Quotes about whisper
page 5

“In secondary immigration, as I await processing, I sit with people for whom I imagine the experience is less of a novelty. To be blunt, non-white people. Mexican and Arabian people, mostly—I assume, I don’t look at their passports; they don’t have them, they’re behind the desks with the border police, equally trapped and obese, behind the counter, often the same color as the people they’re casually harassing. “Who does this notion of nation most suit,” I wonder as I sit there, unable to use my phone. Proper rich people don’t encounter these rooms, these borders, these problems. For them the world is as it is when seen from space, without boundary, without limitation, full of fluid possibility and whispering wonder.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

People, World, Color, Imagination

“Peace and rest at length have come
All the day's long toil is past,
And each heart is whispering, "Home,
Home at last."”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Home at last; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Peace, Home, Past, Heart

“Midnight is a wonderful thing in a vast city—and midnight was upon Vienna. The shops were closed, the windows darkened, and the streets deserted—strange that where so much of life was gathered together there could be such deep repose; yet nothing equals the stillness of a great town at night. Perhaps it is the contrast afforded by memory that makes this appear yet more profound. In the lone valley, and in the green forest, there is quiet even at noon—quiet, at least, broken by sounds belonging alike to day and night. The singing of the bee and the bird, or the voice of the herdsman carolling some old song of the hills—these may be hushed; but there is still the rustle of the leaves, the wind murmuring in the long grass, and the low perpetual whisper of the pine. But in the town—the brick and mortar have no voices of their own. Nature is silent—her soft, sweet harmonies are hushed in the great human tumult—man, and man only, is heard. Through many hours of the twenty-four, the ocean of existence rolls on with a sound like thunder—a thousand voices speak at once. The wheels pass and re-pass over the stones—music, laughter, anger, the words of courtesy and of business, mingle together—the history of a day is the history of all time. The annals of life but repeat themselves.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Life, Music, History, Business

“I can’t believe this,” Mary said, whispering urgently. “Every time I talk to you I think I’ve heard the worst, and then you come along and say something even stupider.”

Lisa Goldstein book A Mask for the General

Source: A Mask for the General (1987), Chapter 7 (p. 119)

Stupidity, Thinking, Time

“All are before me! I behold
The House, the Brotherhood austere!
— And what am I, that I am here? For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb?”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)

Truth, Youth, Faith, Star

“Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. ’T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks.”

J. Proctor Knott (1830–1911) American politician

Speech on the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill, Jan. 27, 1871; Knott made this satirical speech, sometimes titled as Duluth! or The Untold Delights of Duluth, while serving in the United States House of Representatives; the speech lampooned Western boosterism by portraying Duluth, Minnesota, in fantastical and glowing language.

Dreams, Angels, Soul, Sleep

“There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Forgotten Home http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21398/Forgotten_Home From the poems written in English

Singing

“The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.”

John Boyle O'Reilly (1844–1890) Irish-born poet and novelist

A White Rose, lines 1-4, in In Bohemia (1886), p. 24.

Love, Passion

“Rosa Parks showed us all that one little person can make a whole bunch of noise without so much as a whisper. She showed the world that the color of your skin shouldn't determine what part of the bus you sit in… as you ride through life.”

Richard Pryor (1940–2005) American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC

Post http://www.richardpryor.com/forums/msgs.cfm?msg=38560&forum=6 on US civil rights activist Rosa Parks. Web-posts

Life, World, Color, Parting

“How many is there, John?.
Did you learn to whisper in a sawmill?”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Learning

“It's difficult to talk to people who whisper even at home, afraid of Americans eavesdropping on them. It’s not a figure of speech, not a joke, I'm serious.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

(17 April 2014) http://on.rt.com/vqds8o 2011 - 2015

People, Home

“Franz Kafka is dead.He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." The people whispered and nodded among themselves. […] They turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers' shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees, Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children woke up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 187

Children, People, Books, World

“…the wild flowers blooming in hushed solitude
Start not at the whispering, 'tis but the breeze”

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon (1829–1879) Canadian writer

from A Canadian Summer Evening

Flowers, Solitude

“From the lowest and broadest stratum of Society, where the births are by the million, there was born, almost in our own memory, a Robert Burns; son of one who "had not capital for his poor moor-farm of Twenty Pounds a year." Robert Burns never had the smallest chance to got into Parliament, much as Robert Burns deserved, for all our sakes, to have been found there. For the man—it was not known to men purblind, sunk in their poor dim vulgar element, but might have been known to men of insight who had any loyalty or any royalty of their own—was a born king of men: full of valor, of intelligence and heroic nobleness; fit for far other work than to break his heart among poor mean mortals, gauging beer! Him no Tenpound Constituency chose, nor did any Reforming Premier: in the deep-sunk British Nation, overwhelmed in foggy stupor, with the loadstars all gone out for it, there was no whisper of a notion that it could be desirable to choose him,—except to come and dine with you, and in the interim to gauge.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Downing Street (April 1, 1850)

Men, Intelligence, Birth, Beer

“Outside the door a group of men stood whispering while the less solemn parts of the Mass were being said. These men stared about them at the rolling country of little hills and commented on the crops, the weather, the tombstones or whatever came into their dreaming minds.
'Very weedy piece of spuds, them of Mick Finnegan's.'
'He doesn't put on the dung, Larry: the man that doesn't drive on the dung won't take out a crop.' A pause, 'Nothing like the dung.”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) poet

p13
Prose, Tarry Flynn (1948)

Men, Dreams, Parting, Weather

““They’re absolutely necrotic, aren’t they?” Colin whispered behind his order of service.
“It’s late twentieth century atonal,” Dunworthy whispered back. “It’s supposed to sound dreadful.””

Connie Willis book Doomsday Book

Source: Doomsday Book (1992), Chapter 14 (p. 219)

“"I love you," I whispered.
"You are my life now," he answered simply.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, p. 314
Twilight series, Twilight (2005)

Love, Life

““Tell me! What do you think of life? What do you think of ambition? What do you think of science, of learning, of love, of fame, of glory, of aspiration?”
“I think… that those are all very different things.”
“You are wrong. They are all one thing—a cunt.”
“Sir?”
“A cunt! Consider: The cunt is a nasty, ugly, filthy thing. Yet we desire it so greatly as to be willing to suffer any indignity to attain it. For the sake of it we labor and preen and whisper sugary words. We go to the theatre with flowers in our arms, climb over back walls by moonlight, write sonnets, jump out of windows with our trousers in our hands, give dangerous men their choice of weapons. We build love-nests for it sake, and cities, and civilizations. It is our all, our only, our ideal. It has created us and made us great. Such is life, such is ambition, such is science, learning, love, fame, glory, and aspiration. The Eternal Cunt,” he said significantly, “draws us onward.””

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 16, “The Wild Hunt” (p. 276)

Love, Life, Men, Flowers

“I know that's a secret, for it's whispered every where.”

William Congreve Love for Love

Act III, scene iii
Love for Love (1695)

Secret

“the grasses
whisper
"This
is
my
Body"”

Frederick Franck (1909–2006) Dutch painter

Source: Echoes from the Bottomless Well (1985), p. 98

Grass

“You know love is everything you say;
a whisper, a word,
promises you give.
You feel it in the heartbeat of the day.
You know this is the way love is.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)

Love, Way, Feeling

“My years of reading P. T. Barnum is finally coming into play. [snaps fingers] This notion of saying nothing, of keeping a secret, and doing it in a way that's not elitist but that's like, You wanna come in here and hear? [whispers] We have a secret. That's all that I can tell you. But you're involved. You know?”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Reported in Jay Babcock, " MUSIC IS NEVER WRONG: A visit with Josh Homme & John Paul Jones of Them Crooked Vultures http://www.arthurmag.com/2009/10/15/them-crooked-vultures/", Arthur Magazine (October 15, 2009).

Secret, Way, Reading

“Reservations, exclusive arrangements / Dinner with the patrons, the scenery is amazing / It's so outrageous, they whisper when they say it / When it's really real it's even realer than "The Matrix"”

Mos Def (1973) American rapper and actor

From "The Embassy"
Album The Ecstatic

“The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 13.

Age, Lovers

“She could kill him easily. But the lash-tube wavered. Cris Johnson stood without fear; he wasn't at all afraid. Why not? Didn't he understand what it was? What the small metal tube could do to him?
"Of course," she said suddenly, in a choked whisper. "You can see ahead. You know I'm not going to kill you. Or you wouldn't have come here."”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

The Golden Man (1954)

Fear, Understanding

“I first saw Wittgenstein in the Michaelmas term of 1938, my first term at Cambridge. At a meeting of the Moral Science Club, after the paper for the evening was read and the discussion started, someone began to stammer a remark. He had extreme difficulty in expressing himself and his words were unintelligible to me. I whispered to my neighbour, ‘Who is that?’: he replied, ‘Wittgenstein.’ I was astonished, because, for one reason I had expected the famous author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to be an elderly man, whereas this man looked young—perhaps about 35. (His actual age was 49.) His face was lean and brown, his profile was aquiline and strikingly beautiful, his head was covered with a curly mass of brown hair. I observed the respectful attention that everyone in the room paid to him. After his unsuccessful beginning he did not speak for a time but was obviously struggling with his thoughts. His look was concentrated, he made striking gestures with his hands as if he were discoursing. All the others maintained an intent and expectant silence. I witnessed this phenomenon count less times thereafter and came to regard it as entirely natural.”

Norman Malcolm (1911–1990) American philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 1958

Age, Beauty, Nature, Silence

“After two years of traveling almost exclusively to Western Europe and the Middle East, Poland feels like a geopolitical spa. I visited here for just three days and got two years of anti-American bruises massaged out of me. Get this: people here actually tell you they like America -- without whispering. What has gotten into these people? Have all their subscriptions to Le Monde Diplomatique expired? Haven't they gotten the word from Berlin and Paris? No, they haven't. In fact, Poland is the antidote to European anti-Americanism. Poland is to France what Advil is to a pain in the neck. Or as Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs specialist, remarked after visiting Poland: "Poland is the most pro-American country in the world -- including the United States."”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

"Where U.S. Translates As Freedom" http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/opinion/where-us-translates-as-freedom.html (28 December 2003), The New York Times

Pain, People, World, Travel

“It speaks to me in the silence of this one
then through the words of that one speaking;
it whispers to me through an eyebrow raised
and the message of an eye winking.”

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi (1213–1289) Persian philosopher

Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes (1982)

Silence

“Occasionally discouragement may darken our pathway; frustration may be a constant companion. In our ears there may sound the sophistry of Satan as he whispers, "You cannot save the world; your small efforts are meaningless. You haven’t time to be concerned for others." Trusting in the Lord, let us turn our heads from such falsehoods and make certain our feet are firmly planted in the path of service and our hearts and souls dedicated to follow the example of the Lord. In moments when the light of resolution dims and when the heart grows faint, we can take comfort from His promise: "Be not weary in well-doing. … Out of small things proceedeth that which is great. Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind."”

Thomas S. Monson (1927–2018) president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Finding Peace, Ensign, Mar. 2004, 3.

World, Soul, Effort, Light

“The Fascists got what they deserved,” Floyd said.
“My husband lived long enough to see those monsters come to come to power. He saw through their lies and promises, but he also knew that they spoke to something nasty and squalid in the human spirit. Something in all of us. We want to hate those who are not like us. All we need is an excuse, a whisper in the ear.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 9 (p. 135)

Hate

“A trembling and some laughter, / a squirt of pee, a spit, / whispers of the heart, / a smell, / the drift to sleep, / pursuit by Gods, / exposure of the bum, / mathematics …”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

"The Schultz Song"
M is for Man, Music, and Mozart

God, Mathematics, Laughter, Sleep

“It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew (I had heard) that besides the sons we knew, this woman had another son nobody had seen, who was spoken of in whispers, as if he were a great disgrace for the mother, an idiot, a monster or worse. I remember that my mother referred to this woman often as a martyr, who made great sacrifices for this son, and put up with great sorrows. One Sunday morning about ten, I was sent to this woman’s: I had to deliver some crocheting and get the money. I found her shutting the door, dressed up to go out to mass, she had a hamper under her arm. On seeing me she hesitated then decided. She told me to accompany her to a certain place, and that she would take delivery and give me the money on our return. She took me out of the village, into an orchard filled with rubbish and plaster; in one corner there was a sort of pig sty, about four feet high, and windowless, with only a strong door. She opened the door and I could hear an animal-like howling. Inside was her son, a robust boy of 18, who couldn’t stand up and hence scraped along on his seat to the door, as far as he was permitted to move by a chain linked to his waist and attached to the ring in the wall. He was covered with filth, and his eyes shone red, like those of a nocturnal animal. His mother dumped the contents of her basket – a mixed mess of household leftovers – into a stone trough. She filled another trough with water, and we left. I said nothing to my mother about what I had seen, so great an impression it had made on me, and so convinced was I that nobody would believe me. Nor when I later heard of the misery which had befallen that poor mother, did I interrupt to talk of the misery of the poor human wreck who had such a mother.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci, 1965, p. 737 cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 35.

Life, Money, People, Family

“"Why, you have tried to improve before, and failed," the tempter in his soul whispered. "What is the good of trying again? You are not the only one—all are alike. Such is life." But the free, spiritual being which alone is true, alone powerful, alone eternal, was already awake in Nekhludoff. And he could not help believing it. However great the difference between that which he was and that which he wished to be, for the awakened spiritual being everything was possible.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 28

Life, Soul, Help

“Fame, whose sweet voice whispers of phantom bliss
to you proud mortals, and who seems so fair,
is a mere echo, dream, dream lost in shade,
at every wind-puff scattered and unmade.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

La fama che invaghisce a un dolce suono
Voi superbi mortali, e par si bella,
E un'ecco, un sogno, anzi del sogno un'ombra,
Ch'ad ogni vento si dilegua e sgombra.
Canto XIV, stanza 63 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Dreams

“Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Love, Hate

“Beneath the noise, below the din,
I hear a voice, it's whispering,
"In science and in medicine,
"I was a stranger, you took me in."”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

"Miracle Drug"
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

Science

“Thou breeze,
That mak'st an organ of the mighty sea,
Obedient to thy wilful phantasies,
Provoke him not to scorn; but soft and low,
As pious maid awakes her aged sire,
On tiptoe stealing, whisper in his ear
The tidings of the young god's victory.”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Sylphs
Poems (1851), Prometheus

God, Age, Victory, Sea

“Arcadia? The realm of the infinite? It's a poet's corner… It's not a cult or a religion – it's an awareness of your surroundings; you're not going to force yourself on anyone and, equally, no one's going to force themselves on you. And it's about community and pleasure. It came from a whisper through the trees. It came from a crack in the pavement. It can also come when you open a bag of crisps, or when you kick a football against a goalpost. Even if I was winding you up, it would still be true, because Arcadia and the Arcadian Dream is so deep, is so true to our hearts… It can be as powerful as your imagination can allow it to be. But, it can also be as dark and twisted as your soul… Arcadia encompasses the infinite, and that's why it comforts me.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

2002
Arcadia

Pleasure, Religion, Dreams, Soul

“It whispers; all is waiting here
Kept safe for thee, year after year,
Beautiful songs in thousands;
Where hast thou been, where, where?”

Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1864–1931) Swedish poet

Attributed in Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, tr. Leif Sjoberg and W. H. Auden (1964), journal entry for (October 1, 1957).

Beauty, Waiting

“In order to try to remove what we are going to say from what risks happening, if we judge by the many signs, to Marx's work today, which is to say also to his injunction. What risks happening is that one will try to play Marx off against Marxism so as to neutralize, or at any rate muffle the political imperative in the untroubled exegesis of a classified work. One can sense a coming fashion or stylishness in this regard in the culture and more precisely in the university. And what is there to worry about here? Why fear what may also become a cushioning operation? This recent stereotype would be destined, whether one wishes it or not, to depoliticize profoundly the Marxist reference, to do its best, by putting on a tolerant face, to neutralize a potential force, first of all by enervating a corpus, by silencing in it the revolt [the return is acceptable provided that the revolt, which initially inspired uprising, indignation, insurrection, revolutionary momentum, does not come back]. People would be ready to accept the return of Marx or the return to Marx, on the condition that a silence is maintained about Marx's injunction not just to decipher but to act and to make the deciphering [the interpretation] into a transformation that "changes the world. In the name of an old concept of reading, such an ongoing neutralization would attempt to conjure away a danger: now that Marx is dead, and especially now that Marxism seems to be in rapid decomposition, some people seem to say, we are going to be able to concern ourselves with Marx without being bothered-by the Marxists and, why not, by Marx himself, that is, by a ghost that goes on speaking. We'll treat him calmly, objectively, without bias: according to the academic rules, in the University, in the library, in colloquia! We'll do it systematically, by respecting the norms of hermeneutical, philological, philosophical exegesis. If one listens closely, one already hears whispered: "Marx, you see, was despite everything a philosopher like any other; what is more [and one can say this now that so many Marxists have fallen silent], he was a great-philosopher who deserves to figure on the list of those works we assign for study and from which he has been banned for too long.29 He doesn't belong to the communists, to the Marxists, to the parties-, he ought to figure within our great canon of Western political philosophy. Return to Marx, let's finally read him as a great philosopher."”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

We have heard this and we will hear it again.
Injunctions of Marx
Specters of Marx (1993)

People, World, Fear, Fashion

“"Why do they do it?" whispered Horeb. "Their eyes, you mean?" said Rek. "Yes. How can a man put out his own eyes?" "Damned if I know. They say it aids their visions." "Sounds about as sensible as cutting off your staff in order to aid your sex life."”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 1

Life, Sex

“Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves. … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'" http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/exhibits/james/psychical/7_8.cfm, in The American Magazine, Vol. 68 (1909), p. 589 Often (mis)quoted as: "We are like islands in the sea; separate on the surface but connected in the deep", or: "Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest, which co-mingle their roots in the darkness underground." 1900s

Tree, Sea

“I pressed my lips against his ear and whispered, again, It's not your fault. Perhaps this was really the only thing I had ever wanted to say to anyone, and be told. I imagined couples at the altar, standing before the priest, declaring It's not your fault to each other, before kissing in the union.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

The Shared Patio (2005)

Imagination, Kiss

“I was in Miami, reading at the book fair. My partner on the platform had won the Pulitzer Prize the previous day. At the book signing afterwards, Pulitzer Man had waiting for him a queue of admiring readers that stretched up the spine of Florida, while I had three people — an academic who was writing something on my work, the usual maniac in a raincoat, and a kindly chap who leaned down and said to me in a confidential whisper, “I'm not going to buy your book, but you looked so lonely I felt I had to come and talk to you.””

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

How I Write: John Banville on ‘Ancient Light,’ Nabokov, and Dublin (2012)

People, Books, Waiting, Reading

“There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Mowing http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mowing-2/" 1910s

“A title as meaningless as the woman bearing it. The Empress—just another face she’d seen somewhere before, a mask behind which someone hid from mortality.
“No use hiding,” she whispered, frowning down at the dead leaves and branches around her. “No use.””

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 21 (pp. 562-563)

Dead

“My sorcerer is rattling his bones," whispered the host, then laughed wildly. "Dying, he swore his very bones would weave a net of death for me. I shackled his corpse to the floor, and now, deep in the night, I hear his bare skeleton clash and rattle as he seeks to be free, and I laugh, I laugh! Ho! ho! How he yearns to rise and stalk like old King Death along these dark corridors when I sleep, to slay me in my bed!”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Rattle of Bones" (1929)

Death, Sleep, Night

“Wouldst have the princely spirit bowed?
Whisper only, speak not loud,
Mark and leave him in the crowd.

Thou need'st not spies nor jailers have;
The free will serve thee like the slave,
Coward shrinking from the brave.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The Captured Wild Horse

“The third point that is relied on to justify slaveholding is, that it is Constitutional. That is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. I have heard it declared over and over again that the Constitution guarantees slavery. I deny it. In no article, in no section, in no line, in no word, in no syllable, can there be any recognition of the word 'slave' or 'slavery'. Why, sir. When I came up to take the oath to support the Constitution, a whispered buzz, half in earnest and half jocular, passed around. How can Lovejoy swear to support the Constitution? How can he take the oath? I could take the oath to support the Constitution, because I believe in the Constitution, because I hold to it, because my heart is loyal to it. Every part and parcel and portion of it, I believe in. But, I do not believe in the construction put upon it by those who claim its recognition and sanction of the practice of slaveholding.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838&ndash;64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA198 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, pp. 198&ndash;199 1860s, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (April 1860)

Support, Heart, Parting

“At last, after many lives of striving, many lives of working, growing purer and nobler and wiser, life after life, the Soul makes a distinct and clear speaking forth of a will that now has grown strong; and when that will announces itself as a clear and definite purpose, no longer the whisper that aspires, but the word that commands, then that resolute will strikes at the gateway which leads to the Outer Court of the Temple, and strikes with a knocking which none may deny— for it has in it the strength of the Soul that is determined to achieve, and that has learned enough to understand the vastness of the task that it undertakes.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

p. 17

Life, Soul, Understanding, Strong

“A shadow leaned over me, whispering, in the darkness,
Thoughts without sound;
Sorrowful thoughts that filled me with helpless wonder
And held me bound.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

"The Shadow" in The Empire Review (1923) Vol. 37, p. 620

“"To the mistress of all true adventurers!" he whispered, choking on his own blood. "To the Lady Death!"”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Lost Valley of Iskander" (1974)

Death

“Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper circling round
Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd.
Yet was he kind, or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declar'd how much he knew,
'T was certain he could write and cipher too.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Variant: A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew:
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the bust whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned;
Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too.
Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 199.

Love, Business, Learning

“We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.”

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

George Bernard Shaw (1909)

Age

“At a certain point the two cigars fell at our feet in the snow and then we heard them whispering up there and moving about and then came a sigh louder than the others. When we looked up we could see nothing but the withered vine leaves and thousands of stars in the frosty sky. Nuto said "The blackguards" through his clenched teeth.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter XXIII, p. 133

Star

“Practise silence, for the voice of God can be heard in the region of your heart only when the tongue and the inner storm are stilled, and the waves (of the mind) are calmed. There will be no temptation for others to shout when you talk to them in whispers. Set the level of the tone yourself: as low as possible, as high as necessary to reach the outermost boundary of the circle you are addressing. Conserve sound, since it is the treasure of the element ether (Akasa), an emanation from God Himself. Reason can prevail only when the arguments are advanced without the whipping up of sound. Silence is the speech of the spiritual seeker. Soft speech is the expression of genuine love. Hate screeches; fear squeals; conceit trumpets; but love sings lullabies, it soothes, it applies balm. Practise the vocabulary of love; unlearn the language of hate and contempt.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

"Divine Discourse" (19 February 1970)

Love, God, Hate, Fear

“Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space; it is
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour;
it is to know not as yet that you are under sentence of life, nor petition that it be commuted into death.”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

Shelley. In the Dublin Review (July 1908).

Love, Life, Death, World

“He sung,—the notes at first were low,
Like the whispers of love, or the breathings of woe:
The waters were hushed, and the winds were stay'd,
As he sang his farewell to his Lesbian maid!”

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

Arion from The London Literary Gazette (23rd November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IV
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Water

“And someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear.
You almost had your hooks in me, didn't you dear?
You nearly had me roped and tied,
Altar-bound, hypnotized.
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear,
You're a butterfly.
And butterflies are free to fly,
Fly away, high away, bye bye.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Someone Saved My Life Tonight
Song lyrics, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975)

Life, Freedom, Flying

“The newspapers were saying, 'You have AIDS.' They actually said I was dead. I just threw myself into my work when the whispering campaign turned really ugly. I think Camille saved me. I felt incredibly paranoid, just as Camille did. And do you know? I was able to use that in doing Camille's scenes. It made them better.”

Isabelle Adjani (1955) French actress

The 'Hounding' of Isabelle Adjani http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/06/movies/the-hounding-of-isabelle-adjani.html, 6 January 1990.

Thinking, Dead

“"But he has nothing on at all," said a little child at last. "Good heavens! listen to the voice of an innocent child," said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. "But he has nothing on at all," cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, "Now I must bear up to the end." And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.”

Hans Christian Andersen The Emperor's New Clothes

The Emperor's New Clothes
Fairy Tales (1835)

People, Training

“Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame
That at the whisper of Love’s name,
Or Beauty’s, presto! up you raise
Your angry head and stand at gaze?”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Down, Wanton, Down!," lines 1-4, from Poems 1930-1933 (1933).
Poems

Love, Beauty

“Today, Keynesian theorizing does not inspire whispers and giggles from the audience. There are many economists under the age of forty who do not take offense when their work is called ‘Keynesian’, and I count myself as one of them. If Keynesian economics was dead in 1980, then today it has been reincarnated.”

N. Gregory Mankiw (1958) American economist

N. Gregory Mankiw, "The reincarnation of Keynesian economics", European Economic Review (1992).
1990s

Age, Dead

“To Santa Fe
Do you need it?
Can you feel it in the same old way?
I can feel it from the mountain top
Runnin' down to the foamy brine
In a rest'rant 'cross a table top
Looking into a glass of wine
Whispering in the evening breeze
Green leaves glist'ning eucalyptus trees
Can you hear them?
Or get near them?”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Santa Fe/Beautiful Obsession
Song lyrics, Wavelength (1978)

Way, Feeling, Mountain, Tree

“In the land of a thousand dances,
I dance with you.
I was out I was taking my chances
When dreams came true
When you came into my dream
Like from a whisper to a scream.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Heavy Connection
Song lyrics, A Period of Transition (1977)

Dreams, Chance, Dance

“Lay your head upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body
Close to mine
Hear the whisper of the raindrops
Blow softly against my window
Make believe you love me
One more time
For the good times
For the good times..”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

For the Good Times
Song lyrics, Kristofferson (1970)

Love, Time

“We have watched mutant creatures crawl from sewers into cold flat starlight and whisper shyly to each other, drawing maps and messages in faecal mud.
I have sat with the wind at my side and seen cruel things, wicked things.
My scars and bonestubs itch. I am forgetting the weight, the sweep, the motion of wings. If I were not garuda I would pray. But I will not obeise myself before arrogant spirits.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station (2000), p. 51

Drawing, Forgetting

“Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth,
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel

Part II, l. 408
Christabel (written 1797–1801, published 1816)

Love, Life, Truth, Youth

“With the cry I wake;—and around me
The mother and child at her feet
Breathe peace in even whispers;
And the night falls heavy and sweet.”

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897) English poet and critic

Past and Present

Peace, Cry, Night

“Cosmos is God, who whispered the syllable of life.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Cosmos,” p. 13
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Sky-Motion”

Life, God

“The Ninja, as you know, operates by stealth. And so, case in point: I put out records… no one hears them! I make videos… (whispers) no one sees! I go on tour…. (whispers) no one knows! NINJA! I was never here!”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Talk Is Cheap Volume 2 (2003)

“Never been lonely,
Never been lied to,
Never had to scuffle in fear,
Nothing to dive to,
Born at the instant,
The church bells chime,
The whole world whispering,
You're born at the right time.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Born at the Right Time
Song lyrics, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)

World, Fear, Time

“Wonderful baby, nothin' to fear.
Love whom you will, but doubt what you hear.
They'll whisper sweet things to make untrue.
So be good to yourself, that's all you can do.You're a wonderful baby livin' on love
The sandman says maybe he'll take you above,
Up where the girls fly on ribbons and bows,
Where babies float by, just counting their toes.”

Don McLean (1945) American Singer and songwriter

Wonderful Baby
Song lyrics, Homeless Brother (1974)

Love, Fear, Girl, Baby

“The time has passed for our sensations in painting to be whispered. We wish them in the future to sing and re-echo upon our canvasses in deafening and triumphant flourishes.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 132.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

Singing, Time, Future, Painting

“Memories belong in the soil, in stone, in wind. They are the land's unseen meaning, such that touches the soul of all who would look — truly look — upon it. Touches, in faintest whisper, old, almost shapeless echoes — to which a mortal life adds its own.”

Steven Erikson book Memories of Ice

Memories of Ice (2001)

Life, Soul, Memory

“Hamm: Look at the ocean!(Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.)Clov: Never seen anything like that!Hamm (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke?Clov (looking): The light is sunk. Hamm (relieved): Pah! We all knew that. Clov (looking): There was a bit left. Hamm: The base. Clov (looking): Yes. Hamm: And now? Clov (looking): All gone. Hamm: No gulls? Clov (looking): Gulls! Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? Clov (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.) Hamm: The waves, how are the waves? Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead. Hamm: And the sun? Clov (looking): Zero. Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again. Clov (looking): Damn the sun. Hamm: Is it night already then? Clov (looking): No. Hamm: Then what is it? Clov (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.) Hamm (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray? Clov: Light black. From pole to pole.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

An explanation of the universe outside the room of Endgame
Endgame (1957)

God, Light, Sun, Night

“Words of love you whisper soft and true
Darling I love you.”

Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter

Words Of Love
Song lyrics, Buddy Holly (1958)

Love

“Then cricket sing thy song, or answer mine
Thine whispers blame, but mine has naught but praises
It matters not. — Behold the autumn goes,
The Shadow grows,
The moments take hold of eternity;
Even while we stop to wrangle or repine
Our lives are gone
Like thinnest mist,
Like yon escaping colour in the tree: —
Rejoice! rejoice! whilst yet the hours exist
Rejoice or mourn, and let the world swing on
Unmoved by Cricket-song of thee or me.”

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821–1873) American poet

"The Cricket" lines 120–131

World, Autumn, Tree, Singing

“Criticism, like so many other things, keeps to what has been said before and does not get out of the rut. This business of the 'Beautiful' some see it in curved lines, some in straight lines, but all persist in seeing it as a matter of line. I am now looking out of my window and I can see the most lovely countryside; lines just do not come into my head: the lark is singing, the river sparkles with a thousand diamonds, the leaves are whispering; where, I should like to know, are the lines that produce delicious impressions like these? They refuse to see proportion or harmony except between two lines: all else they regard as chaos, and the dividers alone are judge.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote from a letter to Léon Peisse, 15 July 1949; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 68
this quote refers to Delacroix's refusal to use the line as boundary of the form in his painting art, as a too sharp dividing force in the picture - in contrast to the famous classical painter in Paris then, Ingres
1831 - 1863

Love, Beauty, Business, Singing

“Never yet was a springtime,
Late though lingered the snow,
That the sap stirred not at the whisper
Of the southwind, sweet and low;
Never yet was a springtime
When the buds forgot to blow.”

Margaret Elizabeth Sangster (1838–1912) American poet, author, journalist, editor

Awakening.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“A man can never dream these kinds of things
Especially when she came and spread her wings
Whispered in my ear the things I'd like
Then she flew away into the night.”

Liam Gallagher (1972) English musician and songwriter

Song Songbird

Dreams, Night

“That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the worlds tumbled him over in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves.”

Jeanette Winterson book Sexing the Cherry

Source: Sexing the Cherry (1989), p.13

World, Lovers, Passion, Flying

“The power of the average pop artist and her products lies in the pornography that is her 'art,' in her hackneyed political posturing, and in the fantastic technology that is Auto-Tune (without which all the sound you'd hear these 'singers' emit would be a bedroom whisper).”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Harvey Sweinstein And Hollywood's Hos http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/20/harvey-sweinstein-and-hollywoods-hos/," The Daily Caller, October 20, 2017. 2010s, 2017

Art

“Reading what they never wrote,
Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work,
And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 411.

Reading

“Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister spirit, come away!”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)

Angels, Sister

“Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.”

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) English poet

The Dark Angel (1895)

Art

“One sweet whisper from her came;
And he drank to catch her breath, —
Wine and sigh alike are death!”

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

(1836-3) (Vol.48) Subjects for Pictures. Second Series. II. A Supper of Madame de Brinvilliers
The Monthly Magazine

Death, Wine

“Goodbye England's rose,
May you ever grow in our hearts.
You were the grace that placed itself
Where lives were torn apart.You called out to our country,
And you whispered to those in pain.
Now you belong to Heaven,
And the stars spell out your name.And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind,
Never fading with the sunset,
When the rain set in.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Candle in the Wind 1997, written in tribute upon the death of Diana (1997)
Song lyrics, Singles

Life, Pain, Star, Heart

“I fear that in a few years there may be a kind of 'panic', in this form: 'since Millet' we have sunk very low — the word decadence, now whispered or pronounced in veiled terms (see Herkomer), will then sound like an alarm bell. Many, like I myself, now keep quiet, because they already have the reputation of being awkward customers,5 and talking about it doesn't help. That — namely, talking — isn't what one needs to do — one must work, though with sorrow in the heart. Those who later cry out the loudest about decadence will themselves belong to it the most. I repeat: by this shall ye know them, [from: Matt. 7:16. ] by their work, and it won't be the most eloquent who say the truest things. See Millet himself, see Herkomer, they're certainly not orators, and speak almost reluctantly.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 5 Nov. 1882 - original manuscript of letter no. 280 - at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. b263 a-b V/1962, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let280/letter.html 1880s, 1882

Fear, Help, Heart, Cry

“The heritage we give our children, and the myths we leave to sustain them, must work with the tug and press of life, or they will fail. Adaptability has to be enshrined alongside stability, or the ghost of Darwin will surely come back to haunt us, whispering in our ears the penalty of conceit.
We wish our descendants happiness. But over time one criterion alone will judge our efforts.
Survival.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 12 (p. 192)
Glory Season (1993)

Life, Happiness, Children, Penalty

“When I awoke in the morning, my mother and Julia Hislop were whispering in a corner. They didn't have to tell me why. I already knew that my father was dead. And when the feeling of peace wore off, the surprise at having known intensified my sense of loss and sorrow. Although I was only nine, I could imagine what death meant. I knew he was gone forever.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

On the death of her father, p. 18.
Autobiography

Death, Peace, Feeling, Imagination

“The trees that whisper in the evening
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Sing a song of sorrow and grieving
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
All she saw was a silhouette of a gun
Far away on the other side
He was shot six times by a man on the run
And she couldn't find how to push trough
I stay, I pray, see you in heaven far away
I stay, I pray, see you in heaven one day…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Crises (1983)

Tree, Singing, Time

“Things whispered here, and the trees muttered with the wind and perhaps with other things. Men knew the place was old, old as the world, and they never made peace with it.”

C. J. Cherryh book The Dreamstone

The Dreamstone, Book One : The Gruagach, Ch. 1 : Of Fish and Fire
Arafel's Saga (1983)

Men, World, Peace, Tree

“On his first hand he wore rings of stone,
Iron, Amber, Wood and Bone.
There were rings unseen on his second hand,
One was blood in a flowing band,
One was air all whisper thin,
And the ring of ice had a flaw within.
Full faintly shone the ring of flame,
And the final ring was without name.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

A poem from the second book of the The Kingkiller Chronicle, quoted in an interview at Fantasymundo (1 August 2009) http://www.fantasymundo.com/articulos/2207/fantasymundo_entrevista_patrick_rothfuss_nombre_viento The Wise Man's Fear (2011)

“Murray held his daughter at arm’s length. “Does God…er, visit you?”
“She doesn’t even whisper to me. I listen, but she doesn’t talk. It’s not fair.”
God didn’t talk. The best news he’d heard since Gabriel Frostig announced his embryo. “Look Julie, it’s good she doesn’t talk. God asks her children to do crazy things. It’s good she doesn’t whisper. Understand?”
“I guess.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Where’d the crab go? Is he looking for his friends?””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

A profound weariness pressed upon Murray. “Yes. Right. His friends. It’s good God doesn’t whisper.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 2 (p. 46)

God, Children, Understanding, Daughters

““William Henry, when you were my student you honored me by noting down my words and philosophical maunderings. What said I on the subject of hate?”
“A strong man hates no one, is enraged with no one,” whispered William.
Spinoza continued. “He who lives under the guidance of reason endeavors as much as possible to repay hatred with love and nobleness. He who wished to avenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. Hatred is increased by reciprocated hatred, and, on the contrary, can be demolished by love.””

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 224)

Love, Hate, Strong

“Senators say they fear the N. R. A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them. On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip, The New York Times, 2013-04-18, April 17, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/a-senate-in-the-gun-lobbys-grip.html?hp&_r=0,

Love, Children, People, Fear

“The world’s odd tolerance of fighting cropped up again and again in Francis’s study of history, particularly ancient history. On Earth, where his remotest forebears lived, a person could be indisputably responsible for the deaths of thousands and still go down in the history books as some sort of great hero. This was before Francis understood the biological inevitability of violence, so he was bewildered. Why, he wanted to know, were the names of Samson, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Ulysses S. Grant, and Julius Caesar not obscenities, spoken after dark in whispers of revulsion and shame? The same teachers who couldn’t bring themselves to say shitbrain or ortwaddle openly discussed Alexander the Great.
He never found anyone who had the answer. Until he got to Planet Carlotta, he never even found anyone who had the question.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 19)

Death, Books, World, History