Ambrose Bierce Quotes

As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.

When the lever is pulled, the body twists and shudders violently, cooks and sizzles obscenely, and emits horrible noises from the nose, mouth and anus…Chapman said it was the ghastliest mode of death he could have conjured, short of slow torture, and that no sane person who witnessed it could possibly oppose its replacement by a less violent means of execution.

You were impaled? (Delphine) You know the worst part about impalement? You don’t die immediately. You hang on bleeding and aching as the spike works its way slowly through your body until it pierces some major organ. Pray to the gods you worship that you never know what that feels like. (Jericho)

There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.

I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race.

The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.

Public crucifixion is no fun.

Captain Hale, alone, without sympathy or support, save that from above, on the near approach of death asked for a clergyman to attend him. It was refused. He then requested a Bible; that too was refused by his inhuman jailer.

I went out to Charing Cross to see Major General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition.

Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

Surely martyrs, irrespective of the special phase of the divine idea for which they gladly give up their bodies to torture and to death, are the truest heroes of history.

His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr.

Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty... mine's putting in an express lane.

It would have been far better for thee to have died beneath the knife of the assassin.

I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.

Was it not enough to crucify Christ, Must you crucify all redeemers?

This is a war. Whether we receive threats or not, it does not make any difference to us. I am a Muslim. … God willing, life or death for a Muslim, we are not afraid of that. Whatever threats they give to us.

We will cut off his head with the crown upon it.

I die most willingly. And with God’s grace, I shall give others the good example not to fear death. I do forgive who had a hand ... in my death and my innocent blood. As for my religion, ‘tis glorious for all my friends that I should die for it.

God save Ireland, said the heroes God save Ireland said they all. Whether on the scaffold high, Or the battle field we die O’ what matter when for Ireland dear we fall.

Death By A Thousand Cuts

Crucifixion is the most cruel and disgusting penalty; the worst of deaths.

Crucifixion is the most wretched of deaths.

A healthy person could survive on the cross for one or two days. The naked man would be jeered at and ridiculed. Insects would infest his mouth, eyes, and open wounds. With his hands nailed to the cross, he would have been unable to stop them. Left to the elements, unable to eat or drink, in constant pain, and brutally aware he was going to die, there can be no doubt that, as the ancients tell us, crucifixion was the worst of deaths.