt of 75 million people, a people who were forced to the conclusion that neither their life, nor their liberty, to say nothing of the possibility of the pursuit of happiness, was available to them.
indira gandhi— Referring to the fundamental rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" in the United States Declaration of Independence in a letter to Richard Nixon (December 15, 1971).[2]
Beautiful, ugly, impressive, disgusting, meaningless, grim, contradictory etc … It makes no difference, as long as it is life, vigorously pouring forth.
asger jorn— Ansigt til Ansigt [Face to Face], A-5, 1 (1944), p. 14
How unpleasant to meet Mr Eliot! With his features of clerical cut, And his brow so grim And his mouth so prim.
— 1936 'Five-Finger Exercises'.
Theyare sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 578 Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw, The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread, Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said, But that two-handed engine at the door, Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
john milton— 1637 Lycidas, l.122-31.
The grim fact, however, is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies.
Lester Bowles Pearson— 1957 Acceptance speech on receiving the Nobel peace prize, 11 Dec.
That way of life against which my generation rebelled had given us grim courage, fortitude, self-discipline, a sense of individual responsibility, and a capacity for relentless hard work.
rose wilder lane— Written in 1935, as quoted in The Ghost in the Little House, ch. 2, by William V. Holtz (1993)
The grim shape Towered up between me and the stars, and still, For so it seemed, with purpose of its own And measured motion like a living thing, Strode after me.
william wordsworth— Bk. I, l. 381.
When rowan leaves are dank and rusting And rowan berries red as blood, When in my palm the hangman's thrusting The final nail with bony thud, When, over the foul flooding river, Upon the wet grey height, I toss Before my land's grim looks, and shiver As I swing here upon the cross, Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches My dying sight to space remote; I see upon the river’s reaches Christ sailing to me in a boat.
alexander blok— "Autumn Love" (1907); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.) A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 99.
For one who has read the works of Marx it is frightening to look back at the grim determination with which so many nations steadfastly hewed to the very course which he insisted would lead to their undoing.
robert heilbroner— Chapter VI, Karl Marx, p. 158
Poor Felix Randal; How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years, When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers, Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!
gerard manley hopkins— Felix Randal, lines 11-14
He rode as rides the hurricane; He seem'd to swallow up the plain; He rode as never man did ride, He rode, for ghosts rode at his side, And on his right a grizzled grim No, no, this tale is not of him.
joaquin miller— I, p. 15. (The Ship in the Desert (1875))
Beside The grim old sea-king sits his bride, A sun-land blossom, rudely torn From tropic forests to be worn Above as stern a breast as e'er Stood king at sea or anywhere.
joaquin miller— III, p. 22. (The Ship in the Desert (1875))
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
john milton— Line 123. (Lycidas (1637))
Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the Nightly shore, Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore! Quoth the Raven "Nevermore!"
— Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven (1844), Stanza 8.
Who pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood With that grim ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
— Richard III (c. 1591), Act I, scene 4, line 45.
There's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot; To the churchyard a pauper is going I wot; The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs, And hark to the dirge that the sad driver sings Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper whom nobody owns.
thomas noel— Thomas Noel, The Pauper's Drive.
In particular with the grim struggle for the succession still fresh in their minds, they urged - very reasonably - that before leaving Macedonia he should marry and beget an heir. However, the king rejected this motion out of hand, a decision which was to cause untold bloodshed and political chaos after his death. It would be shameful, he told them, for the captain - general of the Hellenes, with Philip's invincible army at his command, to idle his time away on matrimonial dalliance...
— Peter Green, "Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography"
There is grim irony in speaking of the freedom of contract of those who, because of their economic necessities, give their service for less than is needful to keep body and soul together.
— Harlan F. Stone, Morehead v. N.Y. ex rel. Tipaldo, 298 U.S. 587, 632 (1936).
Behold the hippopotamus! We laugh at how he looks to us, And yet in moments dank and grim, I wonder how we look to him.
ogden nash— Ogden Nash, The Hippopotamus
In adamantine chains shall Death be bound, And Hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
Alexander Pope— Alexander Pope, Messiah, line 47.
Gaily I lived as ease and nature taught, And spent my little life without a thought, And am amazed that Death, that tyrant grim, Should think of me, who never thought of him.
— Abbé Regnier; Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 787-90.
I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
— Clarence, scene iv
Everyone knows that time is Death , that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination , however, can refuse his law . Here, freed of the grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.
Federico Fellini— "Death"
grim death.
Philip Massinger— The Roman Actor (1626), Act iv. Sc. 2. Compare: "Grim death, my son and foe", John Milton, Paradise Lost, book ii, line 804.
You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the grim Reaper.
— Who: Robert Alton Harris, d. April 21, 1992
