#gallows

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows. ↗

— Paul Eldridge

#brought #committed #crimes #escape #few

It's very good of you--" "No, no, not at all. It's my hobby. Not proposing to people, I don't mean, but investigating things. Well, cheer-frightfully-ho and all that. And I'll call again, if I may." "I will give the footman orders to admit you," said the prisoner, gravely, "you will always find me at home. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#gallows-humor #prisoner #proposal #humor

My dear dead mother wanted me to go into an honorable trade, like grave robbing. Would I listen? No. Be an assassin, like your uncle Gustav, she said. Would I pay heed? No. Apprentice to the Necromancer― ↗

— Raymond E. Feist

#humor #humor

We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#gallows-humor #humor #laughing #death

The idea of being strong for someone else having never entered their heads, I find myself in the position of having to console them. Since I'm the person going in to be slaughtered, this is somewhat annoying. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#gallows-humor #humor #pique #death

So this is it," said Arthur, "We are going to die." "Yes," said Ford, "except... no! Wait a minute!" He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch?" he cried. "What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round. "No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#humor #science #humor

Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution. ↗

— Elizabeth Wein

#humor

Live, die, something else lives. The very soil humanity walks upon is built up from death. Digging into a flowerbed means digging into bones. ↗

— M. Jones

#death #frankie-and-formaldehyde #gallows-humor #life #death

The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#crime #cross #gallows #hospitals #illness

In the political jargon of those days, the word "intellectual" was an insult. It indicated someone who did not understand life and was cut off from the people. All the Communists who were hanged at the time by other Communists were awarded such abuse. Unlike those who had their feet solidly on the ground, they were said to float in the air. So it was fair, in a way, that as punishment the ground was permanently pulled out from under their feet, that they remained suspended a little above the floor. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#gallows-humour #hanged #insult #intellectual #life