KVL's Morbid Quote Book

MORBID QUOTE BOOK

At present there are not enough entries in this collection to warrant a proper index; the management recommends you just scroll from the first morbidity to the next. But if you really feel you must, you may choose by author.

And if you're feeling the urge to write in the margin,
I invite all guests to add to the collection.

Note: Last update 13 March, 1999

Fanatic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt.
It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure.

- Reinhold Niebuhr

On tue un homme, on est un assassin.
On tue des millions d'hommes, on est conquérant.
On les tue tous, on est un dieu.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin.
Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror.
Kill everyone, and you are a god.

- Jean Rostand (1894-1977)
in Pensées d'un biologist (Thoughts of a Biologist),
1939

The death of one man is a tragedy;
The death of a million is a statistic.

- Joseph Stalin

To kill a human being is,
after all, the least
injury you can do him.

- Henry James (1843-1916)
in My Friend Bingham (a short story),
1867

They say best men are
moulded out of faults,
and, for the most, become
much more the better
for being a little bad.

- William Shakespeare
in Measure for Measure

While the battles the British fight may differ in the widest possible ways, they invariably have two common characteristics - they are always fought uphill and always at the junction of two or more map sheets.

- Field Marshal Sir William Slim,
British Commander-in-Chief Burma,
World War II

Though I reverence those men of Ancient time...yet to the Antiquity it self I think nothing due: For if we will reverence the Age, the Present is Oldest.

- Thomas Hobbes
in Leviathan

Ask yourself whether you are happy,
and you cease to be so.

- John Stuart Mill

The Law of Selective Gravity
(The Buttered Side Down Law):
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Ancient Chinese Curse:
May you live in interesting times.

Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Governments:
No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

On the tomb of Sir James Fuilerton in Westminster Abbey, London:
He dyed
Fuiler of Faith then of Feares; Fuiler of
Resolucon then of Paienes;
Fuiler of Honour then of Dayes

I said to myself, 'My men are going to die if they start shooting back. And for what? For peace?' So I ordered them to surrender.

- Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Michel, a French UN peacekeeper,
recounting how Bosnian Serbs took 21 of his men hostage
(as quoted in Newsweek)

'This is the Grave of Mike O'Day'

This is the grave of Mike O'Day,
Who died maintaining his right of way.
His right was clear, his will was strong,
But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong.

Remember that save for one trifling exception, the entire universe consists of other people.

When there is no peril in the fight,
There is no glory in the triumph.

- Pierre Corneille

Battle, n. A method of untying with teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.

- Ambrose Bierce
in Cynic's Word Book,
1906

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

- Abraham Lincoln

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Author Index:

Bierce, Ambrose
Cicero
Corneille, Pierre
Hobbes, Thomas
James, Henry
Lincoln, Abraham
Mill, John Stuart
Niebuhr, Reinhold
Rostand, Jean
Shakespeare, William
Slim, William
Stalin, Joseph

misc./anon.

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