Revenge

Revenge or vengeance consists primarily of retaliation against a person or group in response to perceived wrongdoing. Although many aspects of revenge resemble or echo the concept of justice, revenge usually has a more injurious than harmonious goal. The vengeful wish consists of forcing the perceived wrongdoer to suffer pain, injury or constraints, and is often justified as a means of making sure that the wrongdoer can never inflict such an injury upon others.

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• Do you who are a Christian desire to be revenged and vindicated, and the death of Jesus Christ has not yet been revenged, nor His innocence vindicated?
  • Augustine of Hippo, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 520.

• Revenge is like a two-headed snake. While you watch your opponent go down, you get poisoned yourself.
  • Air Nomad saying in "The Southern Raiders" episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and "Two-Headed Rat Viper" at Avatar Wikia

• Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
  • Francis Bacon, Essays, Of Revenge (1625)

• Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon.
  • Francis Bacon, Essays, Of Revenge (1625)

• Sweet is revenge—especially to women.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto I, Stanza 124.

• Revenge is like a ghost. It takes over every man it touches. Its thirst cannot be quenched until the last man standing has fallen.
  • Vladmir Makarov, Modern Warfare 2

• Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.
  • Emil Cioran, Histoire et utopie (History & Utopia) (1960)

• "Crom, I have never prayed to you before, I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad, why we fought or how we died. No, all that matters, is that few stood against many. That's what's important. Valor pleases you, Crom, so grant me one request: grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to hell with you!"
  • Conan, Conan the Barbarian (1982).

• Somebody once wrote, "Revenge is a dish that has to be eaten cold." Hot as you are, you're liable to end up with indigestion.
  • Ryan (Lee Van Cleef), Death Rides a Horse (Da uomo a uomo) (1968)

• "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth!"
  "Very good. That way the whole world will be blind and toothless."
  • Villager and Tevye, Fiddler on the Roof

• 'Tis more noble to forgive, and more manly to despise, than to revenge an Injury.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard (1752).

• Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
  • Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, Chap. 11. (1776)

• If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.
  • Hammurabi, Section 196 of the Code of Hammurabi (translated by Leonard William King, 1910).
  • Alternately translated as: If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.

• Living well is the best revenge.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, 520 (1651)

• Revenge may just be the ultimate Hallmark Card. Its as if You're saying "You have effected My Life so much I feel compelled to respond in kind". When though of like that, I guess the old Cliche is True. Revenge is Sweet
  • Augustus Hill

• The sixth precept of the natural law is, that in revenge and punishments we must have our eye not at the evil past, but the future good: that is, it is not lawful to inflict punishment for any other end, but that the offender may be corrected, or that others warned by his punishment may become better. But this is confirmed chiefly from hence, that each man is bound by the law of nature to forgive one another, provided he give caution for the future, as hath been showed in the foregoing article. Furthermore, because revenge, if the time past be only considered, is nothing else but a certain triumph and glory of mind, which points at no end (for it contemplates only what is past, but the end is a thing to come), but that which is directed to no end, is vain: that revenge therefore which regards not the future, proceeds from vain glory, and therefore without reason. But to hurt another without reason introduces a war, and is contrary to the fundamental law of nature. It is therefore a precept of the law of nature, that in revenge we look not backwards, but forward. Now the breach of this law is commonly called CRUELTY.
  • Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, ch.3, sec. 11

• Grammy Flash always used to say, the trouble with "an eye for an eye" is that everyone ends up blind.
  • The Flash, Justice League: Unlimited

• Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 105.

• Revenge, at first though sweet,
  Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IX, lines 171-172.

• One sole desire, one passion now remains
  To keep life's fever still within his veins,
  Vengeance! dire vengeance on the wretch who cast
  O'er him and all he lov'd that ruinous blast.
  • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.

• Beware: "In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man."
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil (1885–1886)

• The whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish day-dream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.
  • George Orwell, "Revenge is Sour", Tribune (9 November 1945)

• To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
  • Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living, 1938-03-05

• There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.
  • Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living, 1946-03-04

• "In certain, extreme situations, the law is inadequate. In order to shame its inadequacy, it is necessary to act outside the law. To pursue - natural justice. This is not vengeance. Revenge is not a valid motive, it's an emotional response. No, not vengeance. Punishment."
  • Frank Castle, The Punisher

• Well, I'm not one to sit and spin
  Because living well is the best revenge.
  • R.E.M., in "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" on Accelerate (2008)

• 'Tis an old tale, and often told;
  But did my fate and wish agree,
  Ne'er had been read, in story old,
  Of maiden true betray'd for gold,
  That loved, or was avenged, like me!
  • Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Canto II, Stanza 27.

• Vengeance to God alone belongs;
  But, when I think of all my wrongs
  My blood is liquid flame!
  • Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Canto VI, Stanza 7.

• Revenge is the sweetest morsel to the mouth, that ever was cooked in hell.
  • Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, Ch. 30 (1818)

• If I can catch him once upon the hip,
  I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act I, scene 3, line 47.

• If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act III, scene 1, line 55.

• Now, infidel, I have you on the hip.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act IV, scene 1, line 334.

• Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,
  Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.
  • William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (c. 1584-1590), Act II, scene 3, line 38.

• Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (1821)

• Revenge is the prime ingredient in the fountain of youth.
  • Clockwerk, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

• Revenge is like a poison. It can take you over, and before you know it, it can turn you into something ugly.
  • Aunt May, Spider-Man 3

• There is an old Klingon proverb, "Revenge is a dish best served cold"...and it is very cold, in space...
  • Khan, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

• The way of revenge lies in simply forcing ones way into a place and being cut down. There is no shame in this. By thinking that you must complete the job you will run out of time. By considering things like how many men the enemy has, time piles up; in the end you will give up. No matter if the enemy has thousands of men, there is fulfillment in simply standing them off and being determined to cut them all down, starting from one end. You will finish the greater part of it.
  • Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure (1710–1716)

• If you wish for revenge, an equally hard blow will be dealt back to yourself.
  • Yūko Ichihara, xxxHOLIC

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 671-72.

• Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
  • Francis Bacon, Of Revenge.

• Women do most delight in revenge.
  • Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, Part III, Section XII.

• It [revenge] is sweeter far than flowing honey.
  • Homer, The Iliad, XVIII. 109.

• Behold, on wrong
  Swift vengeance waits; and art subdues the strong.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book VIII, line 367. Pope's translation.

• At vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa nempe hoc indocti.
  • Revenge is sweeter than life itself. So think fools.
  • Juvenal, Satires, XIII. 180.

• Minuti
  Semper et infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas
  Ultio.
  • Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.
  • Juvenal, Satires, XIII. 189.

• Vindicta
  Nemo magis gaudet quam fœmina.
  • No one rejoices more in revenge than woman.
  • Juvenal, Satires, XIII. 191.

• Je ne te quitterai point que je ne t'aie vu pendu.
  • I will not leave you until I have seen you hanged.
  • Molière, Le Medecin Malgré Lui, III. 9.

• Sæpe intereunt aliis meditantes necem.
  • Those who plot the destruction of others often fall themselves.
  • Phaedrus, Fables, Appendix, VI. 11.

• Inhumanum verbum est ultio.
  • Revenge is an inhuman word.
  • Seneca, De Ira, II. 31.

• Malevolus animus abditos dentes habet.
  • The malevolent have hidden teeth.
  • Syrus, Maxims.

• Odia in longum jaciens, quæ reconderet, auctaque promeret.
  • Laying aside his resentment, he stores it up to bring it forward with increased bitterness.
  • Tacitus, Annales, I, 69.

• Souls made of fire and children of the sun,
  With whom Revenge is virtue.
  • Edward Young, The Revenge, Act V.