“Death is master of lord and clown.
Close the coffin and hammer it down.”
Source: Prince Lucifer (1887), Adam in Act IV, sc. iv; p. 111.
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Alfred Austin56
British writer and poet 1835–1913Related quotes
“With clink of hammers closing rivets up.”
Act V, scene 3. Similar thought in William Shakespeare, King Henry V.
Richard III (altered) (1700)
“Opening, my eyes say 'Let there be light',
Closing, they shut me in a coffin.”
Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters
"The Human Situation"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: And if this I were destroyed,
The image shattered,
My perceived, rent world would fly
In an explosion of final judgement
To the ends of the sky,
The colour in the iris of the eye.
Opening, my eyes say 'Let there be light',
Closing, they shut me in a coffin.
“People hunger for love, and clowning is a trick to get love close.”
Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author
As quoted in "Patch Adams and clowns spreading laughter at hospital" (2 March 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gtw5nzgYpA <br class="br">Context: You know, it's always the same. I've clowned in 81 countries. People hunger for love, and clowning is a trick to get love close. As a clown I can do things that people are too frightened of Love to allow you to do.
John Keats Ode to a Nightingale
Stanza 7
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale
Context: Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter
Funhouse, written by Pink, Tony Kanal and Jimmy Harry
Song lyrics, Funhouse (2008)
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian
Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.269
“The death of our close friends and relatives proves that how close the death is to us!”
Javad Alizadeh (1953) cartoonist, journalist and humorist
Quoted in Humor & Caricature (January 1996), p. 3
Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain
The runic inscription upon the scabbard of Dyrnwyn, correctly read by the bard Taliesin, in Chapter 19
The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968)