Gallows Humour Quotes & Sayings

We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. — Marcel Proust

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both. — Samuel Butler

Desperation is a fact of life in many poor, overcrowded countries. — Anthony Lewis

A professor from UBC observed that he agreed with Alexander Pope about the ultimate unreality of evil. Seen from the highest point of metaphysics. To a rational mind, nothing bad ever really happens. He was talking high-minded balls. Twaddle! I thought. I said, 'Oh? Do you mean that every gas chamber has a silver lining? — Saul Bellow

I have no home but me. — Anne Truitt

However, for all his affection and loyalty towards the animal, the dog would soon be leaving him - they would both be present at a celebratory dinner when they reached the roof, he reflected with a touch of gallows-humour, but the poodle would be in the pot. — J.G. Ballard

There is only one, believe it or not. I did get knocked up by a baller. A big football player. — Jessica Simpson

I try to offset any tendency towards the macabre with humour. As I see it, this is a typically English form of humour. It's a piece with such jokes as the one about the man who was being led to the gallows to be hanged. He looked at the trap door in the gallows, which was flimsily constructed, and he asked in some alarm, 'I say, is that thing safe? — Alfred Hitchcock

You don't fight to protect warships or old men. Like the book says, you fight to save your civilization. And so often it seems that civilization is composed mainly of the things women and children want. — James A. Michener

The great writers like Chekhov know that tragedy and laughter are just a few steps from each other ... but it took me a long time as an actress to learn that. Actually Arthur Miller taught me in the Seventies. We were making a CBS TV drama of his play Playing for Time about Auschwitz but the characters were laughing. It was a big insight for me to realise that that was what's called gallows humour, in this case worse than the gallows, that humans need to laugh and make jokes in order to survive. — Vanessa Redgrave

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

Fell?' he asked. 'Or was pushed?'

Anton shrugged again. 'It hardly makes a difference,' he said, 'when you are the man at the bottom of the stairs. — Michael Montoure

Dexter's a unique killer in that his father saw his dark impulses, shined a light on them, and told Dexter that he saw them, he accepted them, that Dexter is good and that he is worthy of love. And I think that's what enables him to focus his energies in this unique way. — Michael C. Hall

I don't look at our society today too much. My focus is still in the past, and part of the reason is because what I do - the wellspring of art, or what I do - l get from the blues. So I listen to the music of a particular period that I'm working on, and I think inside the music is clues to what is happening with the people. — August Wilson

Use equal parts of the dried herbs (Echinacea, hyssop and mullein) to fill a quart jar half full, then add olive (or vegetable) oil to fill up the rest of the jar and place a lid on it. Soak the herbs for two weeks and then strain. Separately, simmer a clove of diced garlic in olive oil for approximately 30 minutes so that you have an herb oil and a garlic oil. Then you mix, for example, 3/4 cup of herb oil with 1/4 cup of garlic oil and place it in a dark jar and refrigerate it. It will last for a long time - up to two years. The dosage is 25 drops a day, 3 times a day, on the tongue. — Jeffrey Wolf Green

Of course she was bloody found dead." Moore grumbled. "Some bastard cut off her head and her limbs. If she'd been found alive I would have been more than bloody surprised. — Sarah Pinborough

You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?"
"That is about the size of it," said the Sergeant.
I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about. — Flann O'Brien

The eclipse of your faith, the darkness of your mind, the fainting of your hope, all these things are but parts of God's method of making you ripe for the great inheritance upon which you shall soon enter. These trials are for the testing and strengthening of your faith
they are waves that wash you further upon the rock
they are winds which waft your ship the more swiftly towards the desired haven. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Supposedly I've got traces of an English accent, though I can't hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who's English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian. — Lev Grossman

Found dead. A verdict as useful as a fucking Bible in the Bluegate Brothel. — Sarah Pinborough

This idea struck me: the army is the body : I am the brain. Thinking is my fighting. (15 May 1940) — Virginia Woolf