To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
I love the old way best, the simple way of poison, where we too are strong as men.
—Euripides (480–406 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
We kill everybody, my dear. Some with bullets, some with words, and everybody with our deeds. We drive people into their graves, and neither see it nor feel it.
—Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) Russian Novelist, Dramatist, Political Activist
Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
—Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American Civil Liberties Lawyer
Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies.
—George Chapman (c.1560–1634) English Poet, Playwright
Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
Murder is born of love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder.
—Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French Journalist, Art Critic, Novelist, Playwright
Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man’s life.
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852) American Statesman, Lawyer
Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.
—Thomas Browne (1605–82) English Author, Physician
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
One to destroy, is murder by the law; to murder thousands takes a specious name—war’s glorious art, and gives immortal fame.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those who kill him risk nothing except promotion.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Novelist
When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
—Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859) English Essayist, Critic
The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with; the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody only thought of two minutes before he pulled it off.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero; numbers sanctify the crime.
—Beilby Porteus (1731–1809) Anglican Bishop of London
Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
It takes two to make a murder. There are born victims, born to have their throats cut, as the cut-throats are born to be hanged.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Satirist, Short Story Writer
Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime? If it is not, why make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime?
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Writer
A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.
—Graham Greene (1904–91) British Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
To murder character is as truly a crime as to murder the body; the tongue of the slanderer is brother to the dagger of the assassin.
—Tryon Edwards (1809–94) American Theologian, Author
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