Hangman Quotes

You keep distracting from the main point, Vaida. I did not come to Harare to study other people's scars. I have my own to worry about. They make me sick. I will never recover from the events that carved them into my body. You should focus on healing yours instead of creating new ones. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

If you violate Nature's laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman. ~ Luther Burbank

If it were today, I would have her heart cut out, true. But then I would have her head and arms and legs cut off. I would have them disembowel her. And then I would watch, in the town square, as the hangman heated the fire to white-heat with bellows, watch unblinking as he consigned each part of her to the fire. I would have archers around the square, who would shoot any bird or animal who came close to the flames, any raven or dog or hawk or rat. And I would not close my eyes until the princess was ash, and a gentle wind could scatter her like snow.

I did not do this thing, and we pay for our mistakes. ~ Neil Gaiman

Indeed, sir, he that sleeps feels not the toothache; but a man that were to sleep your sleep, and a hangman to help him to bed, I think he would change places with his officer; for look you, sir, you know not which way you shall go. ~ William Shakespeare

The poor always live on debt. At this point, time is the only thing I still have the credibility to borrow. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

In Panama, I found a spider that eats its own limbs during lean times. I am told they grow back. But though the distinction is razor-thin, desperation is not the same thing as determination. Nevertheless, auto-cannibalism is one the most intriguing phenomenon I have ever heard of. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

She had an exciting job, several good friends, her cat, her peanut M&Ms, the mystery novels she was forever reading, and - well, me. ~ Tom Savage

In an age like our own, when the artist is an altogether exceptional person, he must be allowed a certain amount of irresponsibility, just as a pregnant woman is. Still, no one would say that a pregnant woman should be allowed to commit murder, nor would anyone make such a claim for the artist, however gifted. If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear. And, after all, the worst crimes are not always the punishable ones. By encouraging necrophilic reveries one probably does quite as much harm as by, say, picking pockets at the races. One ought to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other. The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. In the same way it should be possible to say, "This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman." Unless one can say that, at least in imagination, one is shirking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being. ~ George Orwell

The key trait of a Sperm Pirate is that she is not driven by desperation. Escaping poverty or hardship is not her motive. She usually has a good education and access to the same opportunities as the man she tries to trap. However, she understands that it is more efficient to enjoy a lavish lifestyle through the sweat of another's labour. But the Sperm Pirate is acutely aware that the infatuation of a hormonal man has a brief shelf life. This poor collateral must be cashed in before it expires. A pregnancy is the best way to convert this volatile resource into a stable asset. Babies are reliable insurance policies. They create legal obligations for financial support, even when the sweet milk of passion turns sour. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

One candidate who considered applying for the position explained his change of heart: That job is like unprotected sex. It feels amazing at the time, but there is a good chance you will pay for it later. None of the benefits are worth the pleasure. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom. ~ Vladimir Lenin

When a group of people are forced to navigate a minefield together, everyone feels a grudging sense of comfort when someone else gets blown up. Though there may be other unseen landmines left in the ground, each death creates a safe spot. A landmine cannot explode twice in the same place. Sure, the explosion robs the survivors of a comrade. Still, each death makes everyone's next step marginally safer. So everyone keeps walking with grief on their faces, and relief in their hearts. Their own deaths are further postponed by the end of another life. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

These are all 'ghosts'. If you are afraid, the ghosts will possess you. If there is inner fear of 'what if they hang me?'; then one should say, 'yes, that is correct'. The Soul can never be hung; nothing [worldly] can touch the Soul. All the doings are that of the pudgal (matter; non-Self). The noose for hanging is pudgal and the one doing hanging (the hangman), is also pudgal. The Soul has never been hung. This [fact] does not fit one's vision and that is why he has fear. But once his vision becomes like the Gnani's [the enlightened one], then it's over! For that, one has to stay in touch with the Gnani [the enlightened one]. ~ Dada Bhagwan

I never knew a critic who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself
as the hangman is generally a worse malefactor than the criminal that suffers by his hand. ~ Joseph Addison

Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he saw of children was their being generated in great numbers for certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen; put the case that he habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business life he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that were to come to his net,––to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow. ~ Charles Dickens

The primitive craving for survival is universal in all things capable of dying. Now imagine if you could isolate the basic element that drives all animals to fight for survival? What would you do with it? I already had my own ideas when I started my search for an entity I eventually dubbed "The Determination Gene". ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Professor, when people say such things after impossibility smacks them in the face, we call it denial ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior. ~ George Santayana

The hangman is a disgrace to any civilized country. ~ Arthur Koestler

I will not mince words. There's been enough mincing for one day. Therefore, I shall ask my question bluntly: How does a man know that his body has been turned inside out? ... His eyes can see the back of his skull with an alarming clarity. I am told it hurts like hell. Especially when he refuses to explain why he has been investigating the hangman's replacement ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Dodger made haste towards the house of the Mayhews while in his mind he saw the cheerful face and hooked nose of Mister Punch, beating his wife, beating the policeman and throwing the baby away, which made all the children laugh. Why was that funny, he thought? Was that funny at all? He'd lived for seventeen years on the streets, and so he knew that, funny or not, it was real. Not all the time, of course, but often when people had been brought down so low that they could think of nothing better to do than punch: punch the wife, punch the child and then, sooner or later, endeavour to punch the hangman, although that was the punch that never landed and, oh how the children laughed at Mister Punch! But Simplicity wasn't laughing ... ~ Terry Pratchett

WE ARE

We are the lost ones

Seeking refuge in dark alleys

Told we are not forgotten

We are a past generation's hope

Asking daily for forgiveness

Viewed as misbegotten

We are restorers of humanity

Who punished betrayers of justice

Now the hangman in his own noose

We are the select few

Wandering parks and streets

Lost in a sea of endless faces

We are the faded photographs

Stored in an attic

Yearning to finish our missions

We are both the young and the old

Poised on the cliff's edge

Thinking of a last goodnight

We are our nation's warriors

Destined to become

Line-items in a county's budget ~ Jose N Harris

Professor Khupe felt his chest swell with pride. It was doing so without his encouragement. If an electrical fault had stopped the elevator from rising, his inflating ego would have powered the remainder of their journey to the twenty-second floor. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Mr. Gweta and his daughter were the cosmetics camouflaging an infected blackhead. The rest of the ugliness ran deep into a world where plants ate people and botanists lay at the bottom of the food chain. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

When things are difficult, awful, stressful, the thing that always gets you through is a sense of humour. I don't mean - well, maybe I do - laugh at the hangman as he puts the noose around your neck. But an eye, an ear, for the ridiculous, the absurd in life, can get you through a lot. ~ Paul Merton

Christianity is the metaphysics of the hangman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is an adventure," Karen's mother used to tell her, "so be sure you experience it when it happens." It was one of Grace Tyler's favorites, one of several rules in her "Mom" arsenal, along with the ones about always having umbrellas and clean underwear and quarters for the pay phone. ~ Tom Savage

It is finally only the fiend who doth truly worship God, as the felon adores the hangman, for the one is defined by the other. ~ Thomas Berger

If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips. ~ Robert Jordan

So you are tired of your life, young man! All the more reason have you to live. Anyone can die. A murderer has moral force enough to jeer at his hangman. It is very easy to draw the last breath. It can be accomplished successfully by a child or a warrior. One pang of far less anguish than the toothache, and all is over. There is nothing heroic about it, I assure you! It is as common as going to bed; it is almost prosy. Life is heroism, if you like; but death is a mere cessation of business. And to make a rapid and rude exit off the stage before the prompter gives the sign is always, to say the least of it, ungraceful. Act the part out, no matter how bad the play. What say you? ~ Marie Corelli

Not all diseases come from bacteria and viruses, Professor. The worst often come from things you cannot see under a microscope. This plant is infested with an aggressive strain of such invisible germs. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Not nature, but the "genius of mankind," has knotted the hangman's noose with which it can execute itself at any moment. ~ Carl Jung

One day, a shadow will come to my door. He will push his head back and scuff the dirt with one heel, and he will tell me to go to the market common should I want to say farewell ere the hangman does his work. Or that my brother died well in some anonymous way, calling down the only kind of justice the likes of us have recourse to.
Then I will have naught left to lose. ~ J. Anderson Coats

Can it be, thought I, that my sole mission on earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Ever since I began to live and act, fate has somehow associated me with the last act of other people's tragedies, as if without me no one could either die or give way to despair! I have been the inevitable character who comes in at the final act, involuntarily playing the detestable role of the hangman or the traitor. What has been fate's object in all this? Has it destined me to be the author of middle-class tragedies and family romances
or a purveyor of tales for, say, the Reader's Library? Who knows? Are there not many who begin life by aspiring to end it like Alexander the Great, or Lord Byron, and yet remain petty civil servants all their lives? ~ Mikhail Lermontov

He looked the Prince up and down, like a hangman taking his measurements. 'Of course there will be a revolution,' he said. 'You are making a nation of Cromwells. But we can go beyond Cromwell, I hope. In fifteen years you tyrants and parasites will be gone. We shall have set up a republic, on the purest Roman model. ~ Hilary Mantel

Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job. ~ George Orwell

That's why I'm a big supporter of the death penalty. I want to be the hangman. I would put many more people to death like the kids who want to kill other people, I'd put 'em to death. Postal workers who get arrested, they have mental problems. You know what? When you're dead you don't have a mental problem. If you take a life, I will take yours. Put me in charge, I will fix it. ~ Gene Simmons

The girl had a special way of saying "anything". The gods had blessed her voice with a special monopoly. It delivered an acoustic chocolate that was laced with all flavours of euphoria. The substance led to surges in testosterone in all types of men, including the average botanist. "Anything." The way she handled the word endowed it with so many possibilities. Professor Khupe decided to investigate how many of these Ketiwe would let him explore. To his delight the parameters of the word had proven to be quite elastic. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

As they say: A baking man will grasp at a hangman. Whoever gets the job will be dragged into the heat, forced to wear a massive pair of iron shoes, and frogmarched across the minefield at gunpoint. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

It was rumored, in 1946, that the hangman in Nuremberg adjusted the nooses of some of the condemned to magnify the pain of suffocation. Such sadism was not called for then and is not called for now. But if fornication is wrong, there is no denying that it can bring pleasure. The death of Saddam Hussein at rope's end brings a pleasure that is undeniable, and absolutely chaste in its provenance. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

It is not conclusive proof of a doctrine's correctness that its adversaries use the police, the hangman, and violent mobs to fight it. But it is a proof of the fact that those taking recourse to violent oppression are in their subconscious convinced of the untenability of their own doctrines. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've got a pretty neck ~ Eli Wallach

The successful recruit must be empathetic. This condition rules out the sadistic, the vengeful, and the enthusiastic. Therefore, many of the garden-variety killers who applied so far have had no chance of success, especially those who are already behind bars. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

The funnel of my family's salvation must continue narrowing towards the gallows. That journey cannot begin at the parted tips of another woman's toes ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

The hardest challenge being an HR is that sometimes you have to be the LAWYER, the JUDGE and the HANGMAN. ~ Hassan Choughari

Every guilty person is his own hangman. ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Abel Muranda fought off furious red ants with mandibles that could cut through a miser's padlock. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Dorothea is a Grey," he pointed out. "Any member of her family would pause on the gallows to exchange witty banter with the hangman before graciously putting the noose about his neck with his own hands. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all the fibres and roots of our being. Every minute of the day adds fresh crimes to the calendar, both those which are detected and punished, and those which are not. The criminal hunts down the criminal. The judge condemns the judger. The innocent torture the innocent. Everywhere, in every family, every tribe, every great community, crimes, crimes, crimes. War is clean by comparison. The hangman is a gentle dove by comparison. Attila, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan reckless automatons by comparison. Your father, your darling mother, your sweet sister: do you know the foul crimes they harbor in their breasts? Can you hold the mirror to iniquity when it is close at hand? Have you looked into the labyrinth of your own despicable heart? Have you sometimes envied the thug for his forthrightness? The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you. The source of it is God whom you place outside, above and beyond. Crime is identification, first with God, then with your own image. ~ Henry Miller

When change cometh, she will bring peace at her back. She will not bend to your will; you must bend to heres. ~ Adriana Mather

The Stalker by Gail Anderson-Dargatz In From the Cold by Deborah Ellis Shipwreck by Maureen Jennings The Picture of Nobody by Rabindranath Maharaj The Hangman by Louise Penny Easy Money by Gail Vaz-Oxlade 2011 ~ Louise Penny

Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground. ~ Cyril Connolly

My heart to my mother, my cock to the whores, my head to the hangman. ~ Jean Genet

Further north, I met a Siberian hermit who lived in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. His life's passion was wrestling black bears ... in the nude (him not the bears). He did not know why he did it. All the hermit knew was that if he stopped wrestling bears, he would die. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

And who among the company at Monseigneur's reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out! ~ Charles Dickens

Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer, but the hangman who would gain his fee? ~ Mary Shelley

A tiny little wooden man [was] slowly ascending the steps to a real set of gallows, both perched on a box that read: Reusable Hangman - Spell It Or He'll Swing! ~ J.K. Rowling

... the only difference between carnivores and plants is that the latter eat meat through 'translator' organisms. Maggots and bacteria 'pre-chew' dead animal matter, which plants then absorb as nutrients. So if eating pre-chewed food does not change the fact that a baby is human, why should a plant be any less of a carnivore because it out-sources the digestion of animal protein to organisms of decay? ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko