
“He who escaped death must have a missed call from heaven.”
The Yeomen of the Guard (1888)
“He who escaped death must have a missed call from heaven.”
Statement made in World War II, as a commissar on the southern front, as quoted in Leonid I. Brezhnev : Pages from his Life (1978) by Academy of Sciences of the USSR, p. 49; also in For the Soul of Mankind : The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (2007) by Melvyn P. Leffler, p. 237
“Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?”
Phrixus, Frag. 830
As quoted in Cosmopolitan (December 1892).
Context: A so-called magician, more than a poet, must be born with a peculiar aptitude for the calling. He must first of all possess a mind of contrarieties, quick to grasp the possibilities of seemingly producing the most opposite effects from the most natural causes. He must be original and quick-witted, never to be taken unawares. He must possess, in no small degree, a knowledge of the exact sciences, and he must spend a lifetime in practice, for in the profession its emoluments come very slowly. All this is discouraging enough, but this is not all. The magician must expect the exposure of his tricks sooner or later, and see what it has required long months of study and time to perfect dissolved in an hour. The very best illusions of the best magicians of a few years ago are now the common property of traveling showmen at country fairs. I might instance the mirror illusions of Houdin; the cabinet trick of the Davenport Brothers, and the second sight of Heller — all the baffling puzzles of the days in which the respective magicians mentioned lived. All this is not a pleasant prospective picture for the aspirant for the honors of the magician.
“I am what they call a throttle man. You must not be scared of going too fast.”
Quoted in People magazine, 15 October 1990 https://people.com/archive/cover-story-another-tragedy-for-monaco-vol-34-no-15/