Death Knell Quotes & Sayings

To be clear, climate change is a true 800 pound gorilla in the room. The effects of global warming threaten global environmental upheaval over the coming century. But for South Florida and the Everglades, it could be our death knell if urgent action is not taken. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz

The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others. — Edmund Morris

When movies work or a TV series, when they really work, it's because of the collaborative effort. Competition is the death knell for anything, in my opinion. Especially in Hollywood. When actors are competing against each other, or when directors are competing against actors, it's usually the beginning of the end. — Rocky Carroll

The top 1% holds nearly half of the financial wealth, the greatest concentration of wealth of any industrialized nation, more concentrated than at any time since the Depression. In 1980, on average, CEOs earned 42 times the salary of the average worker, and these days they earn about 476 times that salary. Since 1980, the rich have been getting richer fast and furiously and hard-working people in the middle are sliding down the greasy slope who never imagined this could happen to them. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humankind has survived this. — Garrison Keillor

One might even take a speech of President Obama's two years ago in the oil town of Cushing, Oklahoma, to be an eloquent death-knell for the species. He proclaimed with pride, to ample applause, "Now, under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. That's important to know. Over the last three years, I've directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We're opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We've quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some." The applause also reveals something about government commitment to security. Industry profits are sure to be secured as "producing more oil and gas here at home" will continue to be "a critical part" of energy strategy, as the president promised. — Noam Chomsky

In 2015, Vladimir Putin may witness his empire's death knell — Strobe Talbott

Hear him now as he toils. He has a long garden-implement in his hand, and he is sending up the death-rate in slug circles with a devastating rapidity. "Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay Ta-ra-ra BOOM - " And the boom is a death-knell. As it rings softly out on the pleasant spring air, another stout slug has made the Great Change. — P.G. Wodehouse

Satisfaction with results will be the [death] knell of progress. No man is good who thinks that he cannot be better. He has no holiness who thinks that he is holy enough. — Charles Spurgeon

The birth of science rang the death-knell of an arbitrary and constantly interposing Supreme Power. — Annie Besant

Regular crises perpetuate the past by reinvigorating cycles which started long ago. In contrast, (capital-C) Crises are the past's death knell. They function like laboratories in which the future is incubated. They have given us agriculture and the industrial revolution, technology and the labour contract, killer germs and antibiotics. Once they strike, the past ceases to be a reliable predictor of the future and a brave new world is born. — Yanis Varoufakis

Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn't funny. It's a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it's not a surprise anymore. — Garrison Keillor

Who are you?" Her eyes snapped open, and her voice held a hysterical edge. "Do I even know who you are?"
He stepped over Walker's battered corpse and grabbed her by the shoulders, leaned down
so that his no-doubt foul breath washed over her face. "I am your husband, my lady."
She turned her face away from him.
He shook her. "The one you promised to obey always."
"Simon - "
"The one you said you'd cleave to, forsaking all others."
"I - "
"The one you make love to at night."
"I don't know if I can live with you anymore." The words were a whisper, but they rang in his head like a death knell. — Elizabeth Hoyt

You're better off single," Bill had always told him. "More marketable. A relationship will threaten your role as America's heartthrob." And always he would add, "Whatever you do, Hill, don't get someone pregnant. It'd be a death knell to your image. — Karen Kingsbury

This sounded the death knell of small family businesses, soon to be followed by the disappearance of the individual entrepreneur, gobbled up one by one by the increasingly hungry ogre of capitalism, and drowned by the rising tide of large companies. — Emile Zola

The death knell for any enterprise is to glorify the past
no matter how good it was. — Jeff Bezos

Ajax blinked. Then he looked swiftly into her face. In her words, in her voice, was a sound he knew well. For the first time he saw the green ribbon. He looked around and saw the gleaming kitchen and the table set for two and detected the scent of the nest. Every hackle on his body rose, and he knew that very soon she would, like all of her sisters before her, put him to the death-knell question "Where you been?" His eyes dimmed with a mild and momentary regret. — Toni Morrison

The Joke...Audience as reflexive cast; 35 mm. X2 cameras;variable length; black and white, silent. Parody of Hollis Frampton's 'audience-specific events,' two Ikegami EC-35 video cameras in theater record the film's audience and project the resultant raster onto screen - the theater audience watching itself watch itself get the obvious 'joke' and become increasingly self-conscious and uncomfortable and hostile supposedly comprises the film's involuted 'antinarrative' flow. Incandenza's first truly controversial project, Film & Kartridge Kulcher's Sperber credited it with 'unwittingly sounding the death-knell of post-postsctructural film in terms of sheer annoyance. — David Foster Wallace

If ever I to the moment shall say:
Beautiful moment, do not pass away!
Then you may forge your chains to bind me,
Then I will put my life behind me,
Then let them hear my death-knell toll,
Then from your labours you'll be free,
The clock may stop, the clock-hands fall,
And time come to an end for me! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved, and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the sun rose higher, I lay down on the grass, and was overpowered by a deep sleep. I had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves were agitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery, The sleep into which I now sunk refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to reflect upon what had passed with greater composure; yet still the words of the fiend rung in my ears like a death-knell, they appeared like a dream, yet distinct and oppressive as a reality. — Mary Shelley

Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell. — David Ogilvy

A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and committal read. But somehow the corpse never stays put. — Bernard Ramm

Here's what the death knell for the personal computer will sound like: Mainly I use my phone/paid, but I still use my PC to write long e-mails and documents. Most people aren't there yet, but that's where we're headed — Paul Allen

The petroDollar system breaking down, where oil is no longer paid for in Dollars internationally, essentially would be the death knell to the US Dollar as the reserve currency. It means the US can't borrow with 'exorbitant privilege' anymore, and it means the US Treasury market is set for an out-of-control interest rate spiral. — Addison Wiggin

And thou art terrible
the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine. — Fitz-Greene Halleck

I think self-doubt, as grim as it can be, makes me a better writer. Stasis and hubris would probably be the death knell for my career. — Kristan Higgins

When top executives get huge pay hikes at the same time as middle-level and hourly workers lose their jobs and retirement savings, or have to accept negligible pay raises and cuts in health and pension benefits, company morale plummets. I hear it all the time from employees: This company, they say, is being run only for the benefit of the people at the top. So why should we put in extra effort, commit extra hours, take on extra responsibilities? We'll do the minimum, even cut corners. This is often the death knell of a company. — Robert Reich

Comparison is a death knell to sibling harmony. — Elizabeth Fishel

David Lawrence, founder of US News & World Report, warned, Confiscation of wealth may satisfy the vengeful in us. It may sooth a retaliatory spirit. But it is the path of national suicide ... There must always be the reward motive. To many people it is but another way to set goals of human ambition ... When government kills the opportunity to earn, it sounds the death knell of the opportunity to serve. — Jim Powell

Cable's on fire. Traditional broadcast TV's hearing a death knell. I sample as much television as possible. I like 'Homeland,' 'Game of Thrones,' 'Veep.' Now reinvention's important. — Darren Star

Attempts to tame the wayward and domesticate the riotous, to make the unknowable predictable and enchain the free-roaming - all such things sound the death knell to love. — Zygmunt Bauman

I think the death knell for any musician is getting a job that you like and pays enough that you just stay there forever. — Wesley Schultz

What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh! — Agnes Repplier

They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere. — Emma Goldman

Would a harsh word ever fall from lips which now breathed only love? Would the step whose lightest footfall now made her heart leap, ever sound in her ear like a death knell? — Fanny Fern

My feeling is that if any Republican was elected it would be almost a death knell for the species literally, just because of their attitude on climate change. — Noam Chomsky

The most devastating thing though that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a Savior. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity. — Frank Zindler