Torture Quotes - Page 28

• Cruelty was the devil, and most people were, in one way or another, cruel. Tyranny, suppression, persecution, torture, slavery, war, neglect - all were cruel. The world was acid and sour with hate, fat with greed, yellow with the triumph of the strong and the rich.

  Rose Macaulay

  Strong, Hate, War

  Rose Macaulay (Dame.) (1940). “And No Man's Wit”

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• The imagination is far better at inventing tortures than life because the imagination is a demon within us and it knows where to strike, where it hurts. It knows the vulnerable spot, and life does not, our friends and lovers do not, because seldom do they have the imagination equal to the task.

  Anais Nin

  Hurt, Imagination, Doe

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• We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves. When we see the martyr to virtue, subject as he is to the infirmities of a man, yet suffering the tortures of a demon, and bearing them with the magnanimity of a God, do we not behold a heroism that angels may indeed surpass, but which they cannot imitate, and must admire.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Humility, Angel, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.212

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• Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Insomnia, Paradise, Lucidity

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• Mothers who force their daughters into interested marriage, are worse than the Ammonites who sacrificed their children to Moloch--the latter undergoing a speedy death, the former suffering years of torture, but too frequently leading to the same result.

  John Wilmot

  Marriage, Daughter, Mother

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• To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures.

  Victor Hugo

  Hypocrisy, Suffering, Perpetual

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.5225, Delphi Classics

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• Trust me no tortures which the poets feign
  Can match the fierce unutterable pain
  He feels, who night and day devoid of rest
  Carries his own accuser in his breast.

  Juvenal

  Pain, Night, Fierce

  Juvenal (1871). “The satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius ...”, p.470

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• A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Serv'd only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end.

  John Milton

  Flames, Light, Sight

  'Paradise Lost' (1667) bk. 1, l. 61

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• I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.

  Amy Lowell

  Writing, Creating, Agony

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• Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.

  Erica Jong

  Self, Doubters, Moments

  Erica Jong (2006). “Fear of Fifty”, p.143, Penguin

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• I think anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy.

  Anna Quindlen

  Fitness, Thinking, Alternatives

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.63, Ballantine Books

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• There was the torture of sermons, and that not a slight one, for I was very fond of them.

  Teresa of Avila

  Sermons

  St Teresa of Avila (2008). “The Life of St. Teresa of Avila”, p.55, Cosimo, Inc.

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• What right can give anyone authority to inflict torture upon a citizen when it is still unknown whether he is innocent or guilty?

  Catherine the Great

  Giving, Citizens, Guilty

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• Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death, and religiosu wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?

  Thomas Paine

  War, Men, Blood

  Thomas Paine (1824). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine”, p.151

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• Given the clientele, the restaurants on Capri might resemble those fancy Northern Italian places on the East Side of Manhattan where the captain has taken bilingual sneering lessons from the maitre d' at the French joint down the street and the waiter, whose father was born in Palermo, would deny under torture that tomato sauce has ever touched his lips.

  Calvin Trillin

  Father, Taken, Food

  Calvin Trillin (1984). “Third Helpings”, Viking Press

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• There is such a torture, happily unknown to ancient tyranny, as talking a man to death. Marcus Aurelius advises to assent readily to great talkers--in hopes, I suppose, to put an end to the argument.

  Laurence Sterne

  Men, Talking, Ancient

  Laurence Sterne (1790). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Complete in Eight Volumes”, p.130

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• The quivering flesh, though torture-torn, may live, but souls, once deeply wounded, heal no more.

  Ebenezer Elliott

  Soul, May, Flesh

  Ebenezer Elliott, Edwin Elliott “The Poetical Works”, Georg Olms Verlag

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• I do not like punishments. You will never torture a child into duty; but a sensible child will dread the frown of a judicious mother more than all the rods, dark rooms, end scolding school-mistresses in the universe.

  Henry Kirke White

  Mother, Children, School

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• Sadistic literature is not only inhumane. It is anti-human.

  Storm Jameson

  Literature, Sadistic, Cruelty

  Storm Jameson (2011). “Parthian Words”, p.69, A&C Black

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• It takes courage to have a conscience when you seem to see others getting something tangible out of not bothering to struggle with the morality of a situation. It gets frustrating and demoralizing. This is precisely where character comes in. All throughout history special people have felt compelled to do what they objectively saw as right and good - even in the face of humiliation or rejection or expulsion or torture or death. That is because they believed that certain ideas were more important than individual well-being.

  Laura Schlessinger

  Struggle, Character, Ideas

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• love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by everyone except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures.

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Fever, Mystery, Madness

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon (2009). “Lady Audley's Secret”, p.594, The Floating Press

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• For the world is founded and built up on death, and the reality of death is neither to be questioned nor feared. Death is a dark dream, but it is not a nightmare. It is mankind's lack of pity, mankind's fatal propensity for torture, that is the nightmare.

  Mary Webb

  Death, Dream, Dark

  Mary Webb (2016). “Gone To Earth”, p.194, Mary Webb

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• I am over-run, jungled in my bed, I am infested with a menagerie of desires: my heart is eaten by a dove, a cat scrambles in the cave of my sex, hounds in my bed obey a whipmaster who cries nothing but havoc as the hours test my endurance with an accumulation of tortures. Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders?

  Elizabeth Smart

  Running, Sex, Heart

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• In more than half the nations of our world, torture certifies that the form of government is tyranny. Only tyranny, no matter how camouflaged, needs and employs torturers. Torture has no ideology.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Our World, Government, Needs

  Martha Gellhorn (1988). “The View from the Ground”, p.356, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• Every religion oppresses women. I talk about the Koran because I know this book best. It allows for torture and other mistreatment, especially for women. And I despise the Sharia laws. They cannot be changed. They must be thrown out, abolished.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Book, Law, Religion

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