Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, “Hungarian Rat Poison” (1757), engraving, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (image via Web Gallery of Art)
The CEOS on Trump’s economic advisory panels have resigned. So have members of the Presidential Arts Commission. When will the cabinet? When will Trump?
The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
—Archibald MacLeish
The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are.
—Harold Rosenberg
The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign.
—Tacitus
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
—Willa Cather
We are all resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.
—Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: It is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them.
—Gustave Le Bon
As her fate, she accepted the world of ice, shining, shimmering, dead; she resigned herself to the triumph of glaciers and the death of the world.
—Anna Kavan, IceThe Heart of the Matter
I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.
—Robert Burns
I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavors for serving my Country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen. Amen. Amen.
—Admiral Horatio, Lord Nelson, diary entry on the eve of the Battle of Trafalgar
If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained. Few die and none resign.
—Thomas Jefferson
I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.
To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.
Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
—Richard Milhous Nixon
If I could get my membership fee back, I’d resign from the human race.
—Fred Allen
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.—Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Dirge without Music”
