Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Murder
Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. I. Sec. I. Memb. II. Subsec. V.
Et tu, Brute fili.
You also, O son Brutus.
Cæsar. Words on being stabbed by Brutus, according to Suetonius. Quoted as “Et tu Brutus” and “Tu quoque Brute.” True Tragedy of Richarde, Duke of York. (1600). Also found in S. Nicholson’s Acolastus his Afterwitte. (1600). Cæsar’s Legend, in Mirror for Magistrates. (1587). Malone suggests that the Latin words appeared in the old Latin play by Richard Eedes—Epilogus Cæsaris Interfecti, given at Christ Church Oxford. (1582).
Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies.
The gods on murtherers fix revengeful eyes.
Geo. Chapman—The Widow’s Tears. Act V. Sc. IV.
Mordre wol out, that see we day by day.
Chaucer—Canterbury Tales. The Nonnes Preestes Tale. L. 15,058.
Murder may pass unpunish’d for a time,
But tardy justice will o’ertake the crime.
Dryden—The Cock and the Fox. L. 285.
Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
George Henry Lewes—Physiology of Common Life. Ch. XII.
Absolutism tempered by assassination.
Count Münster, Hanoverian envoy at St. Petersburg, writing of the Russian Constitution.
Neque enim lex est æquior ulla,
Quam necis artifices arte perire sua.
Nor is there any law more just, than that he who has plotted death shall perish by his own plot.
Ovid—Ars Amatoria. I. 655.
One murder made a villain,
Millions a hero.—Princes were privileg’d
To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.
Ah! why will kings forget that they are men,
And men that they are brethren?
Bishop Porteus—Death. L. 154.
Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 5. L. 27.
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 622.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 80.
No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize.
Hamlet. Act IV. Sc. 7. L. 128.
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy.
Julius Cæsar. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 254.
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incardine,
Making the green one red.
Macbeth. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 60.
Blood hath been shed ere now i’ the olden time,
Ere humane statute purg’d the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d
Too terrible for the ear: the time has been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools: this is more strange
Than such a murder is.
Macbeth. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 76.
The great King of kings
Hath in the table of his law commanded
That thou shalt do no murder: and wilt thou, then,
Spurn at his edict and fulfill a man’s?
Richard III. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 200.
E un incidente del mestiere.
It is one of the incidents of the profession.
Umberto I, of Italy, after escaping death. Assassination is the perquisite of kings. Ascribed to him by other authorities. (Quoted “métier” erroneously.)
Cast not the clouded gem away,
Quench not the dim but living ray,—
My brother man, Beware!
With that deep voice which from the skies
Forbade the Patriarch’s sacrifice.
God’s angel, cries, Forbear!
Whittier—Human Sacrifice. Pt. VII.
One to destroy is murder by the law,
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name,
War’s glorious art, and gives immortal fame.
Young—Love of Fame. Satire VII. L. 55.
Killing no murder.
Title of a tract in Harleian Miscellany, ascribed to Col. Silas Titus, recommending the murder of Cromwell.