I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at all surprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, I thought, and to wish me “Good-by!” They all came, and were all very pleasant; but they were not in the least astonished — not one of them. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of the most-naturally-to-be-expected things in the world.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
“Dreams” (1886)
(Source)
Quotations about:
hanging
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Like enough, you won’t be glad,
When they come to hang you, lad:
But bacon’s not the only thing
That’s cured by hanging from a string.Hugh Kingsmill (1889-1949) English biographer, literary critic, man of letters [pen name of Hugh Kingsmill Lunn]
“Two Poems, After A. E. Housman”, No. 1, st. 2 (1925)
(Source)
Houseman, writing to his brother, said of the parody: "It's the best I have seen, and indeed, the only good one."
There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
[Il n’est si homme de bien, qu’il mette à l’examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.]
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 3, ch. 9 “Of Vanity [De la vanité]” (c. 1587) (3.9) (1595) [tr. Frame (1943)]
(Source)
First appeared in the 1588 edition.
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but brings all his actions and thoughts within compasse and danger of the lawes; and that tenne times in his life might not lawfully be hanged.
[tr. Florio (1603)]There is no so good Man, that so squares all his Thoughts and Actions to the Laws, that he is not Faulty enough to deserve Hanging ten Times in his Life.
[tr. Cotton (1686)]There is no so good man, who so squares all his thoughts and actions to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve hanging ten times in his life.
[tr. Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]There does not exist a man of such worth that, were he to lay open to the scrutiny of the laws all his actions and thoughts, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
[tr. Ives (1925)]No man is so moral but that, if he submitted his deeds and thoughts to cross-examination by the laws, he would be found worthy of hanging on ten occasions in his lifetime.
[tr. Screech (1987)]
