Guillotine Quotes - Page 3

• The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.
  But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people positively do not want to be "done good" by the humanitarian. Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.

  Isabel Paterson

  Men, Thinking, Order

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• Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.

  Henry Miller

  Sports, Suicide, Fashion

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.177, New Directions Publishing

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• What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the guillotine.

  John Adams

  Christian, Book, Order

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.479

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• There's no such thing as life; or if there is,
  It is faster than the weather, faster than
  Any character. It is more than any scene:
  Of the guillotine or of any glamorous hanging.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Character, Weather

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.192, Vintage

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• How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Can men fly?

  Salman Rushdie

  Betrayal, Fall, Angel

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• Human attempts to construct moral order are always precarious: If righteousness too often leads to self-righteousness, the demand for justice can lead to one guillotine or another.

  Susan Neiman

  Self, Order, Justice

  Susan Neiman (2009). “Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists”, p.430, Princeton University Press

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• Ever since my childhood, I was haunted by the search for perfection. An imperfectly cut paper literally made me ill. I would guillotine it.

  Hans Arp

  Cutting, Perfection, Childhood

  "Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs". Book by Hans Arp, Gallimard, Paris, p. 431, 1966.

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• There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Buddhist, Book

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “Fahrenheit 451: A Novel”, p.209, Simon and Schuster

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• Sink me! Your taylors have betrayed you! T'wood serve you better to send THEM to Madam Guillotine

  Baroness Orczy

  Betrayed, Woods

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• What opposite discoveries we have seen! (Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.) One makes new noses, one a guillotine, One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets; But vaccination certainly has been A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets.

  Lord Byron

  Science, Discovery, Opposites

  Lord Byron (2015). “Don Juan”, p.28, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• I can’t believe you were going to call me a liar and take my place under the guillotine. Next time I try to save you, woman, you better stay saved. (Fury)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Liars, Believe, Trying

  Sherrilyn Kenyon, J. R. Ward, Susan Squires, Dianna Love (2008). “Dead After Dark”, p.91, Macmillan

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