Skip to content

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:

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.

Susan Sontag Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

The goal of human life is not death but resurrection.

Karl Barth Witness to an Ancient Truth (1962)

She was trying to feel philosophical about dying, not managing it, trying not to be frightened, and not managing that, either.

Sheri S. Tepper Grass (1989)

Whatever. As far as I can see, there is one state of dead and that’s ‘not living.’ Now, do you have anything useful to add to this investigation or not?”

Jasper Fforde Something Rotten (2004)

Fear God, and take your own part.

George Borrow The Romany Rye (1857)

Cheating ageing by a low-calorie diet, uploading one’s mind into a super-computer, migrating into outer space … Longing for everlasting life, humans show that they remain the death-defined animal.

John Gray The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

No evil is honorable; but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.

Zeno of Citium

Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.

Tanith Lee The Birthgrave (1975)

Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone—the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no fairness on earth.

Svetlana Alexievich Voices from Chernobyl (2005)

The Feast of Birds is dedicated to Avalei, the Goddess of Love and Death, of whom my master had said: “Not all that is ancient is worthy of praise.”

Sofia Samatar A Stranger in Olondria (2013)

There is nothing more alien to a modern American than yesterday’s empires, with their arbitrary imperial powers, their cruelty, and their casual control over life and death.

Charles Sheffield Dancing with Myself (1993)

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

George Bernard Shaw Overruled (1912)

UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.

Dr. Seuss The Lorax (1971)

You find your eyes are growing moist.
All the fears never voiced say you have to make your final choice.

David Gilmour

Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.

Ursula K. Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

In the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Knowledge was what he needed. Fear was what he had.

Roger Zelazny Four for Tomorrow (1967)

I fear the vermin that shall undermine
Senate and citadel and school and shrine.

Edwin Markham

Anxiety is a useful tool: it forces us to make plans. But when too much anxiety freezes us into indecision, it needs checking.

Alastair Reynolds Century Rain (2004)

One’s own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only exorcism.

Glen Cook The White Rose (1985)

Related topics