plagues Quotes

“We tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away.”

“No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and emotions shared by all.”

“Then came the second phase of conflict, tears and pleadings—abstraction, in a word. In those fever-hot, nerve-ridden sickrooms crazy scenes took place.”

“Thus the first thing that plague brought to our town was exile.”

“At first the fact of being cut off from the outside world was accepted with a more or less good grace, much as people would have put up with any other temporary inconvenience that interfered with only a few of their habits. But, now they had abruptly become aware that they were undergoing a sort of incarceration.”

“It was the lonely quiet of the village with all our people gone. Houses empty. Doors banging. Fires out. No smoke rising. Starving dogs dragging themselves from door to door. Beasts out in the meadow lowing to be milked... Comfort, it felt like the end of the world.”

“The plague killed so many, Comfort, labor was scarce, good fields were left untilled. Poor folk like us began to know our worth and ask for better wages. That angered King Edward, our king’s grandfather. When the strong grow angry, Comfort, the weak will suffer.”

“The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.”

“A parcel of patterns brought the plague to Eyam. A parcel sent up from London to George Vicars, a journeyman tailor, who was lodging with Mrs. Cooper in a cottage by the west end of the churchyard.”

“So begins Mall Percival’s account of how her village of Eyam struggled against the plague. George Vicars dies on September 6, 1665, and by the end of October, twenty-five more townsfolk have been buried. ”

“Mall and Thomas marry, but their happiness is short-lived. Finally, in October of 1666, the pestilence subsides. Mall, overwhelmed by grief and sorrow, decides to write a chronicle of all she has witnessed in Eyam, hoping that it will set her free.”

Historians estimate that this act of selflessness, by preventing the spread of plague, saved hundreds of thousands of lives throughout England. It also tells us that for the next year, people from the surrounding villages left food and supplies outside the town so that Eyam would not starve.

“Gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.”

“I believe that the plague was a great sign to us, and we refused to see it and take its meaning, and since then we have had war continuously.”