Ghosts



In folklore, a  (sometimes known as an apparition, haunt, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter or spectre, spirit, spook, and wraith) is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear to the living.

Quotes

 * Alphabetically by author name.


 * Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow, And Scipio's ghost walks unavenged amongst us!
 * Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act II, scene 1


 * GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
 * Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).


 * Accounting for the uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentions somebody's ingenious theory to the effect that they are as much afraid of us as we of them. Not quite, if I may judge from such tables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from memories of my own experience.
 * Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).


 * Man's need of self-esteem entails the need for a sense of control over reality – but no control is possible in a universe which, by one's own concession, contains the supernatural, the miraculous and the causeless, a universe in which one is at the mercy of ghosts and demons, in which one must deal, not with the unknown, but with the unknowable; no control is possible if man proposes, but a ghost disposes; no control is possible if the universe is a haunted house.
 * Nathaniel Branden, "Mental Health versus Mysticism and Self-Sacrifice" (1963)


 * Where entity and quiddity, The ghosts of defunct bodies, fly.
 * Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto I, line 145


 * Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
 * Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) "Foreword"


 * When thoroughly reliable people encounter ghosts, their stories are difficult to explain away.
 * C.B. Colby in Strangely Enough, p. 177 (1963)


 * "That the dead are seen no more," said Imlac, "I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth: those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence, and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears."
 * Samuel Johnson, Rasselas (1759), Chapter 31


 * So many ghosts, and forms of fright, Have started from their graves to-night, They have driven sleep from mine eyes away; I will go down to the chapel and pray.
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Legend (1872), Part IV


 * Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names.
 * John Milton, Comus (1637), line 207


 * For spirits when they please Can either sex assume, or both.
 * John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book I, line 423


 * Whence and what are thou, execrable shape?
 * John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 681


 * All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear, All intellect, all sense, and as they please They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.
 * John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VI, line 350


 * What beck'ning ghost along the moonlight shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
 * Alexander Pope, Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717), line 1


 * Ghosts are not the souls of the dead, but the souls of people written out of history when history changes.
 * Alastair Reynolds The Fixation (2009), reprinted in Deep Navigation, (p. 66)


 * The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.
 * William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 1, line 115


 * There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave. To tell us this.
 * William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 5, line 126


 * I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?
 * William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act III, scene 1, line 52


 * What are these, So wither'd, and so wild in their attire; That look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth, And yet are on 't?
 * William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act I, scene 3, line 39


 * Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?
 * William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act II, scene 1, line 33


 * A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
 * William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act II, scene 1, line 38


 * Now it is the time of night, That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide.
 * William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act V, scene 1, line 386


 * Ghosts don't do things to you. Ghosts make you do unspeakable things to yourself.
 * Sean Stewart, Perfect Circle (2004), ISBN 1-931520-11-9, page 155


 * I kept on ignoring him. The dead are only ghosts, after all.
 * Sean Stewart, Perfect Circle (2004), ISBN 1-931520-11-9, page 233


 * All on my own Here I stand. Am I humble, am I ghost? I'm on a limb to climb To something lawless I hope Am I humble, am I ghost? I found a way To look towards this day But it all hooked up This could only go one way I'm not alive, I'm not alive enough.
 * Warpaint, Love Is To Die, Warpaint (2014)


 * Here's to the ghost We still seem to host How he's becoming us Here come the vultures Here come the vultures Screaming down at us
 * Charlotte Wessels, Here Come the Vultures,  (2014)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

 * Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 33-34.


 * Who gather round, and wonder at the tale Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly, That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand O'er some new-open'd grave; and, (strange to tell!) Evanishes at crowing of the cock.
 * Robert Blair, The Grave, line 67


 * The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she.
 * Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner, Part III


 * The unexpected disappearance of Mr. Canning from the scene, followed by the transient and embarrassed phantom of Lord Goderich. (Quoted, "He flits across the stage a transient and embarrassed phantom.")
 * Benjamin Disraeli, Endymian, Chapter III


 * Thin, airy shoals of visionary ghosts.
 * Homer, Odyssey, Book XI, line 48. Pope's translation


 * My people too were scared with eerie sounds, A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls, A noise of falling weights that never fell, Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand, Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door, And bolted doors that open'd of themselves; And one betwixt the dark and light had seen Her, bending by the cradle of her babe.
 * Alfred Tennyson, The Ring


 * I look for ghosts; but none will force Their way to me; 'tis falsely said That even there was intercourse  Between the living and the dead.
 * William Wordsworth, Affliction of Margaret