Quotes about poison (653 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Naruto, it's nice that you removed the poison so spiritedly, but you'll bleed to death if you lose any more blood… Seriously….”

Hatake Kakashi book Naruto

Death

“I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness.”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

As quoted in Chopin.
Variant translation: I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness. And yet I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
Variant: I wish I could throw off the thoughts that poison my happiness, and yet I love to indulge in them;
Source: Chopin's Letters

Happiness

“Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Source: Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating

Food , Idea

“All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)

“Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Truth , Silence

“Live or die, but don't poison everything.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

“Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses:

"1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

Law , Literature , Knowledge , Appearance

“By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology

Health , Water , Change

“Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. Do you see that from drunkenness comes fornication, from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you contemn the gift of God, and fight with His laws? What is a curse, do you seek as though it were a blessing? Do you make the anteroom of birth the anteroom of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is given to you for the procreation of offspring to perpetrate killing? That she may always be beautiful and lovable to her lovers, and that she may rake in more money, she does not refuse to do this, heaping fire on your head; and even if the crime is hers, you are the cause. Hence also arise idolatries. To look pretty many of these women use incantations, libations, philtres, potions, and innumerable other things. Yet after such turpitude, after murder, after idolatry, the matter still seems indifferent to many men–even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks, invocations of demons, incantations of the dead, daily wars, ceaseless battles, and unremitting contentions.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 24 on the Epistle to the Romans [PG 60:626-27] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2017/10/contraception-early-church-teaching-william-klimon.html

Money , God , Law , Dead

“Money poisons you when you've got it, and starves you when you haven't.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

Money

“Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves poison the fountain.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

For Parents , Parent

“An old battleax of a woman said to Winston Churchill, "If you were my husband I would put poison in your tea." Churchill's response, "Ma'am if you were my wife I would drink it.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Drink , Tea

“Worry is the stomach's worst poison.”

Alfred Nobel (1833–1896) Swedish chemist, innovator, and armaments manufacturer

“And I must speak plainly. If I were a judge, I would have such a poisonous, syphilitic whore tortured by being broken on the wheel and having her veins lacerated, for it is not to be denied what damage such a filthy whore does to young blood, so that it is unspeakably damaged before it is even fully grown and destroyed in the blood.”

Martin Luther book Table Talk

Source: Table Talk (1569), pp. 552-554 (1566); cited in Susan C. Karant-Nunn & Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks [editors and translators], Luther on Women: a Sourcebook, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 157-158)

Whore

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Childhood , Personality , Forgetting , Pain

“I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Feeling

“I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Source: The Dance of the Soul

Love , Life , Death , Men

“I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu

Source: Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Life , Spring , Flowers , Thinking

“When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love”

C.G. Jung book Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self

a special instance of love at first sight
Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.338.30

Love , Drawing

“Mother Mary, like us, was born in sin of sinful parents, but the Holy Spirit covered her, sanctified and purified her so that this child was born of flesh and blood, but not with sinful flesh and blood. The Holy Spirit permitted the Virgin Mary to remain a true, natural human being of flesh and blood, just as we. However, he warded off sin from her flesh and blood so that she became the mother of a pure child, not poisoned by sin as we are. For in that moment when she conceived, she was a holy mother filled with the Holy Spirit and her fruit is a holy pure fruit, at once God and truly man, in one person”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (1905) edited by John Nicholas Lenker; republished as Sermons of Martin Luther (1996), p. 291

God , Nature , Parent , Personality

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love , Death , War , People

“It's like there's this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds upon the essence of the spirit, feeds upon the essence of the human being, the spirit. This predator energy can take fossil fuel and other resources out of the Earth, turn it into fuel, to run a machine system. But in order for there to be a need for that system, and in order for that system to work, they have to mine our minds to get at the essence of our spirit. In the same way the external mining takes place, it pollutes—we see now, people understand how it poisons the environment, the water, the air pollution—the mining of the essence, the mining of the spirit, mining our minds … the pollution from that is all the neurotic, distorted, insecure behavior patterns that we develop. That's the pollution. Because in order for this predatory system, this disease, to work, we must not be able to use our minds in a clear coherent manner. Because if we use our minds in a clear coherent manner, we will not accept the unacceptable.”

John Trudell (1946–2015) Native American rights activist, musician, poet

Columbus Day Speech, San Francisco (1992)

People , Disease , Way , Behavior

“Until my dying day I will look back with pride that I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the spectre which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was tainted. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt.”

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) German jurist, writer and pioneer of LGBT human rights

Quoted in: Keith Stern (2013), Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals. p. 460

Life , Men , Courage , Nature

“Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of CHRIST as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and savour of death. Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison! Do you think he is so unskilful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform. This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Tract 83 http://anglicanhistory.org/tracts/tract83.html (29 June 1838).

Death , God , Truth , World

“I do not ask them to assume the worth of my creed or any creed; and I could wish they did not so often ask me to assume the worth of their worthless, poisonous plutocratic modern society.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Superstition of Divorce (1920)
Context: I do not ask them to assume the worth of my creed or any creed; and I could wish they did not so often ask me to assume the worth of their worthless, poisonous plutocratic modern society. But if it could be shown, as I think it can, that a long historical view and a patient political experience can at last accumulate solid scientific evidence of the vital need of such a vow, then I can conceive no more tremendous tribute than this, to any faith, which made a flaming affirmation from the darkest beginnings, of what the latest enlightenment can only slowly discover in the end.

“Don't be so thirsty for oppurtunity that you drink for every cup handed to you. That's how you get poisoned.”

Unknown author

“Most will live a selfish life
Stubbornly die
without regret
Poisoning the hope
We all drink
Thirsting for love”

Boukabyegga

Selfishness , Life , Drink , Hope

“I have mood poisoning. Must be something I hate.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Hate , Mood

“It was suicide. Others killed themselves with poison or with a revolver. I killed myself with minutes and hours.”

Henri Barbusse book Hell

Source: Hell

Suicide

“A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

“The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Heart

“Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Source: Beyond Good and Evil

Drink

“There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Freedom (1908)
Source: Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes

Age , Solitude , Freedom , Wine

“One pain is lessened by another’s anguish…. Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Pain

“There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.”

August Strindberg (1849–1912) Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter

“Reflection poisons desire.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Transcendence of the Ego

The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 133.
This is a paraphrase of Thoreau: see explanation by the Walden Woods project http://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page).
Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Life , Men , World , Peace

“Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today.
Evil unchecked grows, Evil tolerated poisons the whole system.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

The Unity of India : Collected Writings, 1937-1940 (1942), p. 280
Context: Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today.
Evil unchecked grows, Evil tolerated poisons the whole system. And because we have tolerated our past and present evils, international affairs are poisoned and law and justice have disappeared from them.

Evil , Past

“To while away the day contemplating evils that might have been is to poison the happiness we already have.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Evil , Happiness

“Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?". - (Act III, scene I).”

William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice

Shylock, Act III, scene i.
Source: The Merchant of Venice (1596–7)
Context: I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Revenge

“if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Variant: If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later.
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Drink

“You and I will always be friends."

"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Books , Forgiveness

“Hide not thy poison with such sugar'd words”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

“Live or die, but don't poison everything.”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

“One of the most poisonous of all Satan’s whispers is simply, “Things will never change.” That lie kills expectation, trapping our heart forever in the present. To keep desire alive and flourishing, we must renew our vision for what lies ahead. Things will not always be like this. Jesus has promised to “make all things new.” Eye has not seen, ear has not heard all that God has in store for his lovers, which does not mean “we have no clue so don’t even try to imagine,” but rather, you cannot outdream God. Desire is kept alive by imagination, the antidote to resignation. We will need imagination, which is to say, we will need hope.”

John Eldredge

Source: The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God

God , Lie , Hope , Imagination

“Your presence is a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Malachy McCourt (1931) Irish-American actor, writer and politician

Waiting , Personality

“The poison dart hidden in the raisin tart….”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

“It is a waste of time to see people who have only a social surface to show. I will make every effort to find out the real person, but if I can't, then I am upset and cross. Time wasted is poison.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: Journal of a Solitude

People , Effort , Time , Personality

“With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything…”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

Life , Sadness , Cry

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations

Science

“All the pale horses of the apocalypse have stormed through my life, revolution, starvation, devaluation of currency and terror, epidemics, emigration; I have seen the great ideologies of the masses grow and spread out before my eyes. Fascism in Italy, National Socialism in Germany, Bolshevism in Russia, and, above all, that archpestilence, nationalism, which poisoned our flourishing European culture.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

The World of Yesterday [Die Welt von Gestern] (1942), p. 10, as translated by Marion Sonnenfeld

Life , Horse

“My theory is that for those of us who are too weak to remain single, God gives us a spouse. For those of us who are too hung up to handle marriage, God gives us celibacy. So, pick your weakness. Pick your poison, I guess. But anyway, for those of you who do choose to be in love and stuff, go for it.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Anderson, Indiana http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/anderson-indiana-nov1695.html (November 16, 1995)
In Concert

Love , God , Marriage

“[In what way would you have us bury you? ] In any way that you like; only you must get hold of me, and take care that I do not walk away from you. …I cannot make Crito believe that I am the same Socrates who have been talking and conducting the argument; he fancies that I am the other Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body… And though I have spoken many words in the endeavor to show that when I have drunk the poison I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed—these words of mine, with which I comforted you and myself, have had, I perceive, no effect upon Crito. …you should be my surety to him that I shall not remain, but go away and depart; and then he will suffer less at my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body being burned or buried.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Death , Way , Suffering , Joy

“In a crunch a man's reputation never counts for as much as it ought to. Most people are good-hearted and willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt, but the poisonous few are eager to see others brought down, ruined. … Envy, Bob. Envy eats them alive. If you had money, they'd envy you that. But since you don't, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

Part I, Chapter 1.2, the mysterious stranger's words to Bob Shane
Lightning (1988)

Love , Money , People , Heart

“I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 62
The Antichrist (1888)

Secret , Revenge

“We dare not do all that our opponents do. We dare not sacrifice everything for advantages. For what is an advantage to our opponents is deadly poison to us. The nobility say of themselves, noblesse oblige; so we may say, socialisme oblige, socialism imposes its obligations.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“Vanity rejects all healthy nourishment and lives exclusively on the poison of flattery.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Die Eitelkeit weist jede gesunde Nahrung von sich, lebt ausschließlich von dem Gifte der Schmeichelei und gedeiht dabei in üppigster Fülle.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 35.

“In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)

People , Country

“The idea of research has often made painting go astray, and made the artist lose himself in mental lucubrations. Perhaps this has been the principal fault of modern art. The spirit of research has poisoned those who have not fully understood all the positive and conclusive elements in modern art and has made them attempt to paint the invisible and, therefore, the unpaintable.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

As quoted by Marius de Zayas, in 'The Arts', New York, May 1923
1920s, The Arts', New York, May 1923

Art , Idea , Painting

“When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know. It was fire falling out of the sky and a mist that poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the Destruction. They ran about like ants in the streets of their city — poor gods, poor gods!”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

God , War , Time

“I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood. When I look for my diametric opposite, an immeasurably shabby instinct, I always think of my mother and sister, — it would blaspheme my divinity to think I am related to this sort of canaille. The way my mother and sister treat me to this very day is a source of unspeakable horror; a real time bomb is at work here, which can tell with unerring certainty the exact moment I can be hurt — in my highest moments, … because at that point I do not have the strength to resist poison worms …”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo

"Why I Am So Wise", 3, as translated in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings (2005) edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, p. 77
Ecce Homo (1888)

Way , Thinking , Sister , Time

“This theory argues that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

“Mosalsky: Good folk! Maria Godunov and her son Feodor have poisoned themselves. We have seen their dead bodies. [The People are silent with horror. ] Why are ye silent? Cry, Long live the Tsar Dimitry Ivanovich! [The People are speechless. ]”

Aleksandr Pushkin Boris Godunov

Boris Godunov (1825)

People , Cry , Dead

“It is only at first that pity, like morphine, is a solace to the invalid, a remedy, a drug, but unless you know the correct dosage and when to stop, it becomes a virulent poison. The first few injections do good, they soothe, they deaden the pain. But the devil of it is that the organism, the body, just like the soul, has an uncanny capacity for adaptation. Just as the nervous system cries out for more and more morphine, so do the emotions cry out for more and more pity, in the end more than one can give. Inevitably there comes a moment when one has to say 'no', and then one must not mind the other person's hating one more for this ultimate refusal than if one had never helped him at all. Yes, my dear Lieutenant, one has got to keep one's pity properly in check, or it does far more harm than any amount of indifference — we doctors know that, and so do judges and myrmidons of the law and pawn-brokers; if they were all to give way to their pity, this world of ours would stand still - a dangerous thing pity, a dangerous thing!”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Pain , Hate , World , Law

“Metaphorically, the body becomes a machine to be driven or a garbage dump to be avoided. At the same time, the magnificent Mother in whose womb we live is mindlessly poisoned and raped. Surely, our insane denial has to be perceived and acted upon.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Dancing in the Flames (1997), p. 174

Time

“The good and eatable fish are separated by the fishers' skill from the bad and poisonous fish, so that the enjoyment of the good should not be spoilt by any of the bad getting into the "vessels" with them. The work of true sobriety is the same; from all pursuits and habits to choose that which is pure and improving, rejecting in every case that which does not seem likely to be useful, and letting it go back into the universal and secular life, called "the sea" (Matthew 13:47-48), in the imagery of the Parable.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 18

Life , Fish , Universe , Sea

“The odour rising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and at length the quick-eared Hawkins thought he heard a nasty, slopping sound down there. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Madness

“Children are made to learn bits of Shakespeare by heart, with the result that ever after they associate him with pedantic boredom. If they could meet him in the flesh, full of jollity and ale, they would be astonished, and if they had never heard of him before they might be led by his jollity to see what he had written. But if at school they had been inoculated against him, they will never be able to enjoy him. The same sort of thing applies to music lessons. Human beings have certain capacities for spontaneous enjoyment, but moralists and pedants possess themselves of the apparatus of these enjoyments, and having extracted what they consider the poison of pleasure they leave them dreary and dismal and devoid of everything that gives them value. Shakespeare did not write with a view to boring school-children; he wrote with a view to delighting his audiences. If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 20: The Happy Man, p. 201
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)

Children , Pleasure , School , Music

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, that we've enjoyed some good times this evening, and enjoyed some laughter together, I feel it is my obligation to remind you of some of the negative, depressing, dangerous, life-threatening things that life is really all about; things you have not been thinking about tonight, but which will be waiting for you as soon as you leave the theater or as soon as you turn off your television sets. Anal rape, quicksand, body lice, evil spirits, gridlock, acid rain, continental drift, labor violence, flash floods, rabies, torture, bad luck, calcium deficiency, falling rocks, cattle stampedes, bank failure, evil neighbors, killer bees, organ rejection, lynching, toxic waste, unstable dynamite, religious fanatics, prickly heat, price fixing, moral decay, hotel fires, loss of face, stink bombs, bubonic plague, neo-Nazis, friction, cereal weevils, failure of will, chain reaction, soil erosion, mail fraud, dry rot, voodoo curse, broken glass, snake bite, parasites, white slavery, public ridicule, faithless friends, random violence, breach of contract, family scandals, charlatans, transverse myelitis, structural defects, race riots, sunspots, rogue elephants, wax buildup, killer frost, jealous coworkers, root canals, metal fatigue, corporal punishment, sneak attacks, peer pressure, vigilantes, birth defects, false advertising, ungrateful children, financial ruin, mildew, loss of privileges, bad drugs, ill-fitting shoes, widespread chaos, Lou Gehrig's disease, stray bullets, runaway trains, chemical spills, locusts, airline food, shipwrecks, prowlers, bathtub accidents, faulty merchandise, terrorism, discrimination, wrongful cremation, carbon deposits, beef tapeworm, taxation without representation, escaped maniacs, sunburn, abandonment, threatening letters, entropy, nine-mile fever, poor workmanship, absentee landlords, solitary confinement, depletion of the ozone layer, unworthiness, intestinal bleeding, defrocked priests, loss of equilibrium, disgruntled employees, global warming, card sharks, poisoned meat, nuclear accidents, broken promises, contamination of the water supply, obscene phone calls, nuclear winter, wayward girls, mutual assured destruction, rampaging moose, the greenhouse effect, cluster headaches, social isolation, Dutch elm disease, the contraction of the universe, paper cuts, eternal damnation, the wrath of God, and PARANOIAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Playing With Your Head (1986)

Life , God , Bad luck , Children

“Two Years He Walks The Earth. No Phone, No Pool, No Pets, No Cigarettes. Ultimate Freedom. An Extremist. An Aesthetic Voyager Whose Home Is The Road. Escaped From Atlanta. Thou Shalt Not Return, Cause "The West Is The Best." And Now After Two Rambling Years Comes The Final And Greatest Adventure. The Climactic Battle To Kill The False Being Within And Victoriously Conclude The Spiritual Revolution! Ten Days + Nights Of Freight Trains And Hitchhiking Bring Him To The Great White North. No Longer To Be Poisoned By Civilization He Flees, And Walks Alone Upon The Land To Become Lost In The Wild [double underline under "Wild"]. Alexander Supertramp May 1992.”

Christopher McCandless (1968–1992) American hiker and explorer

Carved into a sheet of plywood inside the "Magic Bus", May 2, 1992

Home , Freedom , Victory , Falseness

“Those who do not speak the words of God with humility must be advised that when they apply medicine to the sick, they must first inspect the poison of their own infection, or else by attempting to heal others, they kill themselves.”

Pope Gregory I (540–604) Pope from 590 to 604

Source: The Book of Pastoral Rule, p.159

God

“You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief?… We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

General Security: The Liquidation of Opium (1925)

Life , Men , Pain , Peace

“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”

Thomas Mann The War and the Future

Speech, "The War and the Future" (1940); published in Order of the Day (1942)

Life , History , Idea

“There can be no doubt that the youth of today have to be protected against certain poisonous effects inherent in present-day civilization. Five social diseases surround them, even in early childhood. There is the decline in fitness due to modern methods of locomotion; the decline in initiative due to the widespread disease of spectatoritis; the decline in care and skill due to the weakened tradition of craftsmanship; the decline in self-discipline due to the ever-present availability of tranquilizers and stimulants, and the decline in compassion, which William Temple called "spiritual death."”

Kurt Hahn (1886–1974) German educator

Quoted by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Colorado Outward Bound's 25th anniversary in 1987; as cited in Leadership the Outward Bound Way (2007), ISBN 159485033X.

Death , Youth , Disease , Childhood

“Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents.”

Peter Mere Latham (1789–1875) English physician and educator

Desk Reference of Clinical Pharmacology - Page 1 by Manuchair S. Ebadi - Medical - 2008.
Collected Works

“The doctrine of equality! … But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice … "Equality to the equal; inequality to the unequal" — that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, "never make the unequal equal".”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Expeditions of an Untimely Man, §48 Progress in my sense (Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen §48 Fortschritt in meinem Sinne). Chapter title also translated as: Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, Kaufmann/Hollingdale translation, and Raids of an Untimely Man, Richard Polt translation
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
Original: (de) Die Lehre von der Gleichheit! ... Aber es giebt gar kein giftigeres Gift: denn sie scheint von der Gerechtigkeit selbst gepredigt, während sie das Ende der Gerechtigkeit ist... "Den Gleichen Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches - das wäre die wahre Rede der Gerechtigkeit: und, was daraus folgt, Ungleiches niemals gleich machen."

Justice , Appearance

“Those who remove our troubles, dispel our doubts, and bestow peace are true teachers. They perform a Godlike work. Their opposites (those who increase our doubts and difficulties) are harmful to us and should be avoided like poison.”

Yukteswar Giri book The Holy Science

The Holy Science

Peace , Teachers

“I try to read all of my fan mail. A lot of them send me candy, which I'm not allowed to eat 'cause my mom says it might be poisonous.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Interview with TIME, as quoted by SugarScape http://www.sugarscape.com/main-topics/lads/506576/justin-biebers-mum-thinks-fans-are-trying-poison-him, May 2010

Moms , Reading

“What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? …I may and I must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world—may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me. [Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control their sorrow; but now, when we saw him drinking, and saw too, that he had finished the draft, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at my own calamity at having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up, and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness:] What is this strange outcry? …I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet then, and have patience.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Women , God , World , Peace

“The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. V, st. 30
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Context: The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.

“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interest, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

Men , World

“Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5

Flowers

“At Weimar [ the Bauhaus art school I have radically overturned everything. This is the famous academy, which now has the most modern teachers! I have talked to the pupils every evening and I have infused the poison of the new spirit everywhere. De Stijl will soon be published again and more radically. I have mountains of strength, and I know now that our notions will be victorious over everyone and everything.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote of Van Doesburg, in a letter to B. Kok, 7 January, 1921; as cited in the Stijl Catalogue, 1951, p. 45
1920 – 1926

School , Art , Mountain , Teachers

“It delights me even more, though, to hear that my nameless cosmic monsters have an air of originality about them! Shapeless, unheard-of creatures are not original with me; for although Poe did not use them, they figure quite widely in minor horror-writing since his time. Usually they tend to be exaggerations of certain known life-forms such as insects, poisonous plants, protozoa, & the like, although a few writers break away wholly from terrestrial analogy & depict things as abstractly cosmic as luminous protoplasmic globes. If I have gone beyond these, it is only subtly & atmospherically—in details, & in occasional imputations of geometrical, biological, & physico-chemical properties definitely outside the realm of matter as understood by us. Most of my monsters fail altogether to satisfy my sense of the cosmic—the abnormally chromatic entity in The Colour Out of Space being the only one of the lot which I take any pride in.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (8 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 316
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life , Sense , Time

“I would guess that most MIT Ph. D.’s since 1980 might deem themselves not to be “Keynesians.” But they, and modern economists everywhere, do use models like those of Samuelson, Modigliani, Solow, and Tobin. Professor Martin Feldstein, my Harvard neighbor, complained at the 350th Anniversary of Harvard that Keynesians had tried to poison his sophomore mind against saving. Tobin and I on the same panel took this amiss, since both of us since 1955 had been favoring a “neoclassical synthesis,” in which full employment with an austere fiscal budget would add to capital formation in preparation for a coming demographic turnaround.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

New millennium, An Interview with Paul A. Samuelson, 2003

“It is a crime that those people who wish to see a generous France take her place as leader of all the free and just nations are being accused of fomenting turmoil in the country, denounced by the very plotters who are conniving so shamelessly to foist this miscarriage of justice on the entire world. It is a crime to lie to the public, to twist public opinion to insane lengths in the service of the vilest death-dealing machinations. It is a crime to poison the minds of the meek and the humble, to stoke the passions of reactionism and intolerance, by appealing to that odious anti-Semitism that, unchecked, will destroy the freedom-loving France of the Rights of Man. It is a crime to exploit patriotism in the service of hatred, and it is, finally, a crime to ensconce the sword as the modern god, whereas all science is toiling to achieve the coming era of truth and justice.
Truth and justice, so ardently longed for! How terrible it is to see them trampled, unrecognized and ignored!”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

J'accuse! (1898)

Love , Death , God , People

“When she [Philosophy] saw that the Muses of poetry were present by my couch giving words to my lamenting, she was stirred a while; her eyes flashed fiercely, and said she, "Who has suffered these seducing mummers to approach this sick man? Never do they support those in sorrow by any healing remedies, but rather do ever foster the sorrow by poisonous sweets. These are they who stifle the fruit-bearing harvest of reason with the barren briars of the passions: they free not the minds of men from disease, but accustom them thereto."”
Quae ubi poeticas Musas uidit nostro assistentes toro fletibusque meis uerba dictantes, commota paulisper ac toruis inflammata luminibus: Quis, inquit, has scenicas meretriculas ad hunc aegrum permisit accedere, quae dolores eius non modo nullis remediis fouerent, uerum dulcibus insuper alerent uenenis? Hae sunt enim quae infructuosis affectuum spinis uberem fructibus rationis segetem necant hominumque mentes assuefaciunt morbo, non liberant.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Prose I, lines 7-9; translation by W.V. Cooper
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book I

Men , Disease , Support , Suffering

“One way of poisoning love is to mingle it with hate. It is the best way but in some ways the most dangerous. Love and hate are the cat and mouse of our emotions, sometimes the cat chases the mouse, often the mouse chases the cat; but when both cat and mouse are tired of chasing each other there is little left to do. All one can do then is to admit the most bitter truth of all, the most bitter but also the best: that two people in love with each other can not be alone on an island without ceasing to love; that they can not be an island, they need contact with the mainland, they need other people. It is cold comfort for those who believe that love is an island in the sea, and when we have grown tired of islands very little consolation remains. When we have grown tired of loving we are glad that the one we love is not the only person in the world.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 206

Love , Hate , People , Truth

“The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
…
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort.”

Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965) Vice President of the United States

" The Danger of American Fascism http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm," in New York Times, April 9, 1944. Quoted in: Democracy Reborn (New York, 1944) p. 259.

Money , War , Truth , Way

“Instead of defining the word, let us briefly characterize or describe the phenomenon. Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such, are normal components of human nature. Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Revenge , Nature , Envy

“My songs, they say, are poisoned.
How else, love, could it be?
Thou hast, with deadly magic,
Poured poison into me.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Lyrical Intermezzo, 57; in Poems of Heinrich Heine: Three Hundred and Twenty-five Poems (1917) Selected and translated by Louis Untermeyer, p. 73

Love

“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Prologue
Slapstick (1976)

Love , Thinking

“Everyone's heard of Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment. You put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison, which many people would suggest is about as far as you need to go.”

Terry Pratchett book The Unadulterated Cat

The Unadulterated Cat (1989)

People , Cats , Box

“To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It happened to us; we are its victim, and we have no control over it. This use of nouns and adjectives makes it logical for us to believe that we can do nothing for ourselves…but you are capable of choosing something better. If it is a choice, it follows that you are responsible for making it. With verbs, you are not a victim of mental illness; you are either the beneficiary of your own good choices or the victim of your own bad choices. You are not ill in the usual sense of having the flu or food poisoning. A choice theory world is a tough responsible world; you cannot use grammar to escape responsibility for what you are doing.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 75

World , Food , Sense

“There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire – poison and antidote.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

In Kenneth Harris Talking To: Bertrand Russell (1971)
Attributed from posthumous publications

“Vegetarianism is necessary for the very rich and the very poor. The poor need it because it is cheap and nourishing. The rich, in order to cleanse all the poisons from the corpses that have accumulated in their overfed organism.”

Natalia Nordman (1863–1914) Russian author

Povarennaia kneiga dlia golodaiushchikh. Quoted in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism (NCLC), vol. 108 https://books.google.it/books?hl=it&id=I7ZkAAAAMAAJ, ed. by Jessica Menzo (Gale Group, 2002), p. 169.

“Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Equality (1943)
Context: We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut — whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison.

Men , Food , Star , Nature

“It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 1, Section 7
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Context: As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies — but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in the world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.