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Halloween Quotes

Halloween has almost nothing of its own on Wikiquote, so the page is built from fear and death. The one entry filed against the holiday is from Jeffrey Ford’s The Empire of Ice Cream (2006): the narrator says Halloween was close and was the favourite holiday because it lacked the holiness of Christmas.

What you get otherwise is Shakespeare on fear and Bertrand Russell on what it does to people, with comedians in between. It will not be seasonal in tone. If you want scary, search for it. If you want something that works as a caption, start here and check the flags.

Random quote on Halloween

Most quoted on halloween:

Dark lattice! letting in eternal day!

Edward Young

All has its date below; the fatal hour
Was register'd in Heav'n ere time began.
We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works
Die too.

William Cowper The Task (1785)

Behold—not him we knew!
This was the prison which his soul looked through.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Vital spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, oh quit this mortal frame.

Alexander Pope

The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs Address at Stanford University (2005)

Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

Alexander Pope The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)

For I say this is death and the sole death,—
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest.

Robert Browning A Death in the Desert (1864)

Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.

Edward Young Night-Thoughts (1742)

Dying visions of angels and Christ and God and heaven are confined to credibly good men. Why do not bad men have such visions? They die of all sorts of diseases; they have nervous temperaments; they even have creeds and hopes about the future which they cling to with very great tenacity; why do not they rejoice in some such glorious illusions when they go out of the world?

Enoch Fitch Burr Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

There are options, and even though anxiety may make the reality of choices elusive, they still exist. Recognize the existence of the anxiety, then strive to overcome it in order to perceive other options.

Sarah Schulman Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (2016)

I met a brother who, describing a friend of his, said he was like a man who had dropped a bottle, and broken it, and put all the pieces in his bosom, where they were cutting him perpetually.

Henry Ward Beecher

See yonder maker of the dead man's bed,
The sexton, hoary-headed chronicle,
Of hard, unmeaning face, down which ne'er stole
A gentle tear.

Robert Blair

There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found,
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground.

James Montgomery

But the grandsire's chair is empty,
The cottage is dark and still;
There's a nameless grave on the battle-field,
And a new one under the hill.

William Winter

Sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

William Cullen Bryant

She'l bargain with them; and will giue
Them GOD; teach them how to liue
In him; or if they this deny,
For him she'l teach them how to Dy.

Richard Crashaw

He was exhal'd; his great Creator drew
His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.

John Dryden

Verse, Fame and beauty are intense indeed,
But Death intenser – Death is life's high mead.

John Keats

She thought our good-night kiss was given,
And like a lily her life did close;
Angels uncurtain'd that repose,
And the next waking dawn'd in heaven.

Gerald Massey

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