Poisoned Quotes

We're nothing but human.
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery we need humanity.
More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
Don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
You are not machines.
You are not cattle.
You have the love of humanity in your hearts.
In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery.
We don't want to hate and despise one another.
We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
You the people have the power.. the power to create machines.. the power to create happiness.
You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful..
To make this life a wonderful adventure.
We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices.
Some are on a grand scale.. Most of these choices are on lesser points.
But we define ourselves by the choices we have made.
We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices.
Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly.
Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design ~ Anonymous

I have performed my duty to my God, my country, and my family. I have nothing to fear in approaching death. To me it is the mere shadow of God's protecting wing ... Here I will rest in quiet and peace beyond the reach of calumny's poisoned shaft, the influence of envy and jealous enemies, where treason and traitors or State backsliders and hypocrites in church can have no peace. ~ Andrew Johnson

Little Red Riding Hood was stalked; Cinderella was abused; the Beauty had to live with a hideous Beast; Snow White was poisoned; Hansel and Gretel were meat for a cannibal… and then we wonder why our kids grow up with problems. ~ Ashwin Sanghi

He who disguises tyranny, protection, or even benefits under the air and name of friendship reminds me of the guilty priest who poisoned the sacramental bread. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

If there ever were one moment where everything worked for us, where we lived in harmony and at ease with our natures, then we would still be there. There is no garden to return to, no idyllic perfect childhood, no enwombed state. The Garden of Eden was boring, childhood is a nightmare we should all be grateful to be done with, and your mother smoked while she was pregnant and poisoned you in the womb with artificial sugar substitutes. The best thing any of us can do is just to keep fucking up in a forward motion, and see what comes out of it. ~ Jessa Crispin

Don't change, Dorian; at any rate, don't change to me. We must always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to anyone. It does harm." "My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralise. You will soon be going about warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. ~ Oscar Wilde

and Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being. With ~ Leo Tolstoy

And they dare to rule the world! They have made it so ugly. Square houses! Their obsession with straight lines and right angles has ruined the earth! They consider all curves, all subtleties, all softness, all indefinites, female, and they shun them. They have poisoned and denatured everything they touch, and expect us to be grateful. ~ Lucy Ellmann

Mad are thy subjects all, and even the wisest heart
Straight to folly will fall, at a touch of thy poisoned dart. ~ Sophocles

The fact was, as a story - even leaving out the supernatural, especially leaving out the supernatural, taking it all as metaphor, I mean - the Bible made perfect sense to me from the very beginning. I saw a God whose nature was creative love. He made man in his own image for the purpose of forming new and free relationships with him. But in his freedom, man turned away from that relationship to consult his own wisdom and desires. The knowledge of good and evil was not some top-secret catalogue of nice and naughty acts that popped into Eve's mind when a talking snake got her to eat the magic fruit. The knowledge was built into the action of disobedience itself: it's what she learned when she overruled the moral law God had placed within her. There was no going back from that. The original sin poisoned all history. History's murders, rapes, wars, oppressions, and injustices are now the inescapable plot of the story we're in. The ~ Andrew Klavan

I do not remember being bitten. I wish I did, for then I would know the creature who did this to me and I would have a purpose, to track him down and repay him for the poisoned gift he gave me. ~ K.J. Wignall

A past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back ... The nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit ... As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he [President Bush] is having it done for him, by proxy. Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon. ~ Keith Olbermann

Americans are being poisoned, all in the name of profit, producing a weak-minded race of people who are given to lust and desire. ~ Lynn Cullen

Malice is poisoned by her own venom. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

I poisoned my skin," Genya said harshly, "my lips. So that every time he touched me-" She shuddered slightly and glanced at David. "Every time he kissed me, he took sickness into his body." She clenched her fists. "He brought this on himself."
"But the poison would have affected you too," Nikolai said.
"I had to purge it from my skin, then heal the burns the lye would leave. Every single time." Her fists clenched. "It was well worth it."
Nikolai rubbed a hand over his mouth. "Did he force you?"
Genya nodded once. A muscle in Nikolai's jaw ticked. ~ Leigh Bardugo

I was feeling more edgy and uncomfortable as my unquenched desires moved from a feeling of discontent to full blown pain. At first, the sensation was more like an irritation or itch, but the longer I sat there, the more intense it grew. Not only was I burning from the dissatisfaction of my unmet arousal, but my entire body felt like it was on fire. It was as if a billion poisoned needles were being injected into me simultaneously torturing my soul with flames that licked the flesh from my body. ~ J.M. Northup

I'm not some outdated alarm company, like Muldoon Security, singular. I'm offering a whole new variety of services, plural - water testing, soil graphs, toxic air readings, the security of this century. The security that you aren't being poisoned in your own home. ~ Christopher Bollen

You don't want to spend your life searching for relevance," Iris said. "It will only lead to mistakes. Those mistakes will harden you and make you bitter. You'll start resenting people who have found happiness. You'll spread misery, hoping it will destroy your own, but it won't. If you have a chance to validate something within yourself, then do yourself a favor and take that chance. You don't want to live with a piece of your heart missing - it'll turn you into a monster. It's better to be the hero of your own story than to become the villain of someone else's."
"So you're saying I would find this Cornelia woman?" Bree asked.
"If it'll bring you peace, I recommend you do," Iris said. "Even if you don't get the answers you're looking for, you'll never be poisoned with regret. ~ Chris Colfer

Peter?"
He couldn't look at her. Instead, he stared down at his
poisoned arm.
"I could do terrible things to you," he cautioned her
sadly. "I have to leave you. You won't be safe with me until
I learn to control myself."
"I'll wait for you."
Finally, when he felt the strength of his conviction, of
her conviction, he turned to her, allowing her in for just a
moment.
"I thought you'd say that. ~ Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

My paper has to be very long and complex," I said. "I shall cite all the great thinkers - Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud." "What about Adolf Hitler?" "Oh, him. He's not a thinker. He's just a ranter and raver." "There may come a time," said Pepi, "when people cannot tell the difference." "Impossible," I solemnly predicted. "I have read Hitler's book Mein Kampf and also some works by his colleague Herr Alfred Rosenberg because I am a fair-minded, objective person and I believe one should always hear out all sides before making a decision, and so I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that these men are idiots. Their ideas about how the Jews have poisoned their so-called superior Aryan race and caused all of Germany's troubles are utter nonsense. No intelligent person could possibly believe them. Hitler is laughable. He will soon disappear." "Just like all your old boyfriends," Pepi said with his sly smile. ~ Edith Hahn Beer

Reduction is the least observed of the three R's of environmentalism ('reduce, reuse, recycle') but it's probably the most important. Reuse and recycling are sensible measures in an over-productive society, but why not neutralise the problem of overproduction at the source? Instead of choosing to act efficiently at the end of a product's life cycle by reusing or recycling it, we should stop said product from being made in the first place by eliminating consumer demand for it. If the rainforests must be burned and the oceans poisoned to cater for the essentials of human life, then so be it and we'll call it an inevitable pity; but for that to happen in the name of games consoles, cell phones and chocolate fountains is a wanton and avoidable shame. ~ Robert Wringham

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in; machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery we need humanity,
more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities life will be violent and all will be lost. ~ Charlie Chaplin

Flint is a city of a hundred thousand that was having a rough go of it even before its water was poisoned by lead. And when the water crisis finally grabbed national headlines this winter, the Democratic presidential candidates noticed. Hillary Clinton sent senior staff to investigate and asked her supporters to donate to a fund for Flint's kids. Bernie Sanders called on Michigan's Republican governor, Rick Snyder, to resign. ~ Tamara Keith

They'd poisoned me, dammit. Probably to trade my dead body to the barbarians for Wulfgar's safe return. Or maybe just for the fun of it. ~ Vivian Vande Velde

Here, in Lorrain's poisoned little jewel of a tale ("The Man Who Made Wax Heads") the consummate achievement of decadent art is caught in miniature. The genius of the artist entangles perpetrators and victims in a sticky web of perverse delights, in which exploitation becomes collusion, the ripples of guilt spread outward, and the real criminal slips away. In the end, responsibility is lodged firmly with the consumer, forced – he must confess – by his own perverse desires, to buy into the values of this particularly black market. ~ Jennifer Birkett

Before I went to college I read two books. I read a book "Moral Mazes" by Robert Jackall which is a study of how corporations work, and it's actually a fascinating book, this sociologist, he just picks a corporation at random and just goes and studies the middle managers, not the people who do any of the grunt work and not the big decision makers, just the people whose job is to make sure that things day to day get done, and he shows how even though they're all perfectly reasonable people, perfectly nice people you'd be happy to meet any of them, all the things that they were accomplishing were just incredibly evil. So you have these people in this average corporation, they were making decisions to blow out their worker's eardrums in the factory, to poison the lakes and the lagoons nearby, to make these products that are filled with toxic chemicals that poisoned their customers, not because any of them were bad people and wanted to kill their workers and their neighbourhood and their customers, but just because that was the logic of the situation they were in.

Another book I read was a book "Understanding Power" by Noam Chomsky which kind of took the same sort of analysis but applied it to wider society which you know we're in a situation where it may be filled with perfectly good people but they're in these structures that cause them to continually do evil, to invade countries, to bomb people, to take money from poor people and give it to rich people, to do all th ~ Aaron Swartz

He's been poisoned you daft dimbo! As for a matter of fact, I've always found him interesting."
-hermione granger(Harry potter and the half blood prince) ~ J.K. Rowling

He passed into the galley and was greeted by a cloud of fragrant steam. The exotic scent of spices mingled with the tang of roasting meat. Startled, Gabriel choked on a sip from a tankard. In the corner, Stubb quickly shoved something behind his back. The old men's eyes shone with more than holiday merriment.
"Happy Christmas, Gray." Gabriel extended the tankard to him. "Here. We poured you some wine."
Gray waved it off with a chuckle. "That my new Madeira you're sampling?"
Gabriel nodded as he downed another sip. "Thought I should taste it before you serve it to company. You know, to be certain it ain't poisoned." He drained the mug and set it down with a smile. "No, sir. Not poisoned."
"And the figs? The olives? The spices? I assume you checked them all, too? For caution's sake, of course."
"Of course," Stubb said, pulling his own mug from behind his back and taking a healthy swallow. "Everyone knows you can't trust a Portuguese trader."
Gray laughed. He plucked an olive from a dish on the table and popped it into his mouth. Rich oil coated his tongue. "Did you find the crate easily enough?" he asked Stubb, reaching for another olive.
The old steward nodded. "It's all laid out, just so. Candles, too."
"Feels like Christmas proper." Gabriel tilted his head. "Miss Turner even gave me a gift."
Gray followed the motion, squinting through the steam.
I'll be damned. ~ Tessa Dare

All my memories are poisoned ~ George R R Martin

I was 22 years old when I met Robert Johnson. I was there the night he was poisoned. ~ David Edwards

For eight years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. During those years I passed through such unbearable terror that I deteriorated into a wild, frightened creature intent only on survival. And I survived. I was raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats and poisoned by tainted food. I was chained in padded cells, strapped into strait-jackets and half-drowned in ice baths. And I survived. The asylum itself was a steel trap, and I was not released from its jaws alive and victorious. I crawled out mutilated, whimpering and terribly alone. But I did survive. ~ Frances Farmer

The well of public opinion has been well and truly poisoned by the Iraq episode. ~ David Cameron

Armchair warriors often fail - and we've been poisoned by these fairy tales ~ Don Henley

She had found Rasputin to be an odd, intense man. He had been undeniably human and very likely insane, but anyone who could survive reputedly being stabbed, poisoned, shot multiple times, mutilated, and badly beaten before finally drowning, deserved a certain amount of respect. ~ Thea Harrison

Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, "I can't wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered," and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony. ~ Lemony Snicket

But I couldn't absorb the idea that death could actually walk by my side, with a human face and a heart that was poisoned with hatred. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I wasn't sure if the word boys should mean dim or incomprehensible. I was hovering between the two, with a healthy dose of testosterone-poisoned. ~ Lili St. Crow

Behold, I bring you the Superman! The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beg of you my brothers, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is fountain of joy; but where the rabble also gather to drink, all wells are poisoned. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A victory? What have we won? We've won a rock in the middle of a wasteland, on the shores of a poisoned sea. ~ Peter O'Toole

We need no help from ThunderClan," growled Crookedstar. "RiverClan cats can look after themselves." "Don't be such a fool." It was Graypool who spoke, with a glare at her leader. Fireheart felt a new surge of respect for her; he guessed that not many cats would dare to take that tone with Crookedstar. "You're too proud for your own good," the elder rasped. "How can we feed ourselves, even with the thaw? There are no fish to eat. The river's practically poisoned; you know it is. ~ Erin Hunter

So answer me, are you merely a cowardly Moses, pointing the way to the Promised Land but poisoned by doubt and so unable to cross the River Jordan? ~ Tony Vigorito

I'm a dumb-ass, and I poisoned myself for years. Now I understand things better. ~ Johnny Depp

The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A lending library of elaborate smut.
I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat. A racket like that, out in the open on the boulevard, seemed to mean plenty of protection. I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it. ~ Raymond Chandler

Once upon a time, powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad.

The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king's decisions were absurd and resolved to take notice of them.

When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. The marched on the castle and called for his abdication.

In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: 'Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.'

And that was what they did: The king and queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such 'wisdom', why not allow him to rule the country?

The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern u ~ Paulo Coelho

Listen to me, Jez. There's no reason for you to die-"
Wood ... poison."
No it isn't! Not to humans. And you're half human. You're vampire enough to survie something that would kill a human, but you're human enough not to be poisoned by wood. ~ L.J.Smith

If the creek predates the city deep in time, then is it right to identify the creek solely with the city? The city has forgotten the creek, as it's forgotten those who walk its side, but the creek didn't need to be known all that long time before the city ever was. Maybe now Hogan's Creek is too steeped in history to claim an independence grounded in prehistory, because the city has too deeply poisoned it for far too long. Then again, there was all that time the creek flowed and had no name. Without a name you belong solely to yourself. ~ Tim Gilmore

If your homeland were invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air and contaminated the food supply, would you resist? ~ Derrick Jensen

Rudeness affected Margaret like a bitter taste in the mouth. It poisoned life. At times it is necessary, but woe to those who employ it without due need. ~ E.M. Forster

The pain is stronger than ever. I've seen bit of lost Paradises and I know I'll be hopelessly tryng tu return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I'm thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I'm going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and sintaxes of the countries I've passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I've never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.
(from "As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty", 2000) ~ Jonas Mekas

My parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear, assuming that in fact, like my parents, they weren't interested in gods, and that this uninterest was 'normal.' You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again. ~ Salman Rushdie

Hating people is like a poisoned apple.
The more you hated them , the faster the poisons spread. ~ Hihi

I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift. ~ Mavis Gallant

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool. ~ John Steinbeck

I distrust the perpetually busy, always have. The frenetic ones spinning in tight little circles like poisoned rats. The slower ones, grinding away their fourscore and ten in righteousness and pain. They are the soul-eaters. ~ Mark Slouka

There is a crucial omission. The front page should display the words of the Nuremberg judgment of prominent Nazis - words that must be repeated until they penetrate general consciousness: Aggression is "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." And alongside these words there should be the admonition of the chief prosecutor for the United States, Robert Jackson: "The record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. ~ Noam Chomsky

Saint Sebastian
Mauretanian Archer, put down your bow,
Imperial Guardsman, lay down your lance.
For my heart, my faithful heart,
Has been already pierced by His glory,
Pierced by a thousand arrows,
That quiver at His glance.

Centaur-archer, Chiron,
Refulgent rider of the southern horizon,
I know the eternal pain you would have suffered
By your pupil's poisoned arrow
Had not Zeus released you from immortality's cage.
For my heart, my heart of shame,
Still courses with the hydra's same venom,
Pierced by His mercy, pierced by a thousand arrows,
That quiver at His name.

God, my God,
My love for You, can endure armies or archers,
a plague of bows thrusting plumed daggers at my heart.
Please, women of Milan, do not kiss my splintered feet!
I, Sebastian, am more sinner than saint.
I need not your veneration, your votive prayers,
For my heart, my martyred heart,
Has been already pierced by His redemption,
Pierced by a thousand arrows,
My quiver full, filled with His love. ~ Beryl Dov

You go in, I go in."
"Listen
"
He took her face in his hands.
"You go, I go. That's non-negotiable. If we're to get blasted to hell or poisoned into lunatics, we do it together."
"Crap, Crap. You have to look less rich and gorgeous."
God help him, she made him grin. "I'll do what I can. ~ J.D. Robb

Would you take a billion dollars, if as part of the deal the Earth were made uninhabitable a year after your death? ... well, of course not; you care about your friends, above all your children, any grandchildren. But ... what if the deal calls for the planet to be poisoned a thousand years later? We feel strong obligations to generations in the near future - should we not feel the same way about our children's great-grandchildren and generations beyond them? ~ John Cleese

As long as the ego overcomes the heart of a man, evil will always exist, and the enemies of God will continue to multiply and thrive. If a tree is bearing bad fruit, you do not destroy the tree by cutting off its branches or eliminating its fruit, but by destroying its roots. I want you to look at the world as this poisoned tree. Even if we eliminate our enemies today, we will create new ones tomorrow. The solution is very simple and this formula is written in all your holy books. LOVE IS THY ANSWER. The strongest weapon to destroy the snakes of hate and evil is LOVE. PURE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. However, to be able to emit the right frequency of love, you must succeed daily in your own personal battle of good versus evil: heart (conscience) vs. mind (ego). Once you learn how to use your heart to embrace all living things as you do your own reflection, and use your heart to detect truths and dictate your actions, your heart will not be fully activated to LOVE. Where there is LOVE, there will remain Truth and LIGHT. Take away the LOVE, and you will always remain in the dark. ~ Suzy Kassem

One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as we have observed above, is far less happy than the first. The difficulty is that the intelligent "ordinary" man, even if he does imagine himself at times (and perhaps all his life) a person of genius and originality, nevertheless retains within his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes leads the intelligent man in the end to absolute despair. If he does yield in this belief, he is still completely poisoned with inward-driven vanity. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Praise God for those of you who do homeschool. I can't emphasize enough: Do what you can to get your kids out of public school. If you can't afford to put them in a private Christian school, homeschool. Because they're being poisoned in the public schools. They're being brainwashed in the public schools, with all this secularism, with all this immorality that is being immersed into them on a daily basis. ~ Rafael Cruz

Nostalgia, it's nothing but pain," Robert said. "It's memory poisoned by the anguish of loss. ~ Laird Barron

While my friend was my friend, he flattered me, and I never heard the truth from him. When he became my enemy, he shot it to me on a poisoned arrow. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves. ~ Margaret Atwood

To show mercy is not naïve. To hold out against the end of hope is not stupidity or madness. It is fundamentally human. Of course... We are all doomed; we are all poisoned from our birth by the rot of stars. That does not mean we should succumb...to the seductive fallacy of despair, the dark tide that would drown us. You may think I'm stupid, you may call me a madman and a fool, but at least I stand upright in a fallen world. ~ Rick Yancey

Love had done this to her, for the second time. Love was bad for her. There must be certain people who were allergic to love, and she was one of them. Not only was it bad for her; it made her bad; it poisoned her. Before she knew him, not only had she been far, far happier but she had been nicer. Loving him was turning her into an awful person, a person she hated. ~ Mary McCarthy

Magnus hoped if he ever went mad like that himself, so mad that he poisoned the very air round him and hurt everyone he came into contact with, that there would be someone ho loved him enough to stop him. To kill him, if it came to that. ~ Cassandra Clare

Vasectomy
After the steaming bodies swept
through the hungry streets of swollen cities;
after the vast pink spawning of family
poisoned the rivers and ravaged the prairies;
after the gamble of latex and
diaphragms and pills;
I invoked the white robes, gleaming blades
ready for blood, and, feeling the scourge
of Increase and Multiply, made
affirmation: Yes, deliver us from
complicity.
And after the precision of scalpels,
I woke to a landscape of sunshine where
the catbird mates for life and
maps trace out no alibis - stepped
into a morning of naked truth,
where acts mean what they really are:
the purity of loving
for the sake of love. ~ Philip Appleman

There were some things it was better not to know. They caused "metaphysical" anguish, for which there was as yet no remedy. When it was worried, the Tribe was inhibited and unable to act.
It was very bad for everyone. The Tribe started to produce toxins that poisoned it. Its long-term survival was more important than short-term knowledge of the truth. If an eye had seen something that the brain knew was dangerous for the rest of the organism, it was better for the brain to put out that eye. ~ Bernard Werber

She did not know how to react, for when your heart has been poisoned and someone picks a dandelion for you - because it is bright and yellow and you seem like you could use something like that - all you can do is contemplate the funny ways of weeds. ~ Anne Ursu

Watch constantly against those things which are thought to be no temptations. The most poisonous serpents are found where the sweetest flowers grow. Cleopatra was poisoned by an asp that was brought to her in a basket of fair flowers. Sharp-edged tools, long handled, wound at last. ~ Charles Spurgeon

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. ~ Winston Churchill

History is the poisoned well, seeping into the ground-water. It's not the unknown past we're doomed to repeat, but the past we know. Every recorded event is a brick of potential, of precedent, thrown into the future. Eventually the idea will hit someone in the back of the head. This is the duplicity of history: an idea recorded will become an idea resurrected. Out of fertile ground, the compost of history. ~ Anne Michaels

A Jesus had to be crucified because he was an alive man. He must have called in his childhood, "Jesus, don't be befooled by others." And he was not befooled, so others had to crucify him, because he was not part of the game. Socrates had to be poisoned and killed, Mansoor had to be murdered. These are people who have escaped from the prison, and whatsoever you say you cannot persuade them to come back. They will not come into the prison. They have known the freedom of the open sky. ~ Rajneesh

Goldstone has done terrible damage to the cause of truth and justice and the rule of law. He has poisoned Jewish-Palestinian relations, undermined the courageous work of Israeli dissenters and-most unforgivably-increased the risk of another merciless IDF assault. ~ Norman Finkelstein

Remember my titles? I don't get poisoned, I do the poisoning. I'm the Princess of it ~ Kresley Cole

Think of the prequels like snap shots of a magical land you're about to visit soon. I like to think of them as poisoned apples ... once you taste them, you'll never see fairy tales in the same light again. ~ Cameron Jace

Good leadership is pervasive, persuasive, and persistent. Bad leadership is poisoned with pedanticism, posturing, self-importance. ~ Marcia Whicker

Once a hunter met a lion near the hungry critter's lair,
and the way that lion mauled him was decidedly unfair;
but the hunter never whimpered when the surgeons, with their thread,
sewed up forty-seven gashes in his mutilated head;
and he showed the scars in triumph, and they gave him pleasant fame,
and he always blessed the lion that had camped upon his frame.
Once that hunter, absent minded, sat upon a hill of ants,
and about a million bit him, and you should have seen him dance!
And he used up lots of language of a deep magenta tint,
and apostrophized the insects in a style unfit to print.
And it's thus with worldly troubles;
when the big ones come along, we serenely go to meet them, feeling valiant, bold and strong, but the weary little worries with their poisoned stings and smarts, put the lid upon our courage, make us gray, and break our hearts. ~ Walt Mason

In my late thirties the dream of disappointment and exhaustion had been the dream of the exploding head: the dream of a noise in my head so loud and long that I felt with the brain that survived that the brain could not survive; that this was death. Now, in my early fifties, after my illness, after I had left the manor cottage and put an end to that section of my life, I began to be awakened by thoughts of death, the end of things; and sometimes not even by thoughts so specific, not even by fear rational or fantastic, but by a great melancholy. This melancholy penetrated my mind while I slept; and then, when I awakened in response to its prompting, I was so poisoned by it, made so much not a doer (as men must be, every day of their lives), that it took the best part of the day to shake it off. And that wasted or dark day added to the gloom preparing for the night. ~ V.S. Naipaul

He places the last pillow on the pile and looks at me. He jerks his head to the pile of pillows.
"I watched you die. I need to fuck you Mac."
The words slam into me like bullets taking my knees out. I lean back against a piece of furniture-an armoire I think. I really don't care. It holds me up. It wasn't a request. It was an acknowledgement of a requirement to make it from this moment to the next like I need a transfusion my body has been poisoned.
"Do you want me to " There is no purr or coyness or seduction in his voice. There is a question that needs an answer. Bare bones. That's what he's after. That's what he offers.
"Yes. ~ Karen Marie Moning

They know they dare not have their stuff stripped down to plain words. These Bishops and parsons with their beloved Christianity are like a man who has poisoned his wife and says her body's too sacred for a post-mortem. Nowadays, by the light we have, any ecclesiastic must be born blind or an intellectual rascal. Don't tell me. The world's had this apostolic succession of oily old humbugs from early Egypt onwards, trying to come it over people. Antiquity's no excuse. A sham is no better for being six thousand years stale. Christianity's no more use to us now than
the Pyramids. ~ H.G.Wells

From the first I became convinced that what I must look for was lead dust and lead fumes, that men were poisoned by breathing poisoned air, not by handling their food with unwashed hands. ~ Alice Hamilton

And Latin America has become very fashionable, yet what repels me is that everyone in Europe goes and imposes themselves there under this mantle of social and socialist cooperation, which in reality is nothing but a disgusting subspecies of European Christian-Socialist fussiness.The Europeans bore themselves to death and meddle every where in the so called Third World in order to escape that fatal European boredom. Missionarianism is a German vice which has invariably just brought misfortune to the world today, which has invariably just plunged the world
into crisis The Church has only poisoned Africa with its detestable dear God, and now it is poisoning Latin America with it. The Catholic Church is the world poisoner the world destroyer, the world annihilator, that is the truth. The Germans continually poison the world outside of
their borders and they will give it no rest until this entire world is fatally poisoned. So I have long withdrawn from my bad habit of wanting to help people in Africa and South America and into myself entirely. There is no helping humanity in our world which has been a hypocrisy for centuries. And, like humanity, there is no helping the World because both are a hypocrisy through and through.
(Goethe Dies, p. 73) ~ Thomas Bernhard

Sometimes at night
when the moon is almost
full and my hands go
numb from writing, I cleanse
myself of her poisoned love.
I welcome the water, the
inevitability of
death and embrace
the long painful road out
of love. ~ A.P. Sweet

Her gaze travels back to the lie twisted in a tempest of mud and blood. She witnesses the culmination of her recklessness through a curved lens. Absorbed in life uncoiling, unaware of the world beyond this ridge. His light hair, darkened by rain. His stiff shoulders, full of pain. The vision poisoned with truth. With rust-stained hues. ~ Laura Kreitzer

The cup of life was poisoned forever, and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. ~ Mary Shelley

Maybe there aren't any happily ever afters, or white knights who ride in on valiant steeds to save the day. Maybe, in real life, Prince Charming isn't always perfect – he's just as flawed as everyone else in the tale. And that princess, alone in her tower? She's not perfect either. Birds don't braid her hair every morning, she can't serenade wild forest creatures into servitude, and she doesn't even own a ball gown. But she's also smart enough to know not to accept poisoned apples from strangers, or prick her finger on deadly spindles.

She doesn't wait around for a prince to charge in and slay the dragon. Maybe she saves herself and in the end, rides off into her own goddamned sunset. ~ Julie Johnson

Aww, you know my verbal stingers are only poisoned with love ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned. ~ James A. Baldwin

I hold it true that thoughts are things
Endowed with bodies, breath, and wings,
And that we send them forth to fill
The world with good results - or ill.

That which we call our secret thought
Speeds to the earth's remotest spot,
And leaves its blessings or its woes
Like tracks behind it as it goes.

It is God's law. Remember it
In your still chamber as you sit
With thoughts you would not dare have known,
And yet made comrades when alone.

These thoughts have life; and they will fly
And leave their impress by-and-by,
Like some marsh breeze, whose poisoned breath
Breathes into homes its fevered breath.

And after you have quite forgot
Or all outgrown some vanished thought,
Back to your mind to make its home,
A dove or raven, it will come.

Then let your secret thoughts be fair;
They have a vital part and share
In shaping worlds and moulding fate --
God's system is so intricate. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

If one's cup of water is foul, one must first ascertain if the well is poisoned. If we find that the well is indeed polluted, it may have some bearing on whether or not he is responsible for his deeds. ~ Graeme Macrae Burnet

Violent ideologies speak their own language; core concepts are translated to maintain the system while appearing to support the people. Under carnism, for instance, democracy has become defined as having the freedom to choose among products that sicken our bodies and pollute our planet, rather than the freedom to eat our food and breathe our air without the risk of being poisoned. But violent ideologies are inherently undemocratic, as they rely on deception, secrecy, concentrated power, and coercion
all practices that are incompatible with a free society. While the larger system, or nation, may appear democratic, the violent system within it is not. This is one reason we don't recognize violent ideologies that exist within seemingly democratic systems; we simply aren't thinking to look for them. ~ Melanie Joy

And now that she knew, she couldn't do nothing. She couldn't. The anger would build inside he, on and on, forever until it poisoned her ~ Django Wexler

The Taster to his highness the Prince of Wales was there also, prepared to taste any suspicious dish upon requirement, and run the risk of being poisoned. He was only an ornamental appendage at this time, and was seldom called upon to exercise his function; but there had been times, not many generations past, when the office of taster had its perils, and was not a grandeur to be desired. Why they did not use a dog or a plumber seems strange; but all the ways of royalty are strange. ~ Anonymous

The monster, Hitler, died like Uther, frightened, hiding, haunted by his crimes and his wholly reasonable belief that all decent human beings would turn their backs on him. Who really cares where Hitler's bones lie, or how he died, as long as he is safely dead? Now, in the twenty-first century, Karl Marx's grave in a London cemetery is no longer a rallying cry to the poisoned idea that the end justifies the means. We shall never know for certain where Arthur lies, or if he even lived. If he was a myth, then it was necessary for human beings to invent him. Hail, Arthur, King of the Britons! I wish another hero would take your place, now that the west has such a need of you. ~ M.K. Hume

But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole. ~ Jonathan Swift

You have slipped under my skin, invaded my blood, and seized my heart. You have poisoned me. ~ Maria V. Snyder

The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon