Pestilence Quotes

• He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

  William Blake

  Life, Desire, Acting

  'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' (1790-3) 'Proverbs of Hell'

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• In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease--a terrible passing inclination to die of it.

  Charles Dickens

  Secret, Disease, Passing

  Charles Dickens (2013). “A Tale of Two Cities Thrift Study Edition”, p.218, Courier Corporation

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• Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Blue, Sky

  Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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• Power, like a desolating pestilence, pollutes whatever it touches.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Power

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• Disease an never be conquered, can never be quelled by emotion's willful screaming or faith's symbolic prayer. It can only be conquered by the energy of humanity and the cunning in the mind of man. In the patience of a Curie, in the enlightenment of a Faraday, a Rutherford, a Pasteur, a Nightingale, and all other apostles of light and cleanliness, rather than of a woebegone godliness, we shall find final deliverance from plague, pestilence, and famine.

  Sean O'Casey

  Prayer, Men, Light

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• Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Men, Genius, Slave

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats (1829). “The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats: Complete in One Volume”

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• The horseman on the pale horse is Pestilence. He follows the wars.

  Ardel Wray

  Horse, War, Pale

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• A new disease? I know not, new or old, but it may well be called poor mortals plague for, like a pestilence, it doth infect the houses of the brain till not a thought, or motion, in the mind, be free from the black poison of suspect.

  Ben Jonson

  House, Black, Brain

  Ben Jonson, William Gifford (1859). “The works of Ben Jonson”

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• From winter, plague and pestilence, good lord, deliver us!

  Thomas Nashe

  Winter, Lord, Plague

  Songs from 'Summer's Last Will and Testament' (performed c.1592, published 1600)

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• The god of the Christians, as we have seen, is the god who makes promises only to break them; who sends them pestilence and disease in order to heal them; a god who demoralizes mankind in order to improve it. A god who created man after his own image, and still the origin of evil in man is not accredited to him.

  Johann Most

  Christian, Men, Order

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• The essence of war is fire, famine, and pestilence. They contribute to its outbreak; they are among its weapons; they become its consequences.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  War, Fire, Essence

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• Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunise against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria. Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin.

  Richard Dawkins

  Wages, Done, Bacteria

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• For plague and pestilence, plunder and pollution, the hazards of nature and the hunger of children are the foes of every nation. The earth, the sea and the air are the concern of every nation.

  John F. Kennedy

  Children, Air, Sea

  Final Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 20 September 1963, New York, NY

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• The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous.

  Albert Camus

  Duration, Truth Is, Reason

  Albert Camus (1960). “Collected fiction”

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• Okay, boys.” Pestilence's grating voice rang out. “Kill the human and the mutt, and let's get this Apocalypse started!

  Larissa Ione

  Boys, Voice, Mutts

  Larissa Ione (2011). “Eternal Rider: Number 1 in series”, p.205, Hachette UK

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• Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.

  David Hume

  Ocean, Gay, Thinking

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.4068, Delphi Classics

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• Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time.

  Mario Puzo

  War, Madness, Passing

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• There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.

  Will Rogers

  War, Helping, Rich

  Will Rogers, Bryan B. Sterling (1995). “Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (writers, Politicians, Comedians, Browsers ...)”, M Evans & Company

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• In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.

  Albert Camus

  Dream, Taken, Men

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• The wine-shops breed, in physical atmosphere of malaria and a moral pestilence of envy and vengeance, the men of crime and revolution.

  Charles Dickens

  Wine, Men, Envy

  Charles Dickens (1856). “Household Words”, p.504

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• There are wars, there's pestilence, there are plagues, there is corruption in religious circles, corruption in the government, when was it not?

  Tenzin Palmo

  Religious, War, Government

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• All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can't judge if it's simple, but I know it's true.

  Albert Camus

  Simple, Judging, Sound

  Albert Camus (1960). “Collected fiction”

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• When old friends get together, everything else fades to insignificance."- War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death

  Robert Asprin

  War, Old Friends, Together

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• Have you any idea of what you’ve unleashed? (Hades) Cruelty, pestilence, wrath, violence, ultimate suffering…what other gifts did the gods bestow on him?

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Wrath, Ideas, Suffering

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2011). “One Silent Night”, p.12, Hachette UK

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• Everything passes away-suffering,pain, blood, hunger,pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the Earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?

  Mikhail Bulgakov

  Stars, Pain, Eye

  Mikhail Bulgakov (1971). “The white guard”

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