Quotes about wound
page 7

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Jacques Verges photo

“Nothing shocks me more than ferocity against the vanquished, especially when victors take poses. Between the dogs and the wolf, I shall always side with the wolf, especially when he is wounded.”

Jacques Verges (1925–2013) French lawyer

Rien ne me choque autant que l'acharnement sur un vaincu, surtout quand les lyncheurs prennent la pose. Entre les chiens et le loup, je serai toujours du côté du loup, surtout quand il est blessé.
Beauté du crime (Plon, 1988, ISBN 2-259-01897-1), p. 13 http://www.denistouret.net/textes/Verges.html

Vladimir Lenin photo

“The capture of Simbirsk, my home town, is a wonderful tonic, the best treatment for my wounds. I feel a new lease of life and energy.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 98.
Collected Works

Clement Attlee photo
George Sand photo

“In the stormy days of our youth, we imagine that solitude is a sure refuge from the assaults of life, a certain balm for the wounds of battle. This is a serious mistake, and experience teaches us that, if we cannot live in peace with our fellow-men, neither romantic raptures nor aesthetic enjoyment will ever fill the abyss gaping at the bottom of our hearts.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

Dans les jours orageux de la jeunesse, on s'imagine que la solitude est le grand refuge contre les atteintes, le grand remède aux blessures du combat; c'est une grave erreur, et l'expérience de la vie nous apprend que, là ou l'on ne peut vivre en paix avec ses semblables, il n'est point d'admiration poétique ni de jouissances d'art capables de combler l'abîme qui se creuse au fond de l'âme.
Un Hiver à Majorque, pt. 3, ch. 5 (1855); Robert Graves (trans.) Winter in Majorca (Chicago: Academy Press, 1978) p. 165

Bai Juyi photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“Heal the Wound, Cure the illness, but let the Dying spirit go”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Chapter 5

William Shatner photo
Enver Hoxha photo

“The sacrifices of our people were very great. Out of a population of one million, 28,000 were killed, 12,600 wounded, 10,000 were made political prisoners in Italy and Germany, and 35,000 made to do forced labour, of ground; all the communications, all the ports, mines and electric power installations were destroyed, our agriculture and livestock were plundered, and our entire national economy was wrecked.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Enver Hoxha, Selected Works, 1941–1948, vol. I (Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House, 1974, 599-600)
Writings, Selected Works, 1941–1948

Margaret Thatcher photo
Joyce Kilmer photo

“Guide Thou my hand within that hand of Thine —
Thy wounded hand! — until its tremblings take
Strength from Thy touch.”

Dora Greenwell (1821–1882) English poet

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 88.

Ben Stein photo
Giorgio de Chirico photo

“Painting is the magic art, the fire set alight on the windows of the rich dwelling, as on those of the humble hovel, from the last rays of the setting sun, it is the long mark, the humid mark, the fluent and still mark that the dying wave etches on the hot sand, it is the darting of the immortal lizard on the rock burnt by the midday heat, it is the rainbow of conciliation, on sad May afternoons, after the storm has passed, down there, making a dark backdrop to the almond trees in flower, to the gardens with their washed colours, to the ploughmen's huts, smiling and tranquil, it is the livid cloud chased by the vehement blowing of Aeolus enraged, it is the nebulous disk of the fleeting moon behind the ripped-open funereal curtain of a disturbed sky in the deep of night, it is the blood of the bull stabbed in the arena, of the warrior fallen in the heat of battle, of Adonis' immaculate thigh wounded by the obstinate boar's curved tusk, it is the sail swollen with the winds of distant seas, it is the centuries-old tree browned in the autumn..”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from the first lines in De Cirico's essay 'Painting', 1938; from http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/211_Painting_1938_Metaphysical_Art.pdf 'Painting', 1938 - G. de Chirico, presentation to the catalogue of his solo exhibition Mostra personale del pittore Giorgio de Chirico, Galleria Rotta, Genoa, May 1938], p. 211
1920s and later

Matthew Arnold photo
Necro (rapper) photo

“I make beats like surgeons resume
To stitch up your wounds
Inside the emergency room
They must work urgently or you'll permanently be in a tomb
You see in the clergy soon
I enjoy physical intimacy with young men”

Necro (rapper) (1976) American rapper

Song 24 Shots http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/24-Shots-lyrics-Necro/64198B0091F2423E48256D98000D6B54

George Herbert photo

“241. An ill wound is cured, not an ill name.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Lech Kaczyński photo

“I haven't been wounded, but I can still feel that hit. I will not tolerate such behaviour.”

Lech Kaczyński (1949–2010) Polish politician, president of Poland

President Kaczyński's comment on being attacked by an anarchist with a blueberry-and-cream pie after banning an LGBT Equality Parade in Warsaw (2 June 2004)

Marie de France photo

“But he who does not let his infirmity be known can scarcely expect to receive a cure. Love is an invisible wound within the body, and, since it has its source in nature, it is a long-lasting ill.”

Mes ki ne mustre s'enferté
A peine en peot aver santé:
Amur est plaie dedenz cors,
E si ne piert nïent defors.
Ceo est un mal que lunges tient,
Pur ceo que de nature vient.
"Guigemar", line 481; p. 49.
Lais

James Fallows photo

“A little bullet pays off so much in wound ballistics. That is what people who choose these weapons know.”

James Fallows (1949) American journalist

"Why the AR-15 Is So Lethal", The Atlantic (7 November 2017)

“To wound the heart is to create it.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Herir al corazón es crearlo.
Voces (1943)

Daniel Handler photo
John Gray photo
William Luther Pierce photo
Guillaume Apollinaire photo

“You see before you a man in his right mind
Worldly-wise and with access to death
Having tested the sorrow of love and its ecstasies
Having sometimes even astonished the professors
Good with languages
Having travelled a great deal
Having seen battle in the Artillery and the Infantry
Wounded in the head trepanned under chloroform
Having lost my best friends in the butchery
As much of antiquity and modernity as can be known I know”

Me voici devant tous un homme plein de sens
Connaissant la vie et de la mort ce qu'un vivant peut connaître
Ayant éprouvé les douleurs et les joies de l'amour
Ayant su quelquefois imposer ses idées
Connaissant plusieurs langages
Ayant pas mal voyagé
Ayant vu la guerre dans l'Artillerie et l'lnfanterie
Blessé à la tête trépané sous le chloroforme
Ayant perdu ses meilleurs amis dans l'effroyable lutte
Je sais d'ancien et de nouveau autant qu'un homme seul pourrait des deux savoir
"La jolie rousse" (The Pretty Redhead), line 1; p. 133.
Calligrammes (1918)

Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo
Isadora Duncan photo
Gregory Scott Paul photo
Rudyard Kipling photo
Friedrich Paulus photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Anish Kapoor photo
Walter Cronkite photo
Georges Bataille photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
William Hazlitt photo

“The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be as constantly wound up.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Cant and Hypocrisy"
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)

Joseph Heller photo
Anna Akhmatova photo

“Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound.
I could never have borne it. So take the thing
that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground.
Whisk the lamps away…
Night.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

No, it is not I, it is else who is suffering.
I could not have borne it. And this thing, which has happened
Let them cover it with black cloths,
And take away the lanterns...
Night.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue

Charles Lamb photo
H.L. Mencken photo
Alvin C. York photo
Agnolo Firenzuola photo

“He who would ease the pain of his wound, should pay his doctor well. Isn’t it so, Doctor? And he who would be cured should pay him badly.”

Agnolo Firenzuola (1493–1543) Italian poet and litterateur

Act V., Scene II. — (Cornelio).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 274.
I Lucidi (published 1549)

Mao Zedong photo
Annie Besant photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo

“Here sits the Unicorn;
The wounds in his side
Still bleed”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

The Unicorn in Captivity (1955)

Warren Farrell photo
Richard Stallman photo

“Andrew Holland was prosecuted in the UK for possessing "extreme pornography", a term which appears to mean porn that judges and prosecutors consider shocking. He had received a video showing a tiger having sex with a woman, or at least apparently so.
He was found innocent because the video he received was a joke. I am glad he was not punished, but this law is nonetheless a threat to other people. If Mr Holland had had a serious video depicting a tiger having sex with a woman, he still would not deserve to go to prison. … I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
But this law is not concerned with protecting animals, since it does not care whether the animal really had sex, or really existed at all. It only panders to the prejudice of censors.
A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?
Perhaps I am spared because this photo isn't "disgusting", but "disgusting" is a subjective matter; we must not imprison people merely because someone feels disgusted. I find the sight of wounds disgusting; fortunately surgeons do not. Maybe there is someone who considers it disgusting for a parrot to have sex with a human. Or for a dolphin or tiger to have sex with a human. So what? Others feel that all sex is disgusting. There are prejudiced people that want to ban all depiction of sex, and force all women to cover their faces. This law and the laws they want are the same in spirit.
Threatening people with death or injury is a very bad thing, but violence is no less bad for being nonsexual. Is it worse to shoot someone while stroking that person's genitals than to shoot someone from a few feet away? If I were going to be the victim, and I were invited to choose one or the other, I would choose whichever one gave me the best chance to escape.
Images of violence can be painful to see, but they are no better for being nonsexual. I saw images of gruesome bodily harm in the movie Pulp Fiction. I do not want to see anything like that again, sex or no sex. That is no reason to censor these works, and would still not be a reason even if most people reacted to them as I do.
Since the law doesn't care whether a real human was really threatened with harm, it is not really concerned about our safety from violence, any more than it is concerned with avoiding suffering for corpses or animals. It is only prejudice, taking a form that can ruin people's lives.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Extreme Pornography Law in the UK" (2010) http://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html
2010s

Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Thomas Brooks photo
Attila photo

“Here you stand, after conquering mighty nations and subduing the world. I therefore think it foolish for me to goad you with words, as though you were men who had not been proved in action. Let a new leader or an untried army resort to that. It is not right for me to say anything common, nor ought you to listen. For what is war but your usual custom? Or what is sweeter for a brave man than to seek revenge with his own hand? It is a right of nature to glut the soul with vengeance. Let us then attack the foe eagerly; for they are ever the bolder who make the attack. Despise this union of discordant races! To defend oneself by alliance is proof of cowardice. See, even before our attack they are smitten with terror. They seek the heights, they seize the hills and, repenting too late, clamor for protection against battle in the open fields. You know how slight a matter the Roman attack is. While they are still gathering in order and forming in one line with locked shields, they are checked, I will not say by the first wound, but even by the dust of battle. Then on to the fray with stout hearts, as is your wont. Despise their battle line. Attack the Alani, smite the Visigoths! Seek swift victory in that spot where the battle rages. For when the sinews are cut the limbs soon relax, nor can a body stand when you have taken away the bones. Let your courage rise and your own fury burst forth! Now show your cunning, Huns, now your deeds of arms! Let the wounded exact in return the death of his foe; let the unwounded revel in slaughter of the enemy. No spear shall harm those who are sure to live; and those who are sure to die Fate overtakes even in peace. And finally, why should Fortune have made the Huns victorious over so many nations, unless it were to prepare them for the joy of this conflict. Who was it revealed to our sires the path through the Maeotian swamp, for so many ages a closed secret? Who, moreover, made armed men yield to you, when you were as yet unarmed? Even a mass of federated nations could not endure the sight of the Huns. I am not deceived in the issue;--here is the field so many victories have promised us. I shall hurl the first spear at the foe. If any can stand at rest while Attila fights, he is a dead man.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

As quoted by Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths http://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html#attila, translated by Charles C. Mierow

Adam Goldstein photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“What makes the vanity of others insufferable to us is that it wounds our own.”

Ce qui nous rend la vanité des autres insupportable, c'est qu'elle blesse la nôtre.
Maxim 389.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

W. Somerset Maugham photo
Ahmed Shah Durrani photo

“Next morning the sun revealed a horrid spectacle on the vast plain south of PAnipat. On the actual field of the combat thirty-one distinct heaps of the slain were counted, the number of bodies in each ranging from 500 upwards to 1000 and in four up to 1500 a rough total of 28,000. In addition to these, the ditch round the Maratha camp was full of dead bodies, partly the victims of disease and famine during the long siege and partly wounded men who had crawled out of the fighting to die there. West and south of PAnipat city, the jungle and the road in the line of MarAtha retreat were littered with the remains of those who had fallen unresisting in the relentless DurrAni pursuit or from hunger and exhaustion. Their number - probably three-fourths non-combatants and one-fourth soldiers - could not have been far short of the vast total of those slain in the battlefield. 'The hundreds who lay down wounded, perished from the severity of the cold.'….
'After the havoc of combat followed massacre in cold blood. Several hundreds of MarAthas had hidden themselves in the hostile city of PAnipat through folly or helplessness; and these were hunted out next day and put to the sword. According to one plausible account, the sons of Abdus Samad Khan and Mian Qutb received the DurrAni king's permission to avenge their father's death by an indiscriminate massacre of the MarAthas for one day, and in this way nearly nine thousand men perished; these were evidently non-combatants. The eyewitness Kashiraj Pandit thus describes the scene: 'Every Durrani soldier brought away a hundred or two of prisoners and slew them in the outskirts of their camp, crying out, When I started from our country, my mother, father, sister and wife told me to slay so may kafirs for their sake after we had gained the victory in this holy war, so that the religious merit of this act [of infidel slaying] might accrue to them. In this way, thousands of soldiers and other persons were massacred. In the Shah's camp, except the quarters of himself and his nobles, every tent had a heap of severed heads before it. One may say that it was verily doomsday for the MarAtha people.'….
The booty captured within the entrenchment was beyond calculation and the regiments of Khans [i. e. 8000 troopers of AbdAli clansmen] did not, as far as possible, allow other troops like the IrAnis and the TurAnis to share in the plunder; they took possession of everything themselves, but sold to the Indian soldiers handsome Brahman women for one tuman and good horses for two tumans each.' The Deccani prisoners, male and female reduced to slavery by the victorious army numbered 22,000, many of them being the sons and other relatives of the sardArs or middle class men. Among them 'rose-limbed slave girls' are mentioned.' Besides these 22,000 unhappy captives, some four hundred officers and 6000 men fled for refuge to ShujA-ud-daulah's camp, and were sent back to the Deccan with monetary help by that nawab, at the request of his Hindu officers. The total loss of the MarAthas after the battle is put at 50,000 horses, captured either by the AfghAn army or the villagers along the route of flight, two hundred thousand draught cattle, some thousands of camels, five hundred elephants, besides cash and jewellery. 'Every trooper of the Shah brought away ten, and sometimes twenty camels laden with money. The captured horses were beyond count but none of them was of value; they came like droves of sheep in their thousands.”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.210-11

Henry David Thoreau photo

“As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday

Edgar Degas photo
Charles Dickens photo
Washington Irving photo
Dorothy Parker photo

“Bringing in a wounded soldier is getting to be rather like waving an American flag at the end of an act. One cannot harbor feelings of unmixed admiration for the playwright who will hide behind either of them. p. 250”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 4: 1921

Edwin Abbott Abbott photo
Muhammad of Ghor photo

“When the army was mustered, it was found to amount to "fifty thousand mounted men clad in armour and coats of mail," with which they advanced to fight against the Rai of Benares… The Rai of Benares, Jai Chand, the chief of idolatry and perdition, advanced to oppose the royal troops with an army… The Rai of Benares, who prided himself on the number of his forces and war elephants," seated on a lofty howdah, received a deadly wound from an arrow, and "fell from his exalted seat to the earth." His head was carried on the point of a spear to the commander, and " his body was thrown to the dust of contempt." "The impurities of idolatry were purged by the water of the sword from that land, and the country of Hind was freed from vice and superstition."… From that place the royal army proceeded towards Benares 'which is the centre of the country of Hind, and here they destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations; and the knowledge of the law became promulgated, and the foundations of religion were established.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the fight with the Rai of Banares and capture of Asni and of Benares. Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 222-223 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Woody Allen photo

“I WANTED nothing more than to be a foreign filmmaker, but of course I was from Brooklyn, which was not a foreign country. Through a happy accident I wound up being a foreign filmmaker because I couldn’t raise money any other way.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

As quoted in the New York Times, That’s Amore: Italy as Muse: Woody Allen on Italian Movies and ‘To Rome With Love’ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/movies/woody-allen-on-italian-movies-and-to-rome-with-love.html?_r=1&smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=MO-E-FB-SM-LIN-TAI-061912-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click, June 15, 2012.
Others

Ma Zhanshan photo
William Cullen Bryant photo

“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Battlefield http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page222 (1839), st. 9

Gene Simmons photo

“They first sallied forth in a body of about 500 persons to attack the market place of the village known as Poorwa, where they slaughtered a cow. With the blood of the animal they defiled a Hindu temple. Then they hung up the four quarters (of the cow) in the different parts of the market place. They maltreated and wounded an unfortunate Brahmin and threatened to make him a Muslim… The village of Laoghatty in the Nadia district was their next object attack. Here they commenced operations by the repetition of the same outrage to the religious feelings of the Hindus which they had committed at Poorwa, viz, the slaughter of a cow in that part of the village exclusively occupied by Hindu residents. But being opposed by Hardeb Ray, a principal inhabitant of the village, and a Brahmin, at the head of a party of villagers, an affray ensued in which one Debnath Ray was killed and Hardeb Ray and a number of villagers were severely wounded… Titu’s party went on increasing and with growing confidence they went on killing cows in different places, making raids on the neighbouring villages, forcing from the raiyats agreements to furnish grain, compelling many of them to profess conformity to the tenets of their sect… They openly proclaimed themselves masters of the country, asserting that the Mussalmans from whom the English usurped it, were the rightful owners of the empire… The rebels issued parwanas to the principal zamindars of the district. Their tenor was as follows: “This country is now given to our Deen Mohammed. You must, therefore, immediately send grain to the army.’ In a written report the magistrate of Nadia states that a paper written in Bengali and signed in Arabic characters, was put into his hand, purporting to be an order of Allah to the Pal Chowdhuries of Ranaghat to supply russud (rations) to the army of fakirs who were about to fight with the government.”

About the exploits of Titumir. Narahari Kaviraj, Wahabi And Faraizi Rebels of Bengal, New Delhi, 1982, Pp. 37-38, 43-44, 50-51. Quoted in Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

James Russell Lowell photo
George Washington Bethune photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound; great debts are like cannon, of loud noise but little danger.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=yEA_AQAAMAAJ&q=%22small+debts+are+like+small+shot+they+are+rattling+on+every+side+and+can+scarcely+be+escaped+without+a+wound+great+debts+are+like+cannon+of+loud+noise+but+little+danger%22&pg=PA189#v=onepage to Joseph Simpson, circa 1759
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Keshia Chante photo
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo

“Mr. Grey said, that he was prepared to defend the country, not only against an invasion of a foreign enemy, wishing to inculcate their own dangerous principles, which were clearly most subversive of civil society, but he would defend it, at the risk of his life, against the subjects of any government, if it was the best that human wisdom could devise; he did not however think it was candid, or by any means conciliatory, in the right hon. gentleman, on every occasion that presented itself to introduce the words "just and necessary" war. He declared he was much obliged to an hon. gentleman who had done him the honour to remember his words. He had declared, and he would declare again, that he would rather live under the most despotic monarchy, nay, even under that of the king of Prussia, or the empress of Russia, than under the present government of France. He wished the chancellor of the exchequer had descended a little from his high and haughty tone of prerogative, and had informed the House, in plain, simple, intelligible language his real opinion of the legality of the measure which ministers had thought to pursue with respect to voluntary subscriptions. As for himself, he would insist, that to raise money without the authority of parliament, for any public purpose whatsoever, was illegal; and if right hon. gentleman should insist on contrary, it would give a deeper wound the constitution than any that it had received even from that right hon. gentleman.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Commons (26 March 1794), reported in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXXI (London: 1818), pp. 94-95.
1790s

Angela Davis photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo

“I remember a rusher; not on a sports team. A rusher who carried an American flag, the regimental flag of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers. It is an attack on the Confederate fort known as Battery Wagner outside of Charleston, south Carolina, in July of 1863. 54th Massachusetts was an all black regiment, one of the first to be recruited after the Emancipation Proclamation. The attack was almost a suicide mission. the regiment swept up to the walls of the fort. penetrated briefly, only to be driven out with heavy losses. the rusher I am thinking of was the color sergeant of the regiment. his name was William H. Carney. He had been born a slave. He was now a free man and a soldier. He brought the stars and stripes off the ramparts of Fort Wagner, despite being wounded in the chest and leg, staggering back under fire to a field hospital, and there, just before he collapsed, he surrendered the flag into the hands of several others there saying, "The old flag never touched the ground, boys!" Before the first of January 1863 when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law, he didn't have a flag, he doesn't have a country. He was a slave; he was an unperson. But in July of 1863, he was a free man. As a free man, there was no symbol to him of greater value than that flag. So you understand that it is difficult for me to understand why people would insult it.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

"Free Speech and the First Amendment" https://www.c-span.org/video/?437511-1/free-speech-amendment&start=150 (20 November 2017), C-SPAN
2010s

Samuel R. Delany photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Rod McKuen photo

“If we only have love
We can reach those in pain
We can heal all our wounds
We can use our own names.”

Rod McKuen (1933–2015) American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer

Translations and adaptations, If We Only Have Love (1968)

Robert Graves photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Josh Homme photo

“Time wounds all the heals, as we fade out of view.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

"I Sat By the Ocean", ...Like Clockwork (2013)
Lyrics, Queens of the Stone Age

Julian of Norwich photo
Jean Racine photo

“Ariane, my sister, wounded by what love,
You died on the shores where you were abandoned.”

Ariane, ma sœur, de quel amour blessée,
Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée.
Phèdre, act I, scene III.
Phèdre (1677)

Jeff VanderMeer photo
Heinrich Heine photo

“The duration of religions has always been dependent on human need for them. Christianity has been a blessing for suffering humanity during eighteen centuries ; it has been providential, divine, holy. All that it has done in the interest of civilisation, curbing the strong and strengthening the weak, binding together the nations through a common sympathy and a common tongue, and all else that its apologists have urged in its praise all this is as nothing compared with that great consolation it has bestowed on man. Eternal praise is due to the symbol of that suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the crucified Christ, whose blood was as a healing balm that flowed into the wounds of humanity. The poet especially must acknowledge with reverence the terrible sublimity of this symbol.”

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

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up. p. 25
Context: I believe in progress; I believe that happiness is the goal of humanity, and I cherish a higher idea of the Divine Being than those pious folk who suppose that man was created only to suffer. Even here on earth I would strive, through the blessings of free political and industrial institutions, to bring about that reign of felicity which, in the opinion of the pious, is to be postponed till heaven is reached after the day of Judgment. The one expectation is perhaps as vain as the other; there may be no resurrection of humanity either in a political or in a religious sense. Mankind, it may be, is doomed to eternal misery; the nations are perhaps under a perpetual curse, condemned to be trodden under foot by despots, to be made the instruments of their accomplices and the laughing-stocks of their menials. Yet, though all this be the case, it will be the duty even of those who regard Christianity as an error still to uphold it; and men must journey barefoot through Europe, wearing monks' cowls, preaching the doctrine of renunciation and the vanity of all earthly possessions, holding up before the gaze of a scourged and despised humanity the consoling Cross, and promising, after death, all the glories of heaven.
The duration of religions has always been dependent on human need for them. Christianity has been a blessing for suffering humanity during eighteen centuries; it has been providential, divine, holy. All that it has done in the interest of civilisation, curbing the strong and strengthening the weak, binding together the nations through a common sympathy and a common tongue, and all else that its apologists have urged in its praise all this is as nothing compared with that great consolation it has bestowed on man. Eternal praise is due to the symbol of that suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the crucified Christ, whose blood was as a healing balm that flowed into the wounds of humanity. The poet especially must acknowledge with reverence the terrible sublimity of this symbol.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.
I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish a broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, and irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.

Yevgeny Zamyatin photo

“Of course, to wound oneself is difficult, even dangerous. But for those who are alive, living today as yesterday and yesterday as today is still more difficult.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: A new form is not intelligible to everyone; many find it difficult. Perhaps. The ordinary, the banal is, of course, simpler, more pleasant, more comfortable. Euclid's world is very simple, and Einstein's world is very difficult — but it is no longer possible to return to Euclid. No revolution, no heresy is comfortable or easy. For it is a leap, it is a break in the smooth evolutionary curve, and a break is a wound, a pain. But the wound is necessary: most of mankind suffers from hereditary sleeping sickness, and victims of this sickness (entropy) must not be allowed to sleep, or it will be their final sleep, death.
The same disease often afflicts artists and writers: they sink into satiated slumber in forms once invented and twice perfected. And they lack the strength to wound themselves, to cease loving what they once loved, to leave their old, familiar apartments filled with the scent of laurel leaves and walk away into the open field, to start anew.
Of course, to wound oneself is difficult, even dangerous. But for those who are alive, living today as yesterday and yesterday as today is still more difficult.

Cyrano de Bergerac photo

“How do you think a spade, sword or dagger wounds us? Because the metal is a form of matter in which the particles are closer and more tightly bound together than those of your flesh.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)
Context: How do you think a spade, sword or dagger wounds us? Because the metal is a form of matter in which the particles are closer and more tightly bound together than those of your flesh. The metal forces flesh to yield to strength, just as a galloping squadron penetrates a battle line that is of much greater extent.
And why is a piece of hot metal hotter than a piece of burning wood? Because the metal contains more heat in a smaller volume. The particles in the metal are more compact than those in the wood.

Ray Bradbury photo

“I am the dreamer and the doer
I the hearer and the knower
I the giver and the taker
I the sword and the wound of sword.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)
Context: I am the dreamer and the doer
I the hearer and the knower
I the giver and the taker
I the sword and the wound of sword.
If this be true, then let sword fall free from hand.
I embrace myself.
I laugh until I weep
And weep until I smile…

Jacques Brel photo

“We can heal all our wounds
We can use our own names.”

Jacques Brel (1929–1978) Belgian singer-songwriter

If Only We Have Love (1957)
Context: If we only have love
We can reach those in pain
We can heal all our wounds
We can use our own names.

P. J. O'Rourke photo