“Tis safter to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”
Source: Macbeth
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
William Shakespeare699
English playwright and poet 1564–1616Related quotes
“Passion is destructive; if it does not destroy, it dies.”
W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge
The Razor's Edge (1943)
Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient
Quoted in The Times, UK (5 August 1980).
1980s and 1990s
“Farewell happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells: Hail, horrors, hail.”
John Milton book Paradise Lost
Source: Paradise Lost
Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism
Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), Chapter three, p. 53
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer
A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights
Anarchical Fallacies (1843)
Context: That which has no existence cannot be destroyed — that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense for immediately a list of these pretended natural rights is given, and those are so expressed as to present to view legal rights. And of these rights, whatever they are, there is not, it seems, any one of which any government can, upon any occasion whatever, abrogate the smallest particle.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
(19th January 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.2
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822