Quotes about toll

A collection of quotes on the topic of toll, death, bell, world.

Quotes about toll

“Tryin' to get control,
Pressure's takin' its toll.
Stuck in the middle zone,
I just want you alone.
My guessing game is strong,
Way too real to be wrong.
Caught up in your show,
Yeah, at least now I know.It wasn't love, it wasn't love,
It was a perfect illusion (Perfect illusion).
Mistaken for love, it wasn't love,
It was a perfect illusion (Perfect illusion).
You were a perfect illusion.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Perfect illusion, written by Kevin Parker, Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, and M. Tucker
Song lyrics, Joanne (2016)

Love, Way, Game, Strong

“The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book The Guns of August

Source: The Guns of August

World, History, Sun

“Never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Source: No man is an island – A selection from the prose

“There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

Books, Soul

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Modern version: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Meditation 17. This was the source for the title of Ernest Hemingway's novel.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)
Source: Meditation XVII - Meditation 17
Context: No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

Death

“Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966

Death, Money, Soul, Forgiveness

“I couldn't help it. I tried to keep it down but it just flooded through all my quiet spaces. It was a message more than a feeling, a message that tolled like a bell: change, change, change.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Feeling, Change, Help

“Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,
Sharp Roman road to Paradise,
Come eat me up, I'll pay thy toll
With all my flesh, and keep my soul.”

Stevie Smith (1902–1971) poet, novelist, illustrator, performer

Source: Selected Poems

Soul

“The man who was once starved may revenge himself upon the world not by stealing just once, or by stealing only what he needs, but by taking from the world an endless toll in payment of something irreplaceable, which is the lost faith.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

World, Faith, Revenge

“…he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people's lives. Mistakes were made, regrets form, and all the was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Travis Parker, Proloque, p. 3
2000s, The Choice (2007)

People, Law, Nature, Change

“These are areas of unparalleled natural beauty to be handed to our children undisturbed. We are merely custodians. You would not build a toll plaza and an administration block in the Grand Canyon or next to the Victoria Falls or within any other World Heritage Site.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

24 February 2012, Cape Argus (p5), in response to the building of a toll plaza on Chapman’s Peak, South Africa.
Speaking & Features

Children, World, Beauty, Nature

“The expenses of the royal household, wars, and lavish public building were financed by tolls and the profits of the king's foreign trade monopoly, by conscription of labour and heavy taxation. The results were impoverishment of the masses, alienation of land, and the development of a proletariat.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter I, The Beginnings, p. 25

War

“Ophelia was a bride of god
a novice Carmelite
in sister cells the cloister bells
tolled on her wedding night”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Ophelia (1998), Ophelia

God, Sister, Wedding, Night

“[On paying the toll at the Severn Bridge] It's worth £5.40 to have that moment where you stop, then you come through and there are no lanes! It takes a very strange sort of man who doesn't go: 'The race is on! Come on, woohoo! First one to the lanes!! Order, order, back in order OK but I had fun while it lasted.”

Michael McIntyre (1976) British comedian

The Comedy Roadshow

“The ever-increasing cattle population is wreaking havoc on the earth's ecosystems, destroying habitats on six continents. Cattle raising is a primary factor in the destruction of the world's remaining tropical rain forests. … Cattle are also a major cause of global warming. … The devastating environmental, economic, and human toll of maintaining a worldwide cattle complex is little discussed in public policy circles. … Yet, cattle production and beef consumption now rank among the gravest threats to the future well-being of the earth and its human population.”

Jeremy Rifkin book Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture

Source: Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture (1992), pp. 1-2

World, Future

“The landlords are receiving eight millions a year by way of royalties. What for? They never deposited the coal in the earth. It was not they who planted these great granite rocks in Wales. Who laid the foundations of the mountains? Was it the landlord? And yet he, by some divine right, demands as his toll—for merely the right for men to risk their lives in hewing these rocks—eight millions a year.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 153-154.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men, Way, Mountain

“What I know was passed to me by others, and so must surrender the toll which information tends to pay when it passes through the minds and memories of others.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Inversions (1998), Chapter 23 (p. 371)

Memory

“It was a historic event. Not unfortunately because of its scale. Unpleasant to think about, but in terms of the scale it’s not that unusual. I did say it’s the worst, probably the worst instant human toll of any crime. And that may be true. But there are terrorist crimes with effects a bit more drawn out that are more extreme, unfortunately. Nevertheless, it’s a historic event because there was a change. The change was the direction in which the guns were pointing. That’s new. Radically new.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2001, The New War Against Terror, 2001

Thinking, Change

“While we talk, the sun is getting older. It will explode in 4.5 billion years. … In comparison everything else seems insignificant. Wars, conflicts, political tension, shifts in opinion, philosophical debates, even passions—everything’s dead already if this infinite reserve from which you now draw energy to defer answers, if in short thought as a quest, dies out with the sun. … The inevitable explosion to come, the one that’s always forgotten in your intellectual ploys, can be seen in a certain way as coming before the fact to render these ploys … futile. … In 4.5 billions years there will arrive the demise of your phenomenology and your utopian politics, and there’ll be no one there to toll the death knell or hear it. It will be too late to understand that your passionate, endless questioning always depended on a “life of the mind.” … Thought borrows a horizon and orientation, the limitless limit and the end without end it assumes, from the corporeal, sensory, emotional and cognitive experience of a quite sophisticated but definitely earthly existence. With the disappearance of the earth, thought will have stopped—leaving that disappearance absolutely unthought of. … The death of the sun is a death of mind. … There’s no sublation or deferral if nothing survives. … The sun, our earth, and your thought will have been no more than a spasmodic state of energy, an instant of established order, a smile on the surface of matter in a remote corner of the cosmos. … Human death is included in the life of the mind. Solar death implies an irreparably exclusive disjunction between death and thought: if there’s death, then there’s no thought.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: Thought Without a Body? (1994), pp. 286-289

Life, Death, War, Smile

“The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 1 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

World, Way, Parting

“When the wedding march sounds the resolute approach, the clock no longer ticks, it tolls the hour…. The figures in the aisle are no longer individuals, they symbolize the human race.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Dearly Beloved

Dearly Beloved (1962)

Wedding

“To all our Lieutenants, Castellains, Captains, Condottieri, Officers, Soldiers and Subjects, to whom these presents may be known, we commit and command that to our Most Excellent and Most Beloved Private Architect and General Engineer Leonardo Vinci, bearer of the same, and who has our Commission to survey the holds and fortresses of our States, in order that according to their exigencies and his judgment we may equip them, they are to give free pass, exempt from all public toll to himself and his company, and friendly reception; and to allow him to see, measure and estimate all he may wish. And to this effect they shall order men on his requisition and lend him all the help, assistance and favours he may request, it being our wish that for all works to be done in our Dominions any engineer be compelled to consult him and to conform to his opinion; and to this may none presume to act in opposition, if it be his pleasure not to incur our indignation.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

Vellum folded as letter describing Leonardo da Vinci as Borgia's Military Engineer, bears the seal of Cesare as Duke and the seal of Alessandro Borgia on the back (July 1502). (The vellum was recently made available to the public by the Duchess Josephine Melzi d'Eril Barbo) Source: http://www.oldandsold.com/articles11/italy-35.shtml

Men, Pleasure, Help

“From one bell all the bells toll.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

"The Bell of the Shape," p. 35
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Bells”

“The death toll is not nearly high enough… too many [jihadists] have escaped.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Referring to the Fallujah offensive on November 2004 Speech at Kenyon College, Ohio http://collegian.kenyon.edu/article.php?id=2400, (2004-11-15): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq 2000s, 2004

Death

“I felt I wanted to talk about the Fed’s mission, and I wanted to do so in understandable terms, and to emphasize that unemployment is part of our mission. The recession has taken a particularly heavy toll on those who have less education and income—middle-income and low-income families—and the Fed’s concern with the job market is a theme I’ve wanted to get across. Why are we doing all these things that are in the newspapers all the time? I was trying to explain that we’re doing this to help American families who are struggling in the aftermath of the Great Recession.”

Janet Yellen (1946) American economist and professor

The Hand on the Lever (2014)

Education, Family, Understanding, Time

“I believe that the shocking toll of AIDS on gay men in the West was partly due to their Seventies delusionism that a world without women was possible. All-male energies, unbalanced and ravenous, literally tore the body apart.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 69

Women, Men, World

“Forever only takes its toll on some”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Wild Flowers
29 (2005)

“Some are born to move the world, to live their fantasies
But most of us just dream about the things we'd like to be
Sadder still to watch it die, then never to have known it
For you, the blind who once could see
The bell tolls for thee…
-- Losing It (1982)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

World, Dreams

“Theologians, pretenders, soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops, have taken advantage of that. They have stood by graves and promised heaven. They have stood by graves and prophesied a future filled with pain. They have erected their toll-gates on the highway of life and have collected money from fear.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Orthodoxy (1884)

Life, Money, Pain, Fear

“I think [Britney Spears] is a perfect example of an artificial construct -- someone with a decent voice and a very marketable image, that producers and business people turned into a pop star. Unfortunately, I think it took a toll on her, mentally, and I feel bad for the trouble that success has brought onto her. However, her music is pretty disposable, and she doesn't have the intelligence and cultural impact of someone like, say, Madonna.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

People, Music, Feeling, Star

“Society has lost its memory, and with it, its mind. The inability or refusal to think back takes its toll in the inability to think.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), pp. 3-4

Thinking, Memory

“There is no rope can strangle song
And not for long death takes his toll.
No prison bars can dim the stars
Nor quicklime eat the living soul.”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

"Easter Week"
Main Street and Other Poems (1917)

Death, Soul, Star

“Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[1992Aug13.192357.15731@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

Feeling, Time

“I do like movies that take a toll on the audience. I want to work the subconscious. I want to involve you in ways in which you might not necessarily want to get involved. I want to play off those things that you're expecting to get when the lights go down and the 20th Century Fox logo comes up. There's an audience expectation and I'm interested in how movies play with--and off--that expectation. That's what I'm interested in.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

Fightin Words (1999)

Way, Light

“If I ask questions about religion that my grandparents didn’t ask, it is not because I am intellectually advanced. I wonder about the existence of God because, unlike my grandparents, I live much of my day in a secular city where I do not measure the hours with the tolling bells of a church.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

God, Religion, Question

“Toll for the brave —
The brave! that are no more;
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

"On the Loss of the Royal George", st. 1 (1791).

“Faintly as tolls the evening chime,
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Poems Relating to America. A Canadian Boat Song, st. 1.

Time

“He felt as he always did when he finished a book — queerly empty, let down, aware that for each little success he had paid a toll of absurdity.”

Stephen King book Misery

Misery (1987)

Books, Success

“In total, communist (Marxist-Leninist) regimes murdered nearly 148 million people from 1917 to 1987. For a perspective on this incredible toll, note that all domestic and foreign wars during the twentieth century killed in combat around 41 million.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 99

War, People

“The flattering, if arbitrary, label, First Lady of the Theatre, takes its toll. The demands are great, not only in energy but eventually in dramatic focus. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a star to occupy an inch of space without bursting seams, cramping everyone else’s style and unbalancing a play. No matter how self-effacing a famous player may be, he makes an entrance as a casual neighbor and the audience interest shifts to the house next door.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

Source: On Reflection (1968), Ch. 4

Star, Housing

“There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from one's nervous system as the anticipation of calamity.”

Sax Rohmer (1883–1959) English novelist

The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext94/fuman12.txt (1920), ch. ix

“All my life I have entirely missed the point; and the turning, as I also have no sense of direction. This long period of uncertainty in the twilight land of the fuddled (it is now more than sixty years) has taken its toll.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Life, Sense

“The global toll of mental illness and neurological disorders is staggering.”

Gro Harlem Brundtland (1939) Norwegian politician

A WHO report revealed that mental disorders are “among the leading causes of ill-health and disability worldwide. Awake! magazine 7/22 2002. http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102002530?q=Brundtland&p=par

“As she sat in the low-backed car
The man at the turn-pike bar
Never asked for the toll
But just rubbed his auld poll
And looked after the low-backed car.”

Samuel Lover (1797–1868) Irish song-writer, novelist, and painter

The low-backed Car, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Cars

“I do not trust those who are above name-dropping. The suppression of small vices always exacts too high a toll.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“Money does not only help the exchange of goods and services but can also hinder the exchange of goods and services by being kept in the hands of those who have more than they need. Thus it creates a private toll gate where those who have less than they need pay a fee to those who more money than they need.”

Margrit Kennedy (1939–2013) German architect

Source: Interest and Inflation Free Money (1995), Chapter One, Four Basic Misconceptions About Money, p. 17-18

Money, Help

“In the mean time I paid the strictest attention to my profession, and was so completely successful, that there was no patient of any consequence in Gottingen that I was not called in to; but as I was not allowed to make up prescriptions, not having taken my degree, and in order to avoid a heavy penalty, I was accompanied in my professional visits by Doctor Tolle, a man who knew the lectures of Schroder by heart, but did not understand them. I dictated to him what to prescribe, he took the fee, and was content. I had nothing but the honour, and plenty of good dinners. At last I took my degree as Doctor of Medicine, and resigned my patients to the care of Dr. Strohmeyer, which was the means of introducing him into practice. I left Gottingen full of honour, with tears in my eyes, at leaving behind me so many dear friends. Puffed up with pride, I arrived in Celle, but was received with coldness and pity. This was too much for mc; I could not brook the insult; but said to myself, "How can I expect to be otherwise received, when I consider my former conduct, and look back on the heedless manner in which I passed my boyish years?"”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My consolation was, that "I should be soon as happy here as I was in Gottingen" in the choice of my friends.
My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Penalty, Understanding, Tear, Time

“His death which happened in his berth,
At forty-odd befell:
They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton tolled the bell.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Faithless Sally Brown, st. 17 (1826).
1820s

Death

“Acting can truly take a toll on your nerves. I mean we have to be larger than life. Worse, I've seen actors acting off the sets too.”

Preity Zinta (1975) film actress

Famous quotes

Life

“You’re very vulnerable when you’re naked. The psychology is a bit weird. It’s all in the eyes between the two people so you’ve got to be confident. You’ve really got to pretend you are enjoying it. I tended to have lots of conversations with lonely old men and to meet lots of nutters as well. I have incredible tolerance for darkness. I can take on board quite a lot of damaged people, but it takes its toll psychologically.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Catherine Deveney, "Stripped bare", http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=288312004 The Scotsman, (2004-03-14) On stripping.

Men, People, Confidence

“Not long ago the head of what should be a strictly scientific department in one of the major universities commented on the odd (and ominous) phenomenon that persons who can claim to be scientists on the basis of the technical training that won them the degree of Ph. D. are now found certifying the authenticity of the painted rag that is called the "Turin Shroud" or adducing "scientific" arguments to support hoaxes about the "paranormal" or an antiquated religiosity. "You can hire a scientist [sic]," he said, "to prove anything." He did not adduce himself as proof of his generalization, but he did boast of his cleverness in confining his own research to areas in which the results would not perturb the Establishment or any vociferous gang of shyster-led fanatics. If such is indeed the status of science and scholarship in our darkling age, Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"The Price of the Head", Instauration magazine (March 1980)
1970s, 1980s

Age, Support, Universe, Science

“The bells which toll for mankind are—most of them, anyway—like the bells of Alpine cattle; they are attached to our own necks, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful and harmonious sound.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

The Future of Man, 1959
1950s

“Most of the world's people have been robbed of their freedom by tyrants… In the last century alone, 272,000,000 were shot, burned, stabbed, tortured, beaten, starved to death, blasted to death, buried alive, or whatever other ways of murdering their slaves these thugs could imagine. This horrific and evil toll of bodies could head-to-toe circle the earth more than ten times. It is as though a catastrophic nuclear war had happened, but its mountain of deaths spread over each day of the last century”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 11

Death, War, People, World

“Now, all we say is this: "In future you must pay one halfpenny in the pound on the real value of your land. In addition to that, if the value goes up, not owing to your efforts—if you spend money on improving it we will give you credit for it—but if it goes up owing to the industry and the energy of the people living in that locality, one-fifth of that increment shall in future be taken as a toll by the State."”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Money, People, Effort, Future

“I am sorry these people had to lose their lives. But that's the nature of the beast. It's understood going in what the human toll will be.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Letters published in the Buffalo News (10 June 2001)
2000s

People, Nature

“The problem that has no name (which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities) is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 14 "A New Life Plan for Women".

Women, Health, Disease, Problem

“March 20th marks the 15th anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq which plunged the country into a brutal occupation leading to sectarian civil war, terrorism and a death toll of hundreds of thousands. Yet in Britain the anniversary marks another year of impunity for the ministers who authorised the invasion. This lack of accountability for crimes committed abroad is a British disease with a very long history.”

Mark Curtis (British author) British journalist and historian

For the British political elite, the invasion of Iraq never happened http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/british-political-elite-invasion-iraq-never-happened-435103022 (19 March 2018), Middle East Eye.

Death, War, Disease, History

“Far between sundown’s finish an’ midnight’s broken toll,
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing.
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds,
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing.
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight,
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight,
An’ for each an’ ev’ry underdog soldier in the night,
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), Chimes of Freedom

Freedom, Fight, Night

“Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls,
Mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls!
Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace.”

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) English poet

The Age of a Dream (1890)

Death, Beauty, Soul

“When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to meet them. Facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard our economy. These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll would be far worse if we had not acted. All Americans are in this together. And together, with determination and hard work, we will restore our economy to the path of growth. We will show the world once again the resilience of America's free enterprise system. The decades ahead will bring more hard choices for our country, and there are some guiding principles that should shape our course.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2009, Farewell speech to the nation (January 2009)

World, Family, Decision, Time

“I am writing to you in the hope that the conflict in Vietnam can be brought to an end. That conflict has already taken a heavy toll-in lives lost, in wounds inflicted, in property destroyed, and in simple human misery. If we fail to find a just and peaceful solution, history will judge us harshly.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Letter to Ho Chi Minh (1967)

Peace, Hope, History

“But Adrian did not hear him. I have mentioned that during dinner, preoccupied with his thoughts, he had bolted his food. Nature now took its toll. An acute spasm suddenly ran though him, and with a brief 'Ouch!' of pain he doubled up and began to walk round in circles. Sir Jasper clicked his tongue impatiently. "This is no time for doing the Astaire pom-pom dance," he said sharply.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

From P.G. Wodehouse's Mulliner Nights (1933).

Pain, Food, Nature, Time

“There is a flower, a magical flower,
On which love hath laid a fairy power;
Gather it on the eve of St. John,
When the clock of the village is tolling one;
Let no look be turned, no word be said,
And lay the rose-leaves under your head;
Your sleep will be light, and pleasant your rest,
For your visions will be of the youth you love best.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(28th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme X: The Eve of St. John
28th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme XI: The Emerald Ring — a Superstition see The Improvisatrice (1824
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Love, Youth, Flowers, Sleep

“Increasing freedom in the world decreases the death toll of its wars. Surely, whatever reduces and then finally ends the scourge of war in our history, without causing a greater evil, must be the greatest moral good. And this is freedom.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 15

Death, War, World, History

“Everybody is born as a mother’s child. When a person does not respect life, but only uses death tolls (number of 228 massacre 20,000 victims) to measure how big a historical tragedy was, how then are we to conduct a dialogue with a person like this?”

Su Tseng-chang (1947) Taiwanese politician

Su Tseng-chang (2014) cited in " DPP’s Su condemns 228 Massacre remarks http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2014/03/02/2003584669" on Taipei Times, 2 March 2014.

Life, Death, Personality

“[Choir of] Women: It should not prejudice my voice that I'm not born a man, if I say something advantageous to the present situation. For I'm taxed too, and as a toll provide men for the nation.”

Aristophanés Lysistrata

tr. Lindsay 1925, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Lys.+649 Lysistrata, line 649-651 Lysistrata (411 BC)

Women, Men

“Hindus suffered such attempted extermination in East Bengal in 1971, when the Pakistani Army killed 1 to 3 million people, with Hindus as their most wanted target. This fact is strictly ignored in most writing about Hindu-Muslim relations, in spite (or rather because) of its serious implication that even the lowest estimate of the Hindu death toll in 1971 makes Hindus by far the most numerous victims of Hindu-Muslim violence in the post-colonial period. It is significant that no serious count or religion-wise breakdown of the death toll has been attempted: the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ruling classes all agree that this would feed Hindu grievances against Muslims…. Even apart from the 1971 genocide, "ordinary" pogroms in East Pakistan in 1950 alone killed more Hindus than the total number of riot victims in India since 1948.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Koenraad Elst, "Was There an Islamic "Genocide" of Hindus?" http://www.academia.edu/16578319/Was_There_an_Islamic_Genocide_of_Hindus 2000s

Death, People, Religion, Suffering

““Perhaps our reservoir of spiritual faith has run out.”
“Perhaps it should have run out a long time ago,” I said sternly. “Superstition has taken a terrible toll on our species. Wars… pogroms… resistance to logic and science and medicine… not to mention gathering power in the hands of people like those who run the Pax.””

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 10 (p. 166)

War, People, Faith, Science

“Are you better than Jesus? You must be better than him. Yes, you must be confident that you can do better things and you can be better than Jesus, because Jesus died and could save the world only on the spiritual level. But you are going to save the world both on the spiritual level and physical level. You must be confident that you are better than Jesus. The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world. I will go beyond the boundary of the U. S., opening up the toll gate, reaching out to the end of the world. I will go forward, piercing through everything. Are you with that attitude? With that zeal and courage? Are you not scared? You must be with strength here. Unless you are like that, you cannot go over or win in the judgment of personality.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Master Speaks: The Significance of the Training Session (1973-05-17 http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon73/SM730517.htm)

World, Confidence, Courage, Personality

“That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me. And that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. And that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. And that nobody is wished to see my dead body. And that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. And that no flours be planted on my grave. And that no man remember me.”

Thomas Hardy book The Mayor of Casterbridge

Source: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Ch. 45 (Henchard's will)

Death, Dead

“Beauty is a fading flower,
Truth is but a wizard's tower,
Where a solemn death-bell tolls,
And a forest round it rolls.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Epilogue
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

Death, Truth, Beauty, Flowers

“We know, that, in the individual man, consciousness grows from a dim glimmer to its full light, whether we consider the infant advancing in years, or the adult emerging from slumber and swoon. We know, further, that the lower animals possess, though less developed, that part of the brain which we have every reason to believe to be the organ of consciousness in man; and as, in other cases, function and organ are proportional, so we have a right to conclude it is with the brain; and that the brutes, though they may not possess our intensity of consciousness, and though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own. I confess that, in view of the struggle for existence which goes on in the animal world, and of the frightful quantity of pain with which it must be accompanied, I should be glad if the probabilities were in favour of Descartes' hypothesis; but, on the other hand, considering the terrible practical consequences to domestic animals which might ensue from any error on our part, it is as well to err on the right side, if we err at all, and deal with them as weaker brethren, who are bound, like the rest of us, to pay their toll for living, and suffer what is needful for the general good.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Pain, World, Error, Feeling

“Management is a seven-days-a-week job. The Intensity of it takes it toll on your health. Some people want to go on for ever, and I obviously don't.”

Kenny Dalglish (1951) Scottish association football player and manager

On leaving the manager job of Liverpool FC in 1991 ( Source http://imdb.com/name/nm0197910/bio)

People, Health

“When we don't take years of experience into account, it is easy for a woman to become discouraged when she reads headlines such as 'Study of TV News Directors Finds Discrimination Against Women.' When a woman in the mid-1980's read that TV news directors who were women got paid about 27% less than men directors, it might have made her avoid the field… If, on the other hand, a headline more accurately reflecting the study's core findings, read 'Female Managers Become TV News Directors Three Times as Quickly as Men,' well, that would have made a woman feel wanted… In brief, the road to higher pay is a toll road. But at this point in history, there are female tollbooths and male tollbooths, and the toll charged to women is lower. This should encourage every woman who wishes to embark on the road to higher pay to take it while the tolls are still low, and every man who wishes to be with his children--or just wishes to support the career-focused woman he loves--to be aware that there was never a better time to be a great dad and go with your wife's flow.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 85-87.

Love, Women, Men, Children

“Glee! the great storm is over!
Four have recovered the land;
Forty gone down together
Into the boiling sand.Ring, for the scant salvation!
Toll, for the bonnie souls,—
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals!How they will tell the shipwreck
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, “But the forty?
Did they come back no more?”Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller’s eye;
And the children no
further question,
And only the waves reply.”

Emily Dickinson Life, and Death, and Giants —

Life, p. 5
Collected Poems (1993)

Children, Soul, Question, Silence

“For the time being I am enjoying my chance to enjoy civilian life off the road. If I combined all the months that I have lived out of a van or tour bus it would amount to twelve solid years. That would be twelve years of driving or flying an average of 100 to 400 miles per day and sleeping in a different city every night. It was a very unique lifestyle that I adapted to and even enjoyed with it’s surreal pace. It’s also a lifestyle that can take a toll on the body and relationships with the people that you are constantly leaving behind.”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Quotes from NatalieMerchant.com

Life, People, Sleep, Chance

“The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.”

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

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article I, p. 786 (See also.. Public-private partnerships).

Personality

“Time takes her toll and the memory fades
but his glory is broken, in the magic that he made.
Reality is ruined; it's the freeing from the fear
The drama is distorted, to what they want to hear
Swimming in their sorrow, in the twisting of a tear
As they wait for a new thrill parade.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

"Crucifixion"
Pleasures of the Harbor (1967)

Fear, Reality, Tear, Memory

“Is there a thought can fill the human mind
More pure, more vast, more generous, more refined
Than that which guides the enlightened patriot's toll”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Independence Day speech (1828)
Context: Is there a thought can fill the human mind
More pure, more vast, more generous, more refined
Than that which guides the enlightened patriot's toll:
Not he, whose view is bounded by his soil;
Not he, whose narrow heart can only shrine
The land — the people that he calleth mine;
Not he, who to set up that land on high,
Will make whole nations bleed, whole nations die;
Not he, who, calling that land's rights his pride
Trampleth the rights of all the earth beside;
No: — He it is, the just, the generous soul!
Who owneth brotherhood with either pole,
Stretches from realm to realm his spacious mind,
And guards the weal of all the human kind,
Holds freedom's banner o'er the earth unfurl'd
And stands the guardian patriot of a world!

“The Air Force and the Navy carriers may have kept us from losing the war, but they were denied the opportunity of influencing the outcome decisively in our favor. They gained complete mastery of the skies, gave magnificent support to the infantry, destroyed every worthwhile target in North Korea and took a costly toll of enemy personnel and supplies. But as in Italy, where we learned the same bitter lesson in the same kind of rugged country, our air power could not keep a steady stream of enemy supplies and reinforcements from reaching the battle line. Air could not "isolate" the front. This made it a footslogger's war. To have pushed that war to a conclusion in the mud and mountains of Korea would have required more trained divisions, more supporting air and naval forces, would have incurred staggering casualties and could not have been attempted with any hope of success unless we had lifted the self-imposed tactical restrictions which gave the enemy a sanctuary north of the Yalu. I believe, however, that we could have obtained better truce terms, shortened the war and saved lives, if we had got tougher faster.”

Mark W. Clark (1896–1984) American general

Source: From the Danube to the Yalu (1954), p. 2-3

War, Hope, Mountain, Support

“The bell tolls for me. I knew it would. So I tried, as best I could, to stay a "part of the main." I hope those who mourn my passing, and even those who don’t, will celebrate as I celebrate a happy life lived in imperfect service to a country made of ideals, whose continued service is the hope of the world. And I wish all of you great adventures, good company, and lives as lucky as mine.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2010s, 2018, The Restless Wave (2018)
Context: "The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it," spoke my hero, Robert Jordan, in For Whom the Bell Tolls. And I do, too. I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace. I’ve lived very well and I’ve been deprived of all comforts. I’ve been as lonely as a person can be and I‘ve enjoyed the company of heroes. I’ve suffered the deepest despair and experienced the highest exultation. I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.
I leave behind a loving wife, who is devoted to protecting the world’s most vulnerable, and seven great kids, who grew up to be fine men and women. I wish I had spent more time in their company. But I know they will go on to make their time count, and be of useful service to their beliefs, and to their fellow human beings. Their love for me and mine for them is the last strength I have.
What an ingrate I would be to curse the fate that concludes the blessed life I’ve led. I prefer to give thanks for those blessings, and my love to the people who blessed me with theirs. The bell tolls for me. I knew it would. So I tried, as best I could, to stay a "part of the main." I hope those who mourn my passing, and even those who don’t, will celebrate as I celebrate a happy life lived in imperfect service to a country made of ideals, whose continued service is the hope of the world. And I wish all of you great adventures, good company, and lives as lucky as mine.

Life, World, Hope, Parting

“By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers”

H. G. Wells book The War of the Worlds

Book II, Ch. 8 (Ch. 25 in editions without Book divisions): Dead London
The War of the Worlds (1898)
Context: For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things — taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many — those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance — our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.

Death

“This, then, is the tyranny of the State; it denies, to both woman and man, the right to earn a living, and grants it as a privilege to a favored few who for that favor must pay ninety per cent toll to the granters of it.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

Sex Slavery (1890)
Context: This, then, is the tyranny of the State; it denies, to both woman and man, the right to earn a living, and grants it as a privilege to a favored few who for that favor must pay ninety per cent toll to the granters of it. These two things, the mind domination of the Church, and the body domination of the State are the causes of sex slavery.

“We need each other. We need friends in the world, and they need us. The bell tolls for us, my friends, Humanity counts on us, and we ought to take measured pride in that. We have not been an island. We were ‘involved in mankind.‘”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2010s, 2018, The Restless Wave (2018)
Context: !-- I want to talk to my fellow Americans a little more, if I may: --> My fellow Americans. No association ever mattered more to me. We’re not always right. We’re impetuous and impatient, and rush into things without knowing what we’re really doing. We argue over little differences endlessly, and exaggerate them into lasting breaches. We can be selfish, and quick sometimes to shift the blame for our mistakes to others. But our country ‘tis of thee.‘ What great good we’ve done in the world, so much more good than harm. We served ourselves, of course, but we helped make others free, safe and prosperous because we weren’t threatened by other people’s liberty and success. We need each other. We need friends in the world, and they need us. The bell tolls for us, my friends, Humanity counts on us, and we ought to take measured pride in that. We have not been an island. We were ‘involved in mankind.‘
Before I leave, I’d like to see our politics begin to return to the purposes and practices that distinguish our history from the history of other nations. I would like to see us recover our sense that we are more alike than different. We are citizens of a republic made of shared ideals forged in a new world to replace the tribal enmities that tormented the old one. Even in times of political turmoil such as these, we share that awesome heritage and the responsibility to embrace it. Whether we think each other right or wrong in our views on the issues of the day, we owe each other our respect, as long as our character merits respect, and as long as we share, for all our differences, for all the rancorous debates that enliven and sometimes demean our politics, a mutual devotion to the ideals our nation was conceived to uphold, that all are created equal, and liberty and equal justice are the natural rights of all. Those rights inhabit the human heart, and from there, though they may be assailed, they can never be wrenched. I want to urge Americans, for as long as I can, to remember that this shared devotion to human rights is our truest heritage and our most important loyalty.

World

“I don't doubt ever that this regime will end… There is no question about that. The question is when and at what cost and how can we help expedite the process to reduce the toll and the cost to our nation.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted in Peter Godspeed, 'It is my duty' http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=462&page=2, Canada National Post, September 24, 2010. Interviews, 2010

Question, Help

“Sometimes people ask me who are the future leaders of Iran… I say I don't know who they are, but I know that they exist by the thousands. They are the artists and engineers; they are poets and businessmen; they are entrepreneurs and they are there -- waiting to inherit this future… And it is, by God, our obligation, our duty to the nation, to help them the best way possible to minimize the toll and the cost of change.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted in Peter Godspeed, 'It is my duty' http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=462&page=2, Canada National Post, September 24, 2010. Interviews, 2010

God, People, Way, Change

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but rather your thoughts about the situation. – Eckhart Tolle”

Ralph Smart