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Homicide

killing of a human being by another human being
For other uses, see Homicide (disambiguation).

Homicide refers to the act of killing another human being. Although homicide does not define an illegal act necessarily, sometimes it is used synonymously with "murder".

Keep far from a false charge, and don't kill the innocent and righteous: for I will not justify the wicked. ~ Book of Exodus
It's in our nature to destroy ourselves. It's in our nature to kill ourselves. It's in our nature to kill each other. It's in our nature to kill! Kill, kill! ~ Jacoby D. Shaddix
No one joins the murder squad who hasn't a taste for death. ~ P. D. James
Thou shalt not kill. ~ Ten Commandments
If he thrust him of hatred, or hurl at him by laying of wait, that he die; Or in enmity smite him with his hand, that he die: he that smote him shall surely be put to death; for he is a murderer: the revenger of blood shall slay the murderer, when he meeteth him. ~ Bible

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Quotes

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B

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Whoever sheds man's blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image. ~ Bible
  • Whoever sheds man's blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image.
  • And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death. And if he smite him with throwing a stone, wherewith he may die, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death. Or if he smite him with an hand weapon of wood, wherewith he may die, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death. The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer: when he meeteth him, he shall slay him. But if he thrust him of hatred, or hurl at him by laying of wait, that he die; Or in enmity smite him with his hand, that he die: he that smote him shall surely be put to death; for he is a murderer: the revenger of blood shall slay the murderer, when he meeteth him.
  • So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.
  • War can be and is mass murder, where the motive is wrong. It can be sacrifice and right action, where the motive is right. The slaying of a man in the act of killing the defenseless is not regarded as murder. The principle remains the same, whether it is killing an individual who is murdering, or fighting a nation which is warring on the defenseless.
    • Alice Bailey, Treatise on the Seven Rays: Volume 1: Esoteric Psychology I, (1936) p. 180
  • Thou shalt not kill.
    • The Bible (King James Version), Deuteronomy 5:17. Alternatively translated as "You shall not murder" (New International Version); "Do not murder" (Contemporary English Version); "Thou dost not murder" (Young's Literal Translation); "Do not kill another person" (New Life Version); "Do not commit murder" (New International Reader's Version).
  • HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation.
  • A subtler analogue occurs in treatments of murder and abortion in twentieth-century fiction. Both are the objects of real and urgent moral, emotional, and legal concerns among American citizens. Yet murder is depicted vastly more often than abortion: it is the single most common plot device in whole genres of imaginative literature-novels, movies, and television. Abortion occurs much less often as a plot device even in novels, and almost never in movies or on television. Is this because murder is a familiar part of most Americans’ lives and abortion is not? Or because Americans are more likely to be affected by a murder than by an abortion? Or because murder is less horrible and disapproved than abortion?
    On the contrary: there are enormously more abortions in the United States than murders, and vastly more members of the reading public are affected by abortion than by homicide (unless, of course, one categorized abortions as “murders,” but it is still not the act on which the bulk of mystery or action plots turn). Moreover, although substantial elements of the population are categorically opposed to it, many Americans do not regard abortion as immoral. Precisely because murder, although a real social problem is horrible enough and sufficiently removed form everyday life to provide the excitement of the extreme and perverse, it makes a useful subject for fiction, whereas abortion raises problems which are too familiar, too troubling, too ambivalent, and not sufficiently exotic to afford the same satisfaction in reading.
  • "'Having abandoned the destruction of life, the recluse Gotama abstains from the destruction of life. He has laid aside the rod and the sword, and dwells conscientious, full of kindness, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings.' It is in this way, bhikkhus, that the worldling would speak when speaking in praise of the Tathāgata.
  • .....murder is not just a crime of lust or violence. It becomes possession. They are part of you … [the victim] becomes a part of you, and you [two] are forever one … and the grounds where you kill them or leave them become sacred to you, and you will always be drawn back to them.
    • Ted Bundy, quoted by Bill Hagmaier. Rule, Ann (2009). The Stranger Beside Me (Paperback; updated 2009 ed.). New York: Pocket Books pages 380–96.

C

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  • The prohibition of murder does not abrogate the right to render an unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm. Legitimate defense is a grave duty for whoever is responsible for the lives of others or the common good.
  • Human life is sacred’’ because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains for ever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being… The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. The law forbidding it is universally valid: it obliges each and everyone, always and everywhere... The fifth commandment forbids direct and intentional killing as gravely sinful. The murderer and those who cooperate voluntarily in murder commit a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance.
  • Scripture notes a twofold equity on which this commandment is founded. Man is both the image of God and our flesh. Wherefore, if we would not violate the image of God, we must hold the person of man sacred—if we would not divest ourselves of humanity we must cherish our own flesh. The practical inference to be drawn from the redemption and gift of Christ will be elsewhere considered. The Lord has been pleased to direct our attention to these two natural considerations as inducements to watch over our neighbour's preservation, viz., to revere the divine image impressed upon him, and embrace our own flesh. To be clear of the crime of murder, it is not enough to refrain from shedding man's blood. If in act you perpetrate, if in endeavour you plot, if in wish and design you conceive what is adverse to another's safety, you have the guilt of murder. On the other hand, if you do not according to your means and opportunity study to defend his safety, by that inhumanity you violate the law. But if the safety of the body is so carefully provided for, we may hence infer how much care and exertion is due to the safety of the soul, which is of immeasurably higher value in the sight of God.
  • Mordre wol out, that see we day by day.
    • Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, "The Nonnes Preestes Tale" ("The Nun's Priest's Tale", line 15,058.
  • Oh dear, I never realized what a terrible lot of explaining one has to do in a murder!

D

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  • It must be true that whenever a sensational murder is committed there are people who — though they are, quite properly, of no interest to law enforcers, attorneys, or newspaper reporters — weep, lie sleepless, and realize at last that their lives have been changed by a crime in which they played no part.
  • To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.

E

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  • Keep far from a false charge, and don't kill the innocent and righteous: for I will not justify the wicked.

G

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  • True believing Christians are sheep among wolves. ... They employ neither worldly sword nor war, since with them killing is absolutely renounced.
  • In vain do they think themselves innocent who appropriate to their own use alone those goods which God gave in common; by not giving to others that which they themselves receive, they become homicides and murderers, inasmuch as in keeping for themselves those things which would alleviate the sufferings of the poor, we may say that every day they cause the death of as many persons as they might have fed and did not. When, therefore, we offer the means of living to the indigent, we do not give them anything of ours, but that which of right belongs to them. It is less a work of mercy which we perform than the payment of a debt.

H

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  • The human race isn't worth fighting for, only worth killing. Give the Earth back to the animals. They deserve it infinitely more than we do. Nothing means anything anymore.
    • Eric Harris, as quoted in 12 Rules for Life, an Antidote to Chaos (2018), by Jordan B. Peterson, Random House Canada, p. 147
  • You're not a homicidal, I checked that on your record before I came out after you. That is why I know you will join the Corps and get a great deal of pleasure out of going after the other kind of criminal who is sick, not just socially protesting. The man who can kill and enjoy it.
  • One of television's great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs.
  • Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill.

I

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  • Gentlemen of the Jury, the charge against the prisoner is murder, and the punishment of murder Is death; and that simple statement is sufficient to suggest to us the awful solemnity of the occasion which brings you and me face to face.

J

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  • If the masterpiece was murder, I'd major in art.
  • To die is the lot of all, to commit homicide only of the weak man.
    • St. Jerome, Apology Against Rufinus, Book III, sec. 2

K

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  • For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer's question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented.
    • Immanuel Kant, On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives (1797).
  • People try to excuse their brutality by saying that it is the custom; but a crime does not cease to be a crime because many commit it. Karma takes no account of custom; and the karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all. The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God's creatures, and call it "sport".
  • Some people will kill for second-rate reasons and that makes their act even more monstrous. The fact that a man will kill for a little money or kill for unnecessary reasons as the thrill of it might be looked down upon by a professional killer. He wouldn't kill for a few dollars or for the thrill of it. The professional murderer would kill for good money and good reasons and he would consider himself a craftsman.

L

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  • Around his neck a ribbon clung,
    Close to his heart a picture hung :
    I saw the face — it was not mine ;
    I saw, too, a small dagger shine,
    A curious toy — you know the rest.
  • Abel the victim—Cain the homicide,
    Were type and prophecy
    Of times that were to be,
    Thus reddened from the first life’s troubled tide.
  • Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
  • The power to kill is less than the power to create, for it produces an ending rather than the beginning of something new.
  • You must not murder.(Exodus 20:13)
    Q. What does this mean?
    A. We should fear and love God so that we may not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and befriend him in every bodily need [in every need and danger of life and body].
  • We have now completed both the spiritual and the temporal government, that is, the divine and the paternal authority and obedience. But here now we go forth from our house among our neighbors to learn how we should live with one another, every one himself toward his neighbor. Therefore God and government are not included in this commandment nor is the power to kill, which they have taken away. For God has delegated His authority to punish evil-doers to the government instead of parents, who aforetime (as we read in Moses) were required to bring their own children to judgment and sentence them to death. Therefore, what is here forbidden is forbidden to the individual in his relation to any one else, and not to the government.
    • Martin Luther, The Large Catechism by Martin Luther, translated by F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau, published in Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church, (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921) pp. 565-773

M

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  • Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma. The philosophy of action is that no one else is the giver of peace or happiness. One's own karma, one's own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever... As you sow, so shall you reap. It's a very old proverb of mankind. As you sow, so shall you reap. Sometime you may have killed that man, and then sometime now he comes to kill you... What we have done, the result of that comes to us whenever it comes, either today, tomorrow, hundred years later, hundred lives later, whatever, whatever. And so, it's our own karma.
    That is why that philosophy in every religion: Killing is sin. Killing is sin in every religion. Whosoever sins, whoever is killed, it doesn't matter. It's a sin. And sin.. is a punishable offense. Because when you sin, when you've killed some man, what you are killing? You are killing the cosmic potential within the individual. Individual is cosmic. Individual potential of life is cosmic potential. Individual is divine deep inside. Transcendental experience awakens that divinity in man...When you kill a man like that you deprive him from getting to his human right.
  • Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety.
  • The murder of one person is called unrighteous and incurs one death penalty. Following this argument, the murder of ten persons will be ten times as unrighteous and there should be ten death penalties; the murder of a hundred persons will be a hundred times as unrighteous and there should be a hundred death penalties. All the gentlemen of the world know that they should condemn these things, calling them unrighteous. But when it comes to the great unrighteousness of attacking states, they do not know that they should condemn it. On the contrary, they applaud it, calling it righteous.
    • Mozi Book 5: Condemnation of Offensive War I

O

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  • To test the idea, the scholars examined the correlation between state abortion rates from 1973-1976 and state crime rates from 1985-1997, ostensibly when the children, had they not been aborted, have reached the prime crime-committing age group of 18-24.
    After factoring out such influences as income, racial composition, unemployment and incarcerations, Donohue and Levitt found a statistically significant correlation between high abortion rates and lower crime rates.
    For example, Donohue noted, the 10 states with the lowest incidence of abortions saw their murder rate rise 16.9 percent between 1985-1997, while the 10 with the highest incidence of abortions saw their murder rate drop 31.5 percent.

P

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  • One murder made a villain,
    Millions a hero. Princes were privileged
    To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.

Q

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  • وَلَا تَقْتُلُوا أَوْلَادَكُمْ خَشْيَةَ إِمْلَاقٍ ۖ نَحْنُ نَرْزُقُهُمْ وَإِيَّاكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ قَتْلَهُمْ كَانَ خِطْئًا كَبِيرًا

R

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  • As a social phenomenon, serial murder is only about a hundred and twenty-five years old, part of as swelling tide of interpersonal violence that has been since the middle of the nineteenth century.
    • Robert Ressler, I Have Lived The Monster as quoted in The Munchausen Complex: Socialization of Violence and Abuse by Richard L. Matteol
  • The first killer I ever studied had put bandages over the wounds of the people he stabbed after they were dead, Other killers have done the same thing.
    • Robert Ressler, I Have Lived The Monster as quoted in The Munchausen Complex: Socialization of Violence and Abuse by Richard L. Matteol
  • When bodies are assaulted or parts excised, the killer is signifying his wish to remove any vestiges of humanity from the victim.
    • Robert Ressler, I Have Lived The Monster as quoted in The Munchausen Complex: Socialization of Violence and Abuse by Richard L. Matteol
  • I believe too thoroughly that we create our own reality, for one thing -- an unpopular belief where violence is concerned -- but I'm convinced that the victim-to-be picks out the assailant with as much skill and craft as the murderer seeks his victim, and until we learn much more about both, we'll get nowhere battling crime. I'm not justifying murder by any means, but I'm saying that the victim wants to be murdered -- perhaps to be punished, if not by a vengeful god then by one of his fellows, and that a would-be murderer can switch in a minute and become the victim instead; and that the slayer wants to be slain.
    • Jane Roberts, Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book, p. 205.
  • It is forbidden to murder, as it says "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17).
    A murderer must be put to death, as it says "He shall be avenged" (Exodus 21:20, see Leviticus 24:17,21); it is forbidden to accept compensation from him instead, as it says "You shall not take redemption for the life of a murderer...; and there shall be no atonement for the blood that was spilled... except the blood of him that spilled it" (Numbers 35:31-33). It is forbidden to execute a murderer before he has stood trial, as it says "And the murderer shall not die until he stands before the congregation for judgment" (Numbers 35:12). However, we are commanded to prevent an attempted murder by killing the would-be murderer if necessary, and it is forbidden to refrain from doing so, as it says "And you shall cut off her hand; you shall not be merciful" (Deuteronomy 25:12); and similarly for attempted fornication, as it says "[If the man seizes her and lies with her...] just as a man rises up against his friend and murders him, so is this thing"(Deuteronomy 22:26). It is forbidden to refrain from saving life when it is in one's power to do so, as it says "You shall not stand on your friend's blood"(Leviticus 19:16).
    • Azriel Rosenfeld, "Murderer and Protection of Life - Rotze'ach u-Shemiras Nefesh", Torah.org
  • Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."

S

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Murder is the only art a swordsman may practice. No ornamental words can change that. You want to protect people with murder? You’ll slaughter legions so that a few may live. Many years, long before you were born, my sword was tearing asunder the lives of men. Yes, all of those men were evil, but they were human beings first and foremost, Kenshin. The world you ardently desire to enter will not know what to do with you. It will deceive you into believing that you are saving lives even as you destroy them. You will accept these lies all the while, your hands will be stained with the worst of offenses. ~ Masashi Sogo
  • I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.
  • If survival calls for the bearing of arms, bear them you must. But the most important part of the challenge is for you to find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow man.
  • Murder most foul, as in the best it is, But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
  • For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
    With most miraculous organ.
  • 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?
  • 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.
  • 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.

  • 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.
  • 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?
  • Killing ain't fair, but somebody's got to do it.
  • Bread is life to the poor; he who takes it from them is a murderer.
    • Ben Sirach, Ecclesiasticus: Wisdom of Sirach Chapter 34 : 21
  • We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes.
    • Potter Stewart, Majority opinion in 7-2 ruling that the death penalty is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment for premeditated murder (July 2, 1976).

T

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W

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  • Do you not weep?
    Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.
    The element of water moistens the earth,
    But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens.
    • John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1612–13), Act 4, Sc. 2. By Bosola, to Ferdinand upon gazing on the dead body of the Duchess. Sometimes reported as "murder cries out".
  • I respect a person who's willing to die for his country, but I admire a person who is prepared to kill for his country.
    • Craig Williamson, as quoted in "The spy who never came in from the cold" (20 September 1998), Sunday Times, South Africa

Y

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  • 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.

Z

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  • A man lusts to become a god...and there is murder. Murder upon murder upon murder. Why is the world of men nothing but murder?

Unknown authorship

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  • Kay: There's something even thieves should never steal. Do you know what that is?
    Edgeworth: You really shouldn't steal anything, however, I'll bite. What shouldn't a thief steal?
    Kay: A life. It's too heavy of a burden on your soul to get away with, ever.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 634.

  • Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I. Sec. I. Memb. II. Subsec. V.
  • Et tu, Brute fili.
    • You also, O son Brutus.
    • Caesar. 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) Caesar's Legend, in Mirror for Magistrates. (1587) Malone suggests that the Latin words appeared in the old Latin play by Richard Eedes—Epilogus Coesaris Interfecti, given at Christ Church, Oxford. (1582).
  • Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies.
    Trie gods on murtherers fix revengeful eyes.
  • Murder may pass unpunish'd for a time,
    But tardy justice will o'ertake the crime.
  • Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
  • Neque enim lex est sequior 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.
  • 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!
  • 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.
  • Killing no murder.
    • Title of a tract in Harleian Miscellany, ascribed to Col. Silas Titus, recommending the murder of Cromwell.

See also

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