Darragh Palmer

“I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed King;”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II

“Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch, Ahab held it out, exclaiming--"Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying