“He looked, this obscenist looked with clear eyes into this ill-got thing you call morality, sealed with the seal of marriage, and saw in it the consummation of immorality, impurity, and injustice.”

— Voltairine de Cleyre

Sex Slavery (1890)
Context: Why, when murder now is stalking in your streets, when dens of infamy are so thick within your city that competition has forced down the price of prostitution to the level of the wages of your starving shirt makers; when robbers sit in State and national Senate and House, when the boasted "bulwark of our liberties," the elective franchise, has become a U. S. dice-box, wherewith great gamblers play away your liberties; when debauchees of the worst type hold all your public offices and dine off the food of fools who support them, why, then, sits Moses Harman there within his prison cell? If he is so great a criminal, why is he not with the rest of the spawn of crime, dining at Delmonico's or enjoying a trip to Europe? If he is so bad a man, why in the name of wonder did he ever get in the penitentiary? … He looked, this obscenist looked with clear eyes into this ill-got thing you call morality, sealed with the seal of marriage, and saw in it the consummation of immorality, impurity, and injustice. He beheld every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passion; who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail at his dictation, not at her desire; who can control no property, not even her own body, without his consent, and from whose straining arms the children she bears may be torn at his pleasure, or willed away while they are yet unborn. It is said the English language has a sweeter word than any other, — home. But Moses Harman looked beneath the word and saw the fact, — a prison more horrible than that where he is sitting now, whose corridors radiate over all the earth, and with so many cells, that none may count them.

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Voltairine de Cleyre 78

American anarchist writer and feminist 1866–1912

Wilson Harris (1921–2018) Guyanese writer

"Redemption song," Maya Jaggi, The Guardian, December 16, 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/dec/16/featuresreviews.guardianreview15/.

“Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace!
And, lips, oh you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

“Everywhere you look — Britain, the States, western Europe — people are sealing themselves into crime-free enclaves.”

J. G. Ballard book Cocaine Nights

"Paula Hamilton"
Cocaine Nights (1996)
Context: Everywhere you look — Britain, the States, western Europe — people are sealing themselves into crime-free enclaves. That's a mistake — a certain level of crime is part of the necessary roughage of life. Total security is a disease of deprivation.

“I don't got friends, I got Flex Seal.”

Vin Diesel (1967) American actor, producer, director, and screenwriter

“ice contains no future, just the past, sealed away. As if they're alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way- cleanly, clearly. That's the essence of ice, the role it plays.”

Haruki Murakami book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

“On speaking to Mr. Fox (who had just received the seals as Secretary of State) on the important event of the day, he said certainly things look very well, but he, meaning the K[ing], will dye soon, and that will be best of all.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Fox to Lord Carmarthen (27 March 1783), quoted in Oscar Browning (ed.), The Political Memoranda of Francis Fifth Duke of Leeds (Camden Society, 1884), pp. 65-66, n.
1780s

“Change is come, and past over, no more strife, no more learning:
Now your lips and your forehead are sealed with his seal,
Look backward and smile at the thorns and the burning.
— Sweet rest, O my soul, and no fear of returning!”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song VIII: While Ye Deemed Him A-Sleeping
Context: All wonder of pleasure, all doubt of desire,
All blindness, are ended, and no more ye feel
If your feet treat his flowers or the flames of his fire,
If your breast meet his balms or the edge of his steel.
Change is come, and past over, no more strife, no more learning:
Now your lips and your forehead are sealed with his seal,
Look backward and smile at the thorns and the burning.
— Sweet rest, O my soul, and no fear of returning!