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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:

Fear is a great enemy of man. It is the enemy of his progress. It disturbs his peace and harmony. It sucks or saps his vitality and energy. It drains the nervous system of its reserve of energy. It produces weakness.

Swami Sivananda Conquest of Fear (1960)

I open heaven; I do what was commanded in Memphis. I have knowledge of my heart; I am in possession of my heart, I am in possession of my arms, [4] I am in possession of my legs, at the will of myself. My Soul is not imprisoned in my body at the gates of Amenti (xxvi. 5, 6).

Annie Besant Theosophical Manual No III: Death & After (1894)

O Earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold, the waller's heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God makes a silence through you all,
And "giveth His beloved, sleep."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

So was she soon exhaled, and vanished hence;
As a sweet odour, of a vast expense.
She vanished, we can scarcely say she died.

John Dryden

What if thou be saint or sinner,
Crooked gray-beard, straight beginner,—
Empty paunch, or jolly dinner,
When Death thee shall call.
All alike are rich and richer,
King with crown, and cross-legged stitcher,
When the grave hides all.

Richard Watson Gilder Drinking Song, as reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

When the last sea is sailed and the last shallow charted,
When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed
Grant the last prayer that I shall pray, Be good to me, O Lord.

John Masefield

All buildings are but monuments of death,
All clothes but winding-sheets for our last knell,
All dainty fattings for the worms beneath,
All curious music but our passing bell:
Thus death is nobly waited on, for why?
All that we have is but death's livery.

James Shirley Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

I rejoice in the presence of death because I think it’s what makes life brilliant and beautiful. And without it, the world would be ridiculous. I’m interested in it from every point of view. My interest in it has not dimmed with its approach.

Orson Welles

For I know that Death is a guest divine,
Who shall drink my blood as I drink this wine;
And he cares for nothing! a king is he—
Come on, old fellow, and drink with me!
With you I will drink to the solemn past,
Though the cup that I drain should be my last.

William Winter

I do not think life will change for the better without an assault on the establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions.

Huey P. Newton Revolutionary Suicide (1973)

Every one of those unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them that has swallowed up the whole of their Essence, and also that tendency to hate others which flows from it.

G. I. Gurdjieff All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (1950)

For ages the world has been waiting and watching; millions, with broken hearts, have hovered around the yawning abyss; but no echo has come back from the engulfing gloom —silence, oblivion, covers all. If indeed they survive; if they went away whole and victorious, they give us no signals. We wait for years, but no messages come from the far-away shore to which they have gone.

Randolph Sinks Foster Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

With regard to their actual course of studies, the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed.

Julius Caesar

It is better to die well, than to live wrongly (...) who is afraid of death loses the joy of life; truth prevails all, prevails who is killed, because no adversity can harm him, who is not dominated by injustice.

Jan Hus

"For all that let me tell thee, brother Panza," said Don Quixote, "that there is no recollection which time does not put an end to, and no pain which death does not remove."
"And what greater misfortune can there be," replied Panza, "than the one that waits for time to put an end to it and death to remove it?"

Miguel de Cervantes

Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either.

Alexander Smith

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

Niccolò Machiavelli

Death, as the human consciousness understands it, pain and sorrow, loss and disaster, joy and distress, are only such because man, as yet, identifies himself with the life of the form and not with the life and consciousness of the soul...p. 76

Alice Bailey A Treatise on the Seven Rays: Volume 1: Esoteric Psychology (1936)

Much good will be brought about through the growing custom to cremate those forms which the indwelling life has vacated; when it is an universal custom, we shall see a definite minimising of disease, leading to longevity and increased vitality. p. 249
On the Cure of Cancer

Alice Bailey A Treatise on the Seven Rays: Volume 4: Esoteric Healing (1953)

The solitary, silent, solemn scene,
Where Cæsars, heroes, peasants, hermits lie,
Blended in dust together; where the slave
Rests from his labors; where th' insulting proud
Resigns his powers; the miser drops his hoard:
Where human folly sleeps.

John Dyer

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