quotations about ghosts
The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always -- take any form -- drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!
EMILY BRONTE
Wuthering Heights
Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow,
And Scipio's ghost walks unavenged amongst us!
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Supposing no ghost then ever appeared, is it a consequence that no man could ever imagine that they saw the figure of a person deceased? Surely those who say this little know the force, the caprice, or the defects of the imagination. Persons after a debauch of liquor, or under the influence of terror, or in the delirium of a fever, or in a fit of lunacy, or even walking in their sleep, have had their brain as deeply impressed with chimerical representations as they could possibly have been, had their representations struck their senses.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
"An Opinion of Ghosts", Essays on Men and Manners
And as to being in a fright,
Allow me to remark
That Ghosts have just as good a right
In every way, to fear the light,
As Men to fear the dark.
LEWIS CARROLL
"Phantasmagoria"
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win.
STEPHEN KING
attributed, A Book of Horrors
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
When thoroughly reliable people encounter ghosts, their stories are difficult to explain away.
C. B. COLBY
Strangely Enough
From what I have told you already you have no doubt drawn the inference that the ghosts are haunting me. But the ghosts themselves are not of that mind. In their opinion it is I who am haunting them.
LAWRENCE PEARSALL JACKS
All Men are Ghosts
Ghosts seem harder to please than we are; it is as though they haunted for haunting’s sake -- much as we relive, brood, and smoulder over our pasts.
ELIZABETH BOWEN
preface, The Second Ghost Book
In the old world, races and tribes have given place to other races and tribes in war and conquests and periods of civilization, and the ghosts and gods and devils have continued with them. Ghosts of the past and the present swarm and hover over the old world lands, especially in mountain ranges and heaths, places rich in traditions, myth and legend. Ghosts continue to fight their battles of the past, to dream through periods of peace amid familiar scenes, and hatch in the minds of the people the seeds of future action. The land of the old world has not been under the ocean for many ages, and the ocean has not been able to purify it by the action of its waters and to free it from ghosts of the living dead and dead men's ghosts and ghosts that were never man.
H. W. PERCIVAL
"Ghosts", The Word, July-September 1913
The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Celtic Twilight
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
There are stories about winter ghosts found tangled like lice in their lovers' hair. Dead people have no hair themselves, which is how they can be recognized in winter. But in summer, the living and dead may pass each other on the street, and no one knows the difference.
KELLY LINK
Magic for Beginners
Houses are not haunted. We are haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves, our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.
DEAN KOONTZ
Velocity
The everyday is like a ghost--secretive, ungraspable, yet with an acutely felt presence--and is itself beset by ghosts.
MARIA DEL PILAR BLANCO & ESTHER PEEREN
introduction, Popular Ghosts: The Haunted Spaces of Everyday Culture
It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Life of Samuel Johnson
The way I see it, having a paranormal encounter like seeing a ghost is kind of like winning the creepiest lottery imaginable.
DAVID GODWIN
introduction, True Ghosts 3: Even More Chilling Tales from the Vaults of FATE Magazine
A play without a ghost is like; is like--i'gad it is like nothing.
JOHN GAY
The What D'Ye Call It