Guillotine Quotes

The loss inside him kept piling - vertebrae shattered, finger bones lost, gravestone past and guillotine future, ghost woman and her ghost curls, ~ Ryan Graudin

Death is a guillotine blade hanging over our heads, reminding us every second of every day that this life we treasure so much is no more important to the universe than those of the two hundred thousand insects each of us kills with the front of our car every year. ~ Neil Strauss

tumbril on his way to the Guillotine. ~ Charles Dickens

I feel we are becoming divergent upon the paths we are walking down. I feel we are becoming distant, as the way we see things becomes more pronounced. I feel I know you less, where once I knew you like I knew myself before. I fear that in the end, we will become no more. When that guillotine descends, friend will be friend no longer. As time ascends, we will move forward on different paths in life's Wonderland. ~ Jennifer Megan Varnadore

I shall die in the belief that to make France free, republican and prosperous, a little ink would have sufficed - and only one guillotine. ~ Camille Desmoulins

What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the guillotine. ~ John Adams

The revolutionary Terror, which is attacked for its revolutionary tribunal, its law of suspects and its guillotine, was a process welded to a regime of popular sovereignty in which the object was to conquer tyranny or die for liberty. This Terror was willed by those who, having won sovereign power by dint of insurrection, refused to let this be destroyed by counter-revolutionary enemies ~ Sophie Wahnich

The dead are on their way to work, grey limbs rubbing together in an open grave, stack on stack in the metal containers of car, tube and train. The grisly carriages are painted bright colors, guillotine colors of tumbril and blade, execution-bright. Each man and woman goes to their particular scaffold, kneels, and is killed day after day. Each collects their severed head and catches the train home. Some say that they enjoy their work. ~ Jeanette Winterson

I put my head out of my window and see how much the wind's knife wants to slice it off. On this unseen guillotine, I've placed the eyeless head of all my desires. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

If a man has tortured and killed your father, your mother, your sweetheart, in short, one of those beings who leave an eternal emptiness and a perpetually bleeding wound when they are torn from your heart, do you think society has given you sufficient reparation because the blade of the guillotine has passed between the murderer's trapezius and his occipital bone, because the who made you undergo long years of mental and emotional suffering has undergone a few seconds of physical pain? ~ Alexandre Dumas

For misdirected love, the attainment of its object is, indeed, the best cure; but it cures as the guillotine cures headache. ~ Ivan Panin

All the ideas in the universe can be described by words. Therefore, if you simply take all the words and rearrange them randomly enough times, you're bound to hit upon at least a few great ideas eventually. Sausage donkey swallows flying guillotine, my love assembly line. ~ Jarod Kintz

Why is it I feel a new nostalgia for the era of the guillotine? ~ Dennis Cooper

I detected sarcoma." He put his finger on his neck. "Right here."
The other man nodded
his head seemed to be nodding continually
and muttered:
"Yes. There's no possibility of operating."
"Of course not," said the old specialist, his eyes shining with a kind of sinister irony. "There's only one thing that could remove it
the guillotine. ~ Henri Barbusse

If my thought-dreams could be seen/ They'd probably put my head in a guillotine. ~ Bob Dylan

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral. ~ Victor Hugo

Charlotte Corday walked alone Paris birds sang sugar calls Charlotte walked down lanes of stone through the haze of perfume stalls Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene Heard the singing guillotine ~ Peter Weiss

The old terms must be invented with new meaning and given new explanations. Liberty, equality, and fraternity are no longer what they were in the days of the late-lamented guillotine. This is what the politicians will not understand; and that is why I hate them. They want only their own special revolutions- external revolutions, political revolutions, etc. But that is only dabbling. What is really needed is a revolution of the human spirit. ~ Henrik Ibsen

I could not bear to leave you coldly or hurt you in any way, even if it were the smallest hurt."
„A small hurt," he said. "That is like saying the guillotine blade nicks a bit. ~ Loretta Chase

The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.
But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people positively do not want to be "done good" by the humanitarian. Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine. ~ Isabel Paterson

If you want respect, you must take your medicine like a brave aristocrat," he said. "Think of the French nobles who walked to the guillotine, double chins aloft. ~ Loretta Chase

We may remain more or less open-minded on the subject of the death penalty, indisposed to commit ourselves, so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. ~ Victor Hugo

Sophie Scholl faced her own death with supreme fearlessness and a deep faith in her moral, political and religious convictions. She showed that brutal dictatorships can only be averted through the courage and resistance of all citizens. She walked towards the guillotine calmly and with no trace of fear, believing that what she had done was the right thing to do. There have been many brave indiviuals in history. Sophie Scholl walks alongside the very bravest of them all. A white rose that will never die - with a profound message: FREEDOM
Please pass Sophie's message on. ~ Frank McDonough

This isn't an accident; this happens because to people at the top, the scariest thing is how many people there are below. They need to watch us. They need to monitor what we're thinking. It's the only thing between them and a guillotine. ~ Max Barry

One may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine with one's own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for or against. Some ~ Victor Hugo

Bro, we're living in the Kali Yuga, a Dark Age of petite bourgeoisie ideology, a petite bourgeoisie ideology whose resources and ruses are infinite and which ubiquitously permeates the world
high culture, low culture, bienpensant media, prestige literature, pop music, commerce, sports, academia, you name it. The only reasonable response to this situation is to maintain an implacable antipathy toward everything. Denounce everyone. Make war against yourself. Guillotine all groveling intellectuals. That said, I think it's important to maintain a cheery disposition. This will hasten the restoration of Paradise. I've memorized this line from Andre Breton's magnificent homage to Antonin Artaud
"I salute Antonin Artaud for his passionate, heroic negation of everything that causes us to be dead while alive." Given the state of things, that's what we need to be doing, all the time
negating everything that causes us to be dead while alive. ~ Mark Leyner

Grease the guillotine with the fat of tyrants. Pull the concubine out of the clergyman`s bed.

Monarch`s blood must flow, as thick as our boots. From there the free republic will rise. ~ Friedrich Hecker

Madame Guillotine gets mad at me. Not because I told them to shove it, but because I didn't say it in French. What is wrong with this school? ~ Stephanie Perkins

The happily ever after thing. It's great when she marries the prince or whatever and they say that. But they just don't show the part where there's a revolution and they drag her to the guillotine. ~ Mark D. Diehl

Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill. ~ Ray Bradbury

They call me a tyrant . . . One arrives at a tyrant's throne by the help of scoundrels . . . What faction do I belong to? You yourselves. What is that faction which, since the Revolution began, has crushed the factions and swept away hireling traitors? It is you, it is the people, it is the principles of the Revolution. . . .

[trans. G. Rudé, ellipses sic; Last Speech to the Convention (July 26, 1794)]. ~ Maximilien Robespierre

And yet, even when all was well, as Shakespeare said, that ends well, did they say 'Hey, Kendra, we understand that you made a noble effort. Why not come to the palace for some champagne sometime?' Noooooo. They're all, 'Get thee from our kingdom, witch, or it's the guillotine." They're lucky I didn't turn them into talking swine. ~ Alex Flinn

Idealists and reformers all become executioners in their turn. The road to utopia ends with the steps of the scaffold, the endless moment of the guillotine. ~ Grant Morrison

If you press your ear to the turf that is stolen
You can hear the sound of limitations exploding
Please sir, may we have another portion?
We're children of the beast that dodged the abortion
Neck placed firm 'tween the floor and the Florsheim
We'll shut your shit down, don't call it extortion
Caution -- we're coming for your head
So call the Feds and get files to shred
Every textbook read said bring you the bread
But guess what we got you instead?

We got the guillotine, we got the guillotine ~ Boots Riley

Forget the noose. Forget the Iron Maiden. Forget the electric chair or the guillotine. The mind was mankind's most painful torture chamber, the blessed liberty to cogitate offering either doom or salvation, depending on one's disposition. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

At first they'd thought the guillotine would be a sweet, clean business, but when you have twenty, perhaps thirty heads to take off in a day, there are problems of scale. ~ Hilary Mantel

I mean, I could go ahead and cut my head off in the guillotine, and it looks great, ... Well, now you turn on CNN and guys are really getting their heads cut off ... As insane as our fantasy world gets, it's nowhere near as scary as reality. ~ Alice Cooper

She had stepped into the thin strip of earth that they claimed as their own. Bound by the last building on Brewster and a brick wall, they reigned in that unlit alley like dwarfed warrior kings. Born with the appendages of power, circumcised by the guillotine, and baptized with the steam from a million non reflective mirrors, these young men wouldn't be called upon to thrust a bayonet into an Asian farmer, target a torpedo, scatter their iron seed from a B-52 into the wound of the earth, point a finger to move a nation, or stick a pole into the moon
and they knew it. They only had that three-hundred-foot alley to serve them as stateroom, armored tank, and executioner's chamber. ~ Gloria Naylor

The knife is the most permanent, the most immortal, the most ingenious of man's creations. The knife was a guillotine; the knife is a universal means of resolving all knots ... ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

I farther assure this noble Duke, that I neither encouraged nor provoked that worthy citizen to seek for plenty, liberty, safety, justice or lenity, in the famine, in the prisons, in the decrees of convention, in the revolutionary tribunal, and in the guillotine of Paris, rather than quietly to take up with what he could find in the glutted markets, the unbarricadoed streets, the drowsy Old Bailey judges, or, at worst, the airy, wholesome pillory of Old England. The choice of country was his own taste. The writings were the effects of his own zeal. In spite of his friend Dr. Priestley, he was a free agent. I admit, indeed, that my praises of the British government loaded with all its encumbrances; clogged with its peers and its beef; its parsons and its pudding; its Commons and its beer; and its dull slavish liberty of going about just as one pleases, had something to provoke a Jockey of Norfolk [Thomas Paine], who was inspired with the resolute ambition of becoming a citizen of France, to do something which might render him worthy of naturalization in that grand asylum of persecuted merit. ~ Edmund Burke

If you want to get into a good entrepreneurial business, guillotines may be in fashion. ~ Gerald Celente

Ever since my childhood, I was haunted by the search for perfection. An imperfectly cut paper literally made me ill. I would guillotine it. ~ Hans Arp

My mother, writing from France, admonished me to take care of my health as she had during the war. My head could be all set for the guillotine, and still my mother would scold me for forgetting my muffler. She never missed an opportunity to try and convince me that the world is a kindly place and that she'd done a good job in conceiving me. This alleged Providence was the great subterfuge of maternal thoughtlessness. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

During the greater part of the day the guillotine had been kept busy at its ghastly work: all that France had boasted of in the past centuries, of ancient names, and blue blood, had paid toll to her desire for liberty and for fraternity. ~ Emmuska Orczy

It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

March 20th. It is done. He was guillotined this morning. He made a good end, very good. It gave me infinite pleasure. How sweet it is to see a man's head cut off! The blood spurted out like a wave, like a wave. Oh, if I could, I would have liked to have bathed in it! What intoxicating ecstasy to crouch below it, to receive it in my hair and on my face, and rise up all crimson, all crimson! Ah, if people knew! ~ Guy De Maupassant

Babette looked too good for the place tonight, but then goodness is only relative after all ("Steps Going Up" aka "Guillotine" aka "Men Must Die") ~ Cornell Woolrich

I almost wish I had cancer. Then I'd either beat it or die from it. But my disease, even if successfully treated, will never go away. And it might not kill me. But it will hang over me like the blade of a guillotine; more threatening inert than if the blade suddenly slips and mercifully turns out my lights. This is my war to end all wars. ~ William Cope Moyers

A people that is able to say everything, becomes able to do everything. The crowd which follows me with admiration, would run with the same eagerness were I marching to the Guillotine. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

'The Sundial' is written with the kind of humor that would make a guillotine laugh. ~ Victor LaValle

In 1800, in the first interparty contest, the Federalists warned that presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, because of his sympathy expressed at the outset of the French Revolution, was 'the son of a half-breed Indian squaw' who would put opponents under the guillotine. ~ Robert Dallek

Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. ~ Charles Dickens

The guillotine is the masterpiece of the plastic arts
Its click
Creates perpetual motion
("The Head") ~ Blaise Cendrars

Three people were going to the guillotine. The first was a lawyer, who was led to the platform, blindfolded, and had his head put on the block. The executioner pulled the lanyard, but nothing happened. To avoid a messy lawsuit, the authorities allowed the lawyer to go free. The next man to the guillotine was a priest. They put his head on the block and pulled the lanyard, but nothing happened. The blade didn't come down. They thought it must have been divine intervention, so they let the priest go. The third man to the guillotine was an engineer. He waived his right to a blindfold, so they led him to the guillotine and put his head on the block. As he lay there, he said, Hey, wait. I think I see your problem. ~ Garrison Keillor

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light. ~ David Hockney

Farewell, my children, forever. I go to your Father. ~ Marie Antoinette

While a friend expects more and more favors, and seethes with jealousy, these former enemies expected nothing and got everything. A man suddenly spared the guillotine is a grateful man indeed, and will go to the ends of the earth for the man who has pardoned him. ~ Robert Greene

But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that along with happiness, in the exact same way, in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here, my man, just hold it this way, while I look into it a bit," he said one day to Fitz G., putting a wounded arm into the keeping of a sound one, and proceeding to poke about among bits of bone and visible muscles, in a red and black chasm made by some infernal machine of the shot or shell description. Poor Fitz held on like a grim Death, ashamed to show fear before a woman, till it grew more than he could bear in silence; and, after a few smothered groans,he looked at me imploringly, as if he said, "I wouldn't, ma'am, if I could help it," and fainted quietly away.

Dr. P. looked up, gave a compassionate sort of cluck, and poked away more busily than ever, with a nod at me and a brief - "Never mind; be so good as to hold this till I finish."

I obeyed, cherishing the while a strong desire to insinuate a few of his own disagreeable knives and scissors into him, and see how he liked it. A very disrespectful and ridiculous fancy of course; for he was doing all that could be done, and the arm prospered finely in his hands. But the human mind is prone to prejudice; and though a personable man, speaking French like a born "Parley voo," and whipping off legs like an animated guillotine, I must confess to a sense of relief when he was ordered elsewhere; and suspect that several of the men would have faced a rebel battery with less trepidation than they did Dr. P., when he came briskly in on his morning round. ~ Louisa May Alcott

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I had one of those headaches. It kept pounding and got into that crazy realm where the guillotine seems like a good idea. ~ Patti Smith

The guillotine has to fall somewhere when the team under-produces, and more times than not it's fallen on me. ~ Dustin Penner

Everybody knows a guillotine choke, and most know how to get to one. But if you can create a different way to get to that choke, then you're going to surprise people. However, that will only happen one time, because once it gets used that one time, everyone will see that and start to train for it. ~ Bas Rutten

The whole famous Reign of Terror [of the 1790s] in fifteen months guillotined 2,596 aristos. The Versaillists [the anti-Communards of 1871] executed 20,000 before their firing squads in one week. Do these figures represent the comparative efficiency of guillotine and modern rifle or the comparative cruelty of upper and lower class mobs? ~ Guy Endore

On February 16, 1943, at 6:00 p.m., she was executed by guillotine. Her last words: "And I have loved Germany so. ~ Erik Larson

Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light. ~ Franz Kafka

If our school ever performed a play about the French Revolution, she could play the guillotine. ~ Robin Benway

Now I have discovered where it is that she goes. It's the guillotine that draws her, across the river in the Place Louis Quinze- Place de la Revolution now-where daily crowds gather, the vendors selling lemonade, the children playing prisoner's base, the old ladies gossiping as the heads fall. ~ Sandra Gulland

Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals - With no cure except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff. ~ Clare Boothe Luce

Aesthetes have it all over intellectuals in one very important respect: You'll rarely catch us hustling anyone off to the nearest guillotine. We're too busy trying to make the world more beautiful. Our hands are stained with ink and paint, not blood. ~ Terry Teachout

Instead, I gave them the only salute I could think of.
Two middle fingers. Held high for emphasis.
The six fiery orbs winked out at once. Hopefully, they'd died from affront.
Ben eyed me sideways as he maneuvered from shore. "What in the world are you doing?"
"Those red-eyed jerks were on the cliff," I spat, then immediately felt silly. "All I could think of."
Ben made an odd huffing sound I couldn't interpret. For a shocked second, I thought he was furious with me.
"Nice work, Victoria." Ben couldn't hold the laughter inside. "That oughta do it!"
I flinched, surprised by his reaction. Ben, cracking up at a time like this?
He had such a full, honest laugh - I wished I heard it more. Infectious, too. I couldn't help joining in, though mine came out in a low Beavis and Butthead cackle. Which made Ben howl even more.
In an instant, we were both in stitches at the absurdity of my one-finger salutes. At the insanity of the evening. At everything. Tears wet my eyes as Sewee bobbed over the surf, circling the southeast corner of the island. It was a release I desperately needed.
Ben ran a hand through his hair, then sighed deeply. "I love it," he snickered, steering Sewee through the breakers, keeping our speed to a crawl so the engine made less noise. "I love you, sometimes."
Abruptly, his good humor cut off like a guillotine. Ben's body went rigid. I felt a wave of panic roll from him, as if he'd accidently triggered a nuclear ~ Kathy Reichs

Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. ~ Charles Dickens

A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty of fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world- the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. ~ Charles Dickens

I twist like a flower
at the sound of your voice
But you leave the receiver
static most days
You have me growing into a dial tone

All it would take is your voice
saying my name
And I would behead myself
to be carried around on your lapel ~ Kait Rokowski

There was terror in each and every one of the people on that beautiful beach and on that breathtakingly beautiful evening. Terror of being alone, terror of the darkness filling their imaginations with devils, terror of doing anything not in the manuals of good behaviour, terror of God's judgement, of what other people would say, of the law punishing any mistake, terror of trying and failing, terror of succeeding and having to live with the envy of other people, terror of loving and being rejected, terror of asking for a rise in salary, of accepting an invitation, of going somewhere new, of not being able to speak a foreign language, of not making the right impression, of growing old, of dying, of being pointed on because of one's defects, of not being pointed out because of one's merits, of not being noticed either for one's defects or one's merits. Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign of terror, in the shadow of the guillotine. ~ Paulo Coelho

The reason the lawyers lead the line to the guillotine or the firing squad is that, while law is supposed to be a device to serve society, a civilized way of helping the wheels go round without too much friction, it is pretty hard to find a group less concerned with serving society and more concerned with serving themselves than the lawyers. ~ Fred Rodell

If you are a guillotine producer, watch out your head; because wickedness is a boomerang. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Allowing the war-prone individuals, bent on evil, to gain power in governments must be one of the most significant reasons that wars erupt. Individuals with prowar inclinations are naturally aggressive and seek power over others. As Friedrich Hayek argued in his book The Road to Serfdom, "the worst get on top." The power seekers also convince themselves that they are superior to average people and have a moral responsibility to use force to mold the world as they see fit. The propaganda is that war is for the sake of "goodness and righteousness." Isabel Paterson described it in her book The God of the Machine as "the humanitarian with a guillotine." Those who are more prone to peace tend to be complacent and to not resist the propaganda required to mobilize otherwise peaceful people to fight and die for the lies told and the false noble goals proposed by the self-appointed moral leaders. ~ Ron Paul

Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine. ~ Albert Camus

Buzz crouched between her feet and scrutinised as much as he could see of her perilous interior to find out if all was in order and there were no concealed fangs or guillotines inside her to ruin him. ~ Angela Carter

. . . the sun set . . . with guillotine-like speed this close to the equator. ~ Doug Stanton

But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all - but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now - this very instant - your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man - and that this is certain, certain! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

That's how I am! eyes peeled, scientific! first things first! the big ones! the small ones! ... if they're going to behead you ... for example! ... you don't take your eyes of the guillotine! ... look, the blade's dull!
-Executioner! you shout, hey, you lazy fucker! don't you have anyone sharpening that thing?
And the executioner scurries off, shit-assed and sheepish! ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

The "sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine," was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name. ~ Charles Dickens

I think I'll accept the challenge to battle. I can choose the terms, right? And I don't have the faintest idea how to 'prevent' a revolution. Besides, as far as I know, revolutions can get out of hand. Remember the German revolution, with the guillotine?"
Derna smirked. "German revolution? Guillotine? The guillotine was used in the French revolution. Nice try, little brother."
"I'm actually impressed he knew what a guillotine was," commented Armen, deadpan.
I glared at the two of them. Typical big sisters. They'd just ruined my chance to show off my knowledge. ~ Kaivallya Dasu

What opposite discoveries we have seen!
(Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)
One makes new noses, one a guillotine,
One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets;
But vaccination certainly has been
A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets, ... ~ Lord Byron

Of course Americans celebrate Independence Day as opposed to Yorktown Day. Who wants to barbecue a hot dog and ponder how we owe our independence to the French navy? Who wants to twirl sparklers and dwell on how the French government's expenditures in America contributed to the bankruptcy that sparked the French Revolution that would send Rochambeau to prison, Lafayette into exile (then prison), and our benefactor His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI to the guillotine. ~ Sarah Vowell

When we experience fear, it cuts us off from our power. It cuts us off from knowledge and experience. It is a guillotine that falls and separates. ~ Frederick Lenz

Watch your back, wolf. There's a pall over this place and the bears are racking up enemies faster than Wal-Mart rakes in sales. When the time comes, it's going to get bloody. (Thorn)
I wouldn't have it any other way. (Fang)
Don't be so arrogant. Long before I was the debonair sophisticate standing in front of you, I was a warlord. I put more blood on my blade than Madame la Guillotine. The one thing all that battle taught me is that no one walks away without scars. No one. (Thorn) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine! ~ Charles Dickens

He committed suicide in 1794 because the Revolutionary authorities had made it clear that they planned to reward his irreverent wit with a visit to the guillotine. ~ Clive James

We may be indifferent to the death penalty and not declare ourselves either way so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. But when we do, the shock is violent, and we are compelled to choose sides, for or against ... Death belongs to God alone. ~ Victor Hugo

Ray Bannister started to build the guillotine the day Jerry Renault returned to Monument. ~ Robert Cormier

I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty. ~ Roseanne Barr

Sink me! Your taylors have betrayed you! T'wood serve you better to send THEM to Madam Guillotine ~ Emmuska Orczy

Sometimes a revolution turns into an actual government, or at the very least an actual way of life that contrasts with days past like blood on snow. Such was the case in France, where even as the guillotine released a steady river of gore, Royalist insurrections were suppressed by what had become a sophisticated military.

In Toulon, the Royalist insurrection in 1793 led to an actual siege by republicans, spearheaded by none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. The Royalists in Toulon, supported by the British and Spanish, were feared by the republicans as an existential threat to every hope and promise of the revolution. For months there were bombardments, cannon fire that made the windows in the prison tremble. ~ Kelsey Brickl

How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Can men fly? ~ Salman Rushdie

Then, as she turned to walk away, Fred dropped the guillotine."So we're making Ev CEO," he said, his fork clenched in his hand. "You're going to get a passive chairman role and a silent board seat. We have some paperwork for you and a recommendation for a lawyer."Jack felt like he had just been hit in the face with a baseball bat. "Say that again," he stuttered to Fred, thinking he had heard incorrectly.Fred repeated himself almost verbatim: We're making Ev CEO. You're getting a passive chairman role. You will have a silent board seat. Here's the paperwork. Call a lawyer. ~ Nick Bilton

There is a new Barbie doll on the market. It's called Marie Antoinette Barbie with removable head; guillotine included! ~ Various

There everything is tolerated: the government and the guillotine, religion and the cholera. You are always acceptable to this world, you will never be missed by it. What, then, is the dominating impulse in this country without morals, without faith, without any sentiment, wherein, however, every sentiment, belief, and moral has its origin and end? It is gold and pleasure. Take ~ Honore De Balzac